Apparently, the core concept of this piece.
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25 Feb 10
Peter BeaumontRelating textual (in)stability to the digital age and the changing role of the library.
We need to make sure that we don't undervalue the library and rely on Google to digitise every book. Some will be missed, and they have no responsibility to conserve -
04 Feb 10
Angela MenaceDarnton outlines "four fundamental changes in information technology" and then presents eight reasons why Google books is not the be all end all.
bibliography Darnton digitization Google infotopia libraries
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the page emerged as a unit of perception
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When strung out in this manner, the pace of change seems breathtaking: from writing to the codex, 4,300 years; from the codex to movable type, 1,150 years; from movable type to the Internet, 524 years; from the Internet to search engines, nineteen years; from search engines to Google's algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years; and who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?
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that every age was an age of information
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We live in a time of unprecedented accessibility to information that is increasingly unreliable. Or do we?
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By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
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In fact, Voltaire toyed with his texts so much that booksellers complained. As soon as they sold one edition of a work, another would appear, featuring additions and corrections by the author. Their customers protested. Some even said that they would not buy an edition of Voltaire's complete works—and there were many, each different from the others—until he died, an event eagerly anticipated by retailers throughout the book trade
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But this, too, may be a grand illusion—or, to put it positively, there is something to be said for both visions, the library as a citadel and the Internet as open space.
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I recently discovered an extraordinary libertine novel, Les Bohémiens, by an unknown author, the marquis de Pelleport, who wrote it in the Bastille at the same time that the marquis de Sade was writing his novels in a nearby cell. I think that Pelleport's book, published in 1790, is far better than anything Sade produced; and whatever its aesthetic merits, it reveals a great deal about the condition of writers in pre-Revolutionary France. Yet only six copies of it exist, as far as I can tell, none of them available on the Internet
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The criteria of importance change from generation to generation, so we cannot know what will matter to our descendants.
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lies far beyond Google's capacity to digitize.
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In 2006, 291,920 new titles were published in the United States, and the number of new books in print has increased nearly every year for the last decade, despite the spread of electronic publishing.
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I realize, however, that considerations of "feel" and "smell" may seem to undercut my argument.
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Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital repositories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.
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mei m.Darnton contends that despite Google's (and search engines' and directories' in general) capacity and ability to organize and hold information, a research library is still the ultimate repository of information and that Google will never be able to replace it. He reifies the experience of interaction with physical text and the printed world in order to come to that conclusion.
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31 Oct 09
Daniel RourkeInformation is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the
fut 2008 academia art article articles blogs crackthetext book books libraries library history information google regolithworks digitization research reference data computers consciousness mind brain technology huge-entity.com reading teach machinemachine
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Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008
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How to orient ourselves in the new landscape?
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How to orient ourselves in the new landscape?
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four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
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4000 BC, humans learned to write.
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4000 BC, humans learned to write.
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invention of writing was the most important technological breakthrough in the history of humanity.
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alphabetical writing to 1000 BC.
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history of books led to a second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era.
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second technological shift when the codex replaced the scroll sometime soon after the beginning of the Christian era.
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printing with movable type in the 1450s.
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But Gutenberg's invention, unlike those of the Far East, spread like wildfire, bringing the book within the reach of ever-widening circles of readers.
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bringing the book within the reach of ever-widening circles of readers
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literacy, education, and access to the printed word.
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extended the process of democratization so that a mass reading public came into existence during the second half of the nineteenth century.
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fourth great change, electronic communication,
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search engines became common in the mid-1990s
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search engines became common in the mid-1990s.
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from writing to the codex, 4,300 years
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movable type to the Internet, 524
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codex to movable type, 1,150 years
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earch engines to Google's algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years
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Internet to search engines, nineteen years
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who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?
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speed-up has continued at such a rate as to seem both unstoppable and incomprehensible
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The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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I want to argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable.
