Via if:book, which added its own nicely textured analysis, comes Siva on Google, absolutely nailing the issue: “Libraries should not be relinquishing their core duties to private corporations for the sake of expediency.” Now, I realize I said that because Siva is echoing my own concerns. But he does it so exquisitely, and with such […]
The LITA-L list has seen brisk traffic today regarding Michael Gorman’s continued statements about bloggers, Google, the distressing habit of not reading books from page A to Z, and his one-man campaign in support of the global eradication of snippet-reading. I’d like to ignore Gorman, but he keeps popping up like a bad penny. The […]
I always read “Modern Love,” short essays about relationships in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times, usually right after I scan the “Weddings/Celebrations” section for announcements of marriages and confirmation ceremonies for same-sex couples. “Modern Love” essays are uneven: sometimes poignant or drop-dead funny, but other times overbearingly snarky or just predictable […]
I like to say that I heart user reviews on websites, but that’s not across-the-board accurate. I am smitten with the reviews on epicurious.com, even when they’re not that useful; I groove on the reviews on Amazon.com, as long as they are useful; I avoid the reviews on imdb.com; and I am unmotivated to add […]
This is one of those years where we showed up somewhere and were fed, and that was fine. I brought some cut-up veggies and two spreads: a simple chicken-liver pate from my very, very old copy of the New York Times Cookbook–mid-1960s–and Green Goddess dip from my new Williams-Sonoma “horses’ ovaries” cookbook (to use an […]
In a report presciently dated 11/27/2005, a day when most of us will spend our afternoon at the gym working off the pie and stuffing, Pew reports that lots more people use search engines these days: “[A]bout 60 million American adults are using search engines on a typical day. … These results from September 2005 […]
Do you know what that book even is? It’s a 200-plus page handbook automatically distributed to every ALA member who is on a committee or in some governance role (for example, on Council). It is also a sacred cow, a third rail of Council, at least where the idea of producing it any other way […]
A Non-heterosexual, Non-male-identified, Creative Nonfiction Pathfinder, Beta .2 (Work in progress, November 2005, K.G. Schneider, kgs at bluehighways dot com) (N.b. I began this pathfinder last week, when I realized that I could not list any contemporary lesbian creative nonfiction writers. I ran a search in ProQuest, then approached a mailing list for GLBT librarians, […]
Going over the November 1 WSJ article where Gorman was (again) quoted on Google’s ambitions to scan all known texts (let’s face it, that’s what it is), I thought it might be worth to look at the article in context. My conclusion is that the reporters tried hard to be balanced, but in terms of […]
I received a few amused comments for the blog title “Shut Yer Piehole.” So I had to look up that phrase in Google Books, which I know I am supposed to call Google Book Search but just can’t, because Google, to me, is a company of three or fewer syllables. But Google Book/Book-Search, whatever, is […]