Press release from Princeton: Library joins Google project to make books available online A new partnership between the Princeton University Library and Google soon will make approximately 1 million books in Princeton’s collection available online in a searchable format. Princeton will be joining 11 other libraries. Copyright issues notwithstanding, I’m particularly glad to see the Google Books project expanding, in light of this: Archivists Lose Another Round in Bid to.. Read More
Wicked smaht
Apparently lobster-trap mesh is good for archival preservation. Who knew? Crustacean Innovation, from the Chronicle
nvl
A slightly odd addition to the noble ranks the epistolary novel: Re: Book written in txt msg, from CNN At least txt is a recognizable written slang, and not phonetic, or weirder, entirely made up.
Miss Collegiality
Top Academic Workplaces report, from The Collaborative On Academic Careers in Higher Education While the majority of junior faculty at America’s colleges and universities are satisfied at work, some institutions are doing extraordinarily well in this area. The survey, administered by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) in 2005, determined that some colleges and universities are “exemplary” on certain key dimensions of faculty work life. UNC-CH is.. Read More
Evidence that Republicans really are brain damaged
Activation Of Brain Region Predicts Altruism, from ScienceDaily “…fMRI scans showed that increased activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus strongly predicted a person’s likelihood for altruistic behavior. …the ability to perceive other people’s actions as meaningful is critical for altruism…” So, the opposite of altruism then is sociopathy? That explains a lot.
Netflix video-on-demand
Wow, 2 posts in one day… I need to figure out a more productive way to spend my leave. Netflix to offer online movie viewing, from CNN Money Online movie rental service Netflix introduced a new feature Tuesday to allow customers to watch movies and television series on their personal computers and said it will make the new feature available to its subscribers in a phased rollout during the next.. Read More
Doing our part to support D-Lib
D-Lib Magazine has been facing funding issues for some time now. There’s an editorial about this in the latest issue: Current and Future Status of D-Lib Magazine From the many readers who have spoken with D-Lib’s editor, Bonnie Wilson, as well as with me and others at CNRI, and from various studies such as “The Core: Digital Library Education in Library and Information Science Programs” [3], we know that D-Lib.. Read More
Open Peer Review Closed
Nature Ends Experiment With Open Peer Review, as Responses Are Disappointing, from the Chronicle …while participation by authors was greater than anticipated, the posted remarks were disappointing. … Nearly half of the papers received no comments at all. Most of the messages made reasonable but minor points. Others, such as “nice work,” were far from useful. Once a decision had been made to accept or reject a paper, the entire.. Read More
The global instant noodle industry
Sad news for starving college students everywhere: Inventor of instant noodles dies, from BBC The inventor of instant noodles, Momofuku Ando, has died in Japan, aged 96, of a heart attack. Clearly ramen is not as bad for you as one might have thought. And can I just say, I love the BBC’s reporting: …the global instant noodle industry… …the masterstroke of providing a waterproof polystyrene container for the noodles….. Read More
More giant squids
As my students know, I have a thing for giant squids. So here’s some happy news: Researchers catch giant squid, from CNN The one pictured here is just a peanut, in giant squid terms: a mere 24 feet long. There are two things that are extremely cool about this: one, that the research team brought the squid to the surface and caught it there, and two, that they got video.. Read More