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a million blogs have emerged during the last few years. They have given rise to a rich lore of anecdotes about the spread of misinformation,
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a million blogs have emerged during the last few years. They have given rise to a rich lore of anecdotes about the spread of misinformation,
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blogs create news, and news can take the form of a textual reality that trumps the reality under our noses.
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blogs create news, and news can take the form of a textual reality that trumps the reality under our noses.
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possibilities of misinformation on a global scale.
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news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.
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news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.
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News is not what happened but a story about what happened.
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News is not what happened but a story about what happened.
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many reporters do their best to be accurate
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many reporters do their best to be accurate
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"squeal sheets" or typed reports of calls received at the central switchboard.
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go through them for anything that might be news, and announce the potential news to the veteran reporters from a dozen papers playing poker in the press room on the ground floor.
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My job was to collect them from a lieutenant on the second floor, go through them for anything that might be news,
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One of the reporters would say if something I selected would be worth checking out. I did the checking, usually by phone calls to key offices like the homicide squad.
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If the information was good enough, I would tell the poker game, whose members would phone it in to their city desks. But it had to be really good—that is, what ordinary people would consider bad—to warrant interrupting the never-ending game.
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But it had to be really good—that is, what ordinary people would consider bad—to warrant interrupting the never-ending game.
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I soon learned to disregard DOAs (dead on arrival, meaning ordinary deaths) and robberies of gas stations
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it took time for me to spot something really "good,"
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One day I found a squeal sheet that was so good—it combined rape and murder—that I went straight to the homicide squad instead of reporting first to the poker game.
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accounts of Washington's defeat at the Battle of Brandywine as it was refracted in the American and European press
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adding new material picked up from gossips in coffeehouses or ship captains returning from voyages.
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A copy of the paper traveled by ship, passing from New York to Halifax, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, where the paragraph and the letter were reprinted in a local newspaper.
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each time undergoing subtle changes.
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changes were important, because speculators were betting huge sums on the course of the American war,
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Londoners had learned to mistrust their newspapers
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original paragraph came from a loyalist American paper made it suspect to the reading public.
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close readings of Washington's letter revealed stylistic touches that could not have come from the pen of a general.
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Londoners therefore concluded that the report was a fraud, designed to promote the interests of the bull speculators and the Tory politicians
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French newspaper produced in London, printed a translated digest of the English reports with a note warning that they probably were false.
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By the time it arrived in Versailles, the news of Washington's defeat had been completely discounted. The comte de Vergennes, France's foreign minister, therefore continued to favor military intervention on the side of the Americans.
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when Howe's report of his victory finally arrived after a long delay (he had unaccountably neglected to write for two weeks), it was eclipsed by the more spectacular news of Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga
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case of miswritten and misread news
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the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself.
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messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission
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skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
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Unbelievers used to dismiss Henry Clay Folger's determination to accumulate copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare as the mania of a crank.
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eighteen of the thirty-six plays in the First Folio had never before been printed.
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Since none of Shakespeare's manuscripts has survived, differences between these texts can be crucial in determining what he wrote.
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differences were compounded by at least one hundred stop-press corrections and by the peculiar practices of at least nine compositors who set the copy while also working on other jobs—and occasionally abandoning Shakespeare to an incompetent teenage apprentice.
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But textual stability never existed in the pre-Internet eras.
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Piracy was so pervasive in early modern Europe that best-sellers could not be blockbusters as they are today.
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they were printed simultaneously in many small editions by many publishers,
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abridged, expanded, and reworked texts as they pleased,
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issue of textual stability leads to the general question about the role of research libraries in the age of the Internet.
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. The knowledge came ordered into standard categories which could be pursued through a card catalog and into the pages of the books
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Modern or postmodern students do most of their research at computers in their rooms. To them, knowledge comes online, not in libraries.
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there is something to be said for both visions, the library as a citadel and the Internet as open space.
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2006 Google signed agreements with five great research libraries—the New York Public, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, and Oxford's Bodleian—to digitize their books.
