Pages that I have encountered throughout the week which relate to libraries, technology, theology, and anything else I found interesting:

• Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition via the Distant Librarian. Data in this report is based on a survey of 75 academic, public and special libraries. Librarians detail their plans on how they plan to develop their e-book collections, what they think of e-book readers and software, and which e-book aggregators and publishers appeal to them most and why. Other issues covered include: library production of e-books and collection digitization, e-book collection information literacy efforts, use of e-books in course reserves and inter-library loan, e-book pricing and inflation issues, acquisition sources and strategies for e-books and other issues of concern to libraries and book publishers.
• Bibliomaniacs and the Medieval Book Curse. This site is based on a paper written by Sandra Anderson for a History of the Book course as a part of her MLIS degree at the University of Alberta. It includes a section examining “book curses as a library security measure that was used as a deterrent against bibliomaniacs for thousands of years but that is almost completely unknown today.”
• Get 91% Off Microsoft Office Ultimate [Deals] via Lifehacker. A Microsoft student promotion that slashes 91% off a copy of Office Ultimate applies to anyone with a .edu email address—and most universities offer .edu addresses to their alumni for free. Microsoft Office Ultimate, which retails for $680, is available to students for only $60 until May 16th.
• Firefox plug-in personalises search results via Pandia Search Engine News. SurfCanyon is a Firefox plug-in that claims mind reading capabilities. Even though there’s no actual magic involved, this nifty little app does a great job of digging though the search results for the hits you need, even though Google buried them on page 12.
• Sofas and schoolwork
• LifeWay Is Going To Use Twitter via Said at Southern.
• Stanford and Deep Web Technologies Partner on Federated Search via Library Technology Guides.
• WAMPANOAG REVIVAL via languagehat.
• Music Made from Microfiche. That’s right. Learn how to take the humble library microfiche, translate the light and dark values into MIDI, and feed it to a Casio keyboard for playback. But why?
• C&RL preprints go open access via Steven Cohen. College & Research Libraries (C&RL), the bi-monthly scholarly journal of the Association of College and Research Libraries now provides its articles online in full-text.
• DIY Bookmaking: The Book Binding Guy via MAKE. I do old-wold bookbinding with Amish-made tools in my off-time. And now so can you.
• Puppy Linux 4.0 Released [Linux] via Lifehacker. The latest version of a Linux distribution that can be run entirely from a thumb drive.
• 8 Top Alternative Search Engines via iLibrarian.
• Web 2.0 Predictions for 2008 via Don Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog.
• Wikipedia vs. Subscription Reference Sources via Digital Reference.
• MIT reinvents the Post It Note via Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology.
• Oxford University Library Services chooses MetaLib by Ex Libris via Library Technology Guide Automation Update.
• 15,000 Classical Hebrew Books for Free Download The non-profit Society for the Preservation of Hebrew Books announced that it added two ancient book collections to the Friedberg-Ryzman collection of more than 15,000 Hebrew books and works of Judaica online. HT: Data Security: Internet Privacy Blog
• Next Generation Data Format via Planet Code4Lib. Issues related to the next generation catalog.

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I am often amused at the juxtaposition of books that come across my desk. Today I point out two new acquisitions to our library which make for a rather unlikely pairing. If, however, the former is correct, then the latter is all that much more important.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt argues that “if morality represents how people would like for the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work.” Incentives, cheating, fabrication, self-interest, convenience, randomness, and power are all addressed in terms of how they influence economics and therefore how they effect society. He argues that we live in a age where nothing is as it seems. Everything has a hidden side. Informed decisions, then, are next to impossible since someone else always has the upper hand.

The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies answers the question that John MacArthur poses in the foreword, “With such a broad patchwork of competing ideas all clamoring for mainstream acceptance, how can the average person in the pew be expected to know what is truly sound, safe, and biblical?” In placing the discipline of discernment in connection with biblical truth and theology, the church’s corporate witness, and personal sanctification, Challies offers a great word on how to discern one’s way through such a freakonomic world. He writes:

Discernment is not a pursuit that stands on its own in the life of the Christian. Rather, it is inexorably connected to others. Those who wish to be discerning must have a posture of discernment. The must commit to reading and studying the Bible, to participating in the local church, and to pursuing the character traits of a Christian. The lives of these people will display the proof of discernment in their obedience to the Bible and in their maturity as Christians.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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It’s time to grab a bucket and start bailing.

I think it was D. L . Moody who famously quipped that the Church is like boat: in order for a boat to be what it was created to be, it must be in water. But if too much of the water gets in the boat it will sink. Similarly, in order for the Church to be what she was created to be she must be in the world. But if too much of the world gets in the Church, she will sink. Okay, so this analogy only goes so far and is admittedly flawed. Don’t miss his point, though.

