I am reviving the weekly webliography in which I summarize in a single post the “dogeared items from the web” listed in the sidebar. Dogeared from the web, March 1-6, 2009:

• Obama Questions Constitutionality of Copyright Fines. Okay, so this isn’t about copyright and libraries but I am very glad to see the Executive beginning to question the ridiculous structure of our current copyright laws. [via tgdaily.com]
• Before and After: Barren Attic to Programmer’s Paradise. Again, I am invoking the commonplacing nature of this site and giving something completely unrelated to theological libraries. But who among us has no interest in reclaiming dead space to increase productivity? [via Lifehacker.com]
• Compile Wikipedia Articles and Publish as a Book. This page shows you how to create a book from Wikipedia articles in three steps. Books can be created in PDF form or ordered for printing on the PediaPress website.
• Zotero Library to RSS Feed and Anatomy of the Zotero Library to RSS Feed Pipe. A very cool development concerning the Zotero citation management plugin for Firefox. [via the Disruptive Library Technology Jester]
• Twenty-nine reports about the future of academic libraries as compiled by John Dupuis, Head of the Steacie Science & Engineering Library at York University in Toronto. [HT: iLibrarian]
• LibriVox now has the free audio to Martin Luther’s Large Catechism. I have not personally listened to this particular recording so please let me know what you think.
• An interesting idea for a reference kiosk using Skype. [HT: Digital Reference]
• Resisting the Kindle - The Atlantic (March 2, 2009) and In Defense of the Kindle - The Atlantic (March 5, 2009). Very good reading. I gave my two cents about these articles here.

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Commonplaces | No Comments »

I say these things because I agree to some extent with both of two opposing viewpoints on the Kindle’s impact on the culture of words and the future of books, both of which were published at theAtlantic.com.

Sven Birkerts’ article of March 2, 2009, “Resisting the Kindle,” laments the potential world created by the Kindle revolution in which “libraries survive as information centers rather than as repositories of printed books.” Professionally, I am actually fine with that. I am a librarian not primarily to preserve information but to make it available in ways that our students find helpful and accessible. Personally, however, his recognition that our literature is deeply contextual and historicized resonates with me. Consider:

Why, then, am I so uneasy about the page-to-screen transfer—a skeptic if not a downright resister? Perhaps it is because I see in the turning of literal pages—pages bound in literal books—a compelling larger value, and perceive in the move away from the book a move away from a certain kind of cultural understanding, one that I’m not confident that we are replacing, never mind improving upon. I’m not blind to the unwieldiness of the book, or to the cumbersome systems we must maintain to accommodate it—the vast libraries and complicated filing systems. But these structures evolved over centuries in ways that map our collective endeavor to understand and express our world. The book is part of a system. And that system stands for the labor and taxonomy of human understanding, and to touch a book is to touch that system, however lightly.

I think, though, that Matthew Battles’ article of March 5, 2009, “In Defense of the Kindle,” along with his 2003 book on the “unquiet history” of libraries, has helped to soothe my personal bibliophilic concerns:

Yet the culture of letters has always been subject to disruption and transformation. Indeed, since the advent of print, technologies of the book have changed dramatically, and with them the book’s place in society. The world of letters not only transcends these technological changes—it thrives because of them. Were that not the case, the cultural continuity that Birkerts holds so dear would have been lost long ago.

In other words, We didn’t start the fire. It was always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’.

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Books, Libraries, Literature, Tech | 3 Comments »

Last April I highlighted JTOC, an online service written by Jason Fowler for viewing scans of the tables of contents for the most frequently used journals at our library.

The Mar/Apr issue of ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals” turned me on to ticTOCs, another service for reviewing the latest Table of Contents (TOC) for any of 12,000+ scholarly journals. From ONLINEmag:

…users can find journals of interest by title, subject, or publisher; view the latest TOCs… ticTocs also allows users to export selected TOC RSS feeds to feedreaders and to import article citations into RefWorks.

ticTOC even links to the full-text of the articles, but this aspect of their service is subscription-based. The rest, however, appears to be completely free.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Research, Web | No Comments »