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Google can put virtually all printed books on-line. That claim is misleading, and it raises the danger of creating false consciousness, because it may lull us into neglecting our libraries.
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If Google missed this book, and other books like it, the researcher who relied on Google would never be able to locate certain works of great importance.
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Although Google pursued an intelligent strategy by signing up five great libraries, their combined holdings will not come close to exhausting the stock of books in the United States.
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it has not yet ventured into special collections, where the rarest works are to be found.
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difficult to see how copyright will cease to pose a problem.
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books published after 1923 are currently covered by copyright, and copyright now extends to the life of the author plus seventy years.
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How can Google keep up with current production while at the same time digitizing all the books accumulated over the centuries?
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Google defines its mission as the communication of information—right now, today; it does not commit itself to conserving texts indefinitely.
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Companies decline rapidly in the fast-changing environment of electronic technology.
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Google will make mistakes. Despite its concern for quality and quality control, it will miss books, skip pages, blur images, and fail in many ways to reproduce texts perfectly.
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As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that Google's copies will last. Bits become degraded over time. Documents may get lost in cyberspace, owing to the obsolescence of the medium in which they are encoded. Hardware
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As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that Google's copies will last. Bits become degraded over time. Documents may get lost in cyberspace, owing to the obsolescence of the medium in which they are encoded.
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As in the case of microfilm, there is no guarantee that Google's copies will last. Bits become degraded over time. Documents may get lost in cyberspace, owing to the obsolescence of the medium in which they are encoded. Hardware and
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problem of digital preservation is solved, all texts "born digital" belong to an endangered species.
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Google plans to digitize many versions of each book, taking whatever it gets as the copies appear, assembly-line fashion, from the shelves; but will it make all of them available?
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It now has a secret algorithm to rank Web pages according to the frequency of use among the pages linked to them, and presumably it will come up with some such algorithm in order to rank the demand for books.
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Even if the digitized image on the computer screen is accurate, it will fail to capture crucial aspects of a book.
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reading a small duodecimo, designed to be held easily in one hand, differs considerably from that of reading a heavy folio propped up on a book stand. It is important to get the feel of a book—the texture of its paper, the quality of its printing, the nature of its binding
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I realize, however, that considerations of "feel" and "smell" may seem to undercut my argument. Most readers care about the text, not the physical medium in which it is embedded
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Rare book rooms are a vital part of research libraries, the part that is most inaccessible to Google.
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Google, scholars are able to search, navigate, harvest, mine, deep link, and crawl (the terms vary along with the technology) through millions of Web sites and electronic texts.
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Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter.
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05 Aug 09
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11 May 09
Kay Cunningham"Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? "
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22 Mar 09
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What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
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News in the information age has broken loose from its conventional moorings, creating possibilities of misinformation on a global scale. We live in a time of unprecedented accessibility to information that is increasingly unreliable. Or do we?
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11 Mar 09
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05 Mar 09
Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem:How to orient ourselves in the new landscape?What,for example,will become of research libraries in the face
inspiration toread reference culture history reading academia academic discussion future digitalage digitalhumanities digitization information knowledge research technology media library article books ebooks articles news internet blogs web2.0 libraries d
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Courtney Walker520 Module 23 reading about technology, libraries and information
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
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What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
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What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts.
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What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
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Today many reporters spend more time tracking blogs than they do checking out traditional sources such as the spokespersons of public authorities
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We take today's front page as a mirror of yesterday's events, but it was made up yesterday evening—literally, by "make-up" editors, who designed page one according to arbitrary conventions: lead story on the far right column, off-lead on the left, soft news inside or below the fold, features set off by special kinds of headlines.
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I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves. A
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Information has never been stable
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Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.
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libraries looked like citadels of learning.
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In colleges everywhere the library stood at the center of the campus. It was the most important building, a temple set off by classical columns, where one read in silence: no noise, no food, no disturbances beyond a furtive glance at a potential date bent over a book in quiet contemplation.
