Dirty Books Reveal Secret Lives of People Living in Medieval Times
The ground-breaking research has even managed to pinpoint the moment that people fell asleep reading the same book.
For example one of the dirtiest pages in a selection of European religious books was a prayer to St Sebastian who was often prayed to because his arrow-wounds (the cause of his martyrdom) looked like the bubonic plague.
This shows us that the reader of the book was terrified of the plague and repeated the prayer to ward off the disease
Libraries and Lemonade: Wikipedia & Libraries
Frankly, it feels really weak to me, especially:
- The hint that wikipedia “caused” EB to stop printing, and that wikipedia is some how worse than EB (studies have shown they have roughly the same number of errors in similar articles, plus wikipedia is constantly updated without needing users to invest over a thousand dollars for new versions).
- Using textbooks (as opposed to primary sources) as a rubric for accuracy (or, failing to recognize the illusion of accuracy in the first place and accept that there’s a range of accuracy rather than a single point of it).
- The implication that libraries vs. wikipedia is even a thing, when a) many people use libraries as their primary source of internet, and even those who don’t can and do use the internet there and b) one person might search wikipedia 30 times in the hour they spend on a library computer. They’re not the same resource.
- The implication that wikipedia is anything BUT an encyclopedia. No, it’s not great for research, but that’s because it’s an encyclopedia, and if you’re doing more than a basic overview of a topic for your own basic knowledge, encyclopedias aren’t good sources.
(Source: open-site.org)
WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia and libraries. NO. No. Wikipedia and librarians. This, to me, has to be the more important issue. Wikipedia is here, it’s staying, it’s fabulous. I use it as often as I need to—just as I use books, or any other gimme-that-information-now tool.
Just as we cringe as students copy and paste any old “fact” from Wikipedia into their “research” paper, so do we hate to watch them wander aimlessly through the library finding (or not finding) inaccurate or useless information.
So what do we do? In libraries, we have parked ourselves in behind desks to hopefully intercept students before they fumble through the research process like teenagers after junior prom.
What’s more important than making libraries better than Wikipedia is making sure we, as librarians, understand how to help other make the best use of Wikipedia—which will likely (or hopefully) mean our directing them to sounder, more specific resources, if their research requires it.
Has James Joyce Been Set Free?
On New Year’s Eve, the Twitter feed of UbuWeb, an online archive of the avant garde, posted a link to an article in The Irish Times about the expiry of European copyright on the work of James Joyce. The link was accompanied by a curt message to Joyce’s grandson and sole living descendent: “Fuck you Stephen Joyce. EU copyright on James Joyce’s works ends at midnight.” While the language may have been unusually confrontational, the sentiment it expressed is widespread. The passage into public domain of Joyce’s major works has been talked up in certain quarters as though it were a bookish version of the destruction of the Death Star, with Stephen Joyce cast as a highbrow Darth Vader suddenly no longer in a position to breathe heavily down the necks of rebel Joyceans.
-Mark O’Connell on what the post-Stephen will bring: http://nyr.kr/xj2D9F
Elsevier-funded Congresswoman backs "Research Works Act"
No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that:
(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or
(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work
This bill would end the NIH’s public access policy.
Protest today.
![thelifeguardlibrarian:
appsandstacks:
Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search - Wired.com
High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
[…]
Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.
In my experience, there is a MAJOR problem with the assumption that teenagers are ‘digital natives.’ Hardly any of the youth I work with are competent with a keyboard. They are uncertain how to navigate to websites, they continually ask Google questions rather than searching by keyword, and they have no visual literacy skills in recognizing legitimate websites. We assume too much about kids’ experience with computers rather than creating information/tech literacy curricula that supports our students through primary and secondary school.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lud25uzgHy1r5wtflo1_400.jpg)
Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search - Wired.com
High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
[…]
Consider the efforts of Frances Harris, librarian at the magnet University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. (Librarians are our national leaders in this fight; they’re the main ones trying to teach search skills to kids today.) Harris educates eighth and ninth graders in how to format nuanced queries using Boolean logic and advanced settings. She steers them away from raw Google searches and has them use academic and news databases, too.
In my experience, there is a MAJOR problem with the assumption that teenagers are ‘digital natives.’ Hardly any of the youth I work with are competent with a keyboard. They are uncertain how to navigate to websites, they continually ask Google questions rather than searching by keyword, and they have no visual literacy skills in recognizing legitimate websites. We assume too much about kids’ experience with computers rather than creating information/tech literacy curricula that supports our students through primary and secondary school.
Royal Society Journal Archive Made Permanently Free to Access
Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available.
Treasures in the archive include Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper, geological work by a young Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated account of his electrical kite experiment. And nestling amongst these illustrious papers, readers willing to delve a little deeper into the archive may find some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution – including accounts of monstrous calves, grisly tales of students being struck by lightning, and early experiments on to how to cool drinks “without the Help of Snow, Ice, Haile, Wind or Niter, and That at Any Time of the Year.”
Includes the world’s first peer-reviewed scientific journal! This is BIG, folks. Check it out.