James Twitchell’s Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart To In Your Face (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007) traces part of the problem to an idea conceived by a man named Mel Stewart. Actually, Mel just capitalized on an idea he saw while driving one day: a moveable type sign in front of a church. Heretofore churches did not typically have large signs since religion was considered private and signage was too public.

He added flourescent lights. He added larger letters. Twitchell thinks he turned American churches on to the idea of branding, the topic which the remainder of the book seeks to address. A fascinating study of the business of church marketing in America.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Books, Commonplaces, Ecclesiology | 3 Comments »

Stephen M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007) is, despite its rather impressive title, a readable, understandable, and helpful evaluation of the most prescient points of Basil’s theological contributions. Hildebrand’s discussion of Basil’s thought as evidenced by his choice of words in argumentation rightly revolves around two sets of words: homoouisios/homoiousios (ομοουσιος/ομοιουσιος) and prosopon/hypostasis (προσοπον/υποστησις). The first set refers to the famous debate on the “substance” (ousia) of Christ and whether it is similar to (homoi-ousia) or the same as (homo-ousia) that of God the Father. Hildrebrand clearly and consisely outlines Basil conversion from the former to the latter. The second set indicates the debate over the position of Christ in the Godhead. A thoroughly enjoyable read if you have interest in the history of theology. Knowledge of Greek is helpful, but not required since the terms are transliterated.

Popularity: 54% [?]

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As promised, here are the other two books I mentioned on Friday. The first is The Other Calling: Theology, Intellectual Vocation and Truth (Malden, MA / Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007) by Andrew Shanks, the Canon Theologian for Manchester Cathedral. Shanks identifies the true calling of an intellectual as a form of priesthood — Melchizedek priesthood, to be exact — in what I deem a misguided venture to unite “intellectuals” as a religiously multicultural ‘priesthood of all thinkers’ in which the “priests” come from “every different sort of given religious background,” (p. 1). Though his theology of contemporary priesthood is overly open-minded, his discussions of the moral responsibility of intellectualism are really quite though provoking. He writes in Chapter 11, pp. 199-200:

What is an intellectual: how exactly are we to define the moral vocation inherent in the privileges that derive from a good education and a receptive mind?

It seems to me that there are three basic options: the choice is between (a) various forms of militant intellectual elitism, (b) a perhaps justifiable ’sophistry’, or (c) priestliness. So, to recapitulate:

• The first option, for militant elitism, involves intellectuals organizing with a view to themselves, as an elite group… Platonist philosophic politics in the Straussian sense is one model of this; the Enlightenment secularism of groups like the Parisian philosophes is another…
• The second option, for sophistry, involves intellectuals who are altogether less clubbable in their specific capacity as intellectuals… Rather, it is simply a principle of inner self-distancing… And most ‘postmodernist’ thinking may also be said to belong to the same category.
• The third option, however, for priestliness, involves intellectuals, so far as possible, completely immersing themselves in the life of a catholic community. When it comes to criticizing the prevailing mindlessness of the ‘world’, in other words, such thinkers do not just inwardly to withdraw from the world… On the contrary, their thinking is none other than an intimate, loyalist critical engagement with the life of a particular moral group, which, in the fullest possible, non-sectarian sense, itself belongs to the world.

He then reveals his empty hermeneutic by assigning this third option to the biblical priesthood of Melchizadek. Odd, I know. If you can get past this entirely misplaced theology of priesthood, Shanks actually has some helpful things to say about the responsibilities of intellectuals in thoughtfully engaging the mindlessness of the world.

I don’t watch the television show Survivor because it seems to me merely to be a revisiting of junior high. I do know, however, that they filmed a season in the incredibly beautiful Vanuatu. I doubt they ever made reference to John G. Paton, missionary whose autobiography is now on my reading list (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), originally printed in 1886. The publisher’s blurb:

[Paton] was ordained as a missionary to the New Hebrides in 1858. This group of thirty mountainous islands, so named by Captain Cook, with its unhealthy climate, was then inhabited by savages and cannibals. The first attempt attempt to introduce Christianity to them resulted in John Williams and James Harris being clubbed to death within a few minutes of arriving in 1839. The difficulties that confronted Paton were accentuated by the sudden death of his wife and child within months of their arrival. Against the savagery and the superstition, despite the trials and tragedies, Paton persevered and witnessed the triumph of the gospel in two of these South Sea islands.

Popularity: 52% [?]

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