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Modern or postmodern students do most of their research at computers in their rooms. To them, knowledge comes online, not in libraries. They know that libraries could never contain it all within their walls, because information is endless, extending everywhere on the Internet, and to find it one needs a search engine, not a card catalog
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because it may lull us into neglecting our libraries.
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If Google missed this book, and other books like it, the researcher who relied on Google would never be able to locate certain works of great importance.
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Contrary to what one might expect, there is little redundancy in the holdings of the five libraries: 60 percent of the books being digitized by Google exist in only one of them. There are about 543 million volumes in the research libraries of the United States.
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Ordinary readers could get lost while searching among thousands of different editions of Shakespeare's plays, so they will depend on the editions that Google makes most easily accessible.
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Google employs hundreds, perhaps thousands, of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer. Its innocence of any visible concern for bibliography is particularly regrettable in that most texts, as I have just argued, were unstable throughout most of the history of printing
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CaféScribe, a French on-line publisher, is trying to counteract that reaction by giving its customers a sticker that will give off a fusty, bookish smell when it is attached to their computers.
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. I love rare book rooms, even the kind that make you put on gloves before handling their treasures. Rare book rooms are a vital part of research libraries, the part that is most inaccessible to Google. But libraries also provide places for ordinary readers to immerse themselves in books, quiet places in comfortable settings, where the codex can be appreciated in all its individuality.
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make books available from computers that will operate like ATM machines: log in, order electronically, and out comes a printed and bound volume. Perhaps someday a text on a hand-held screen will please the eye as thoroughly as a page of a codex produced two thousand years ago.
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refore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
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Lars BauerThe New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008
libraries books history Culture Darnton humanities articles publications
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Emma CoonanArticle by Robert Darnton. _The New York Review of Books_ 55(10), Jun 2008
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Add Sticky Notebewildering speed
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Add Sticky Notefour fundamental changes in information technology
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Interesting timeline. A bit too linear, but rather convincing in the context.
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Of course, a timeline would be linear. But the point is well taken. Think of other lines that could be drawn which might include things like Luther's translating the Bible into German in the 16th century and the Lyceum movement in the 19th century.;the development of public education and the public library: not changes in the technology, but parallel changes in the culture. Are these things really the result of a change of information technology? Maybe Guttenberg really did beget Luther--but it seems a little simple.
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Sounds tautological, doesn't it?
I was using "linear" for "unilinear" but a more appropriate term would be "teleological." Darnton's description makes it sound, at this point, as if the changes were somehow oriented toward a given goal. Of course, the rest of the article goes on to problematize this. But mine was a knee-jerk reaction. And, in fact, it was more about "I don't usually like those timelines, but this one works rather well in this specific context."
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Add Sticky NoteJack Goody
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Goody and other anthropologists have had a lot to say about the cultural and historical contexts for "information technology."
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I don't know his work. Someone to look up one of these days
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Goody's work hasn't been that popular recently, except among some dedicated students of orality. One reason may be that some of Goody's core concepts are well-understood, now.
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Add Sticky Notemost important technological breakthrough
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If I remember correctly, surveys about "most important inventions" often show a similar perspective in the general population, at least among industrial societies. Perhaps we're simply a scriptocentric bunch.
I personally tend to think orality remembers very powerful but, apart from the origins of spoken language, it's very difficult to talk about breakthroughs in orality before the latter part of the Industrial Revolution (with recording and broadcasting technology). My gut feeling is that the Post-Industrial period is giving new meaning to orality.
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Add Sticky Notehistory of books
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Preaching to the choir?
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Add Sticky Notethe Chinese developed movable type around 1045
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Hadn't realized this!
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See Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China.
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Thanks for the reference. Maybe this is common knowledge in some circles but I find this point to be a good way to complexify the "unilinear evolution" view.
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Add Sticky NoteGutenberg's invention, unlike those of the Far East, spread like wildfire
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Interesting point about technological adoption. Like Gutenberg's printing press, the Internet wouldn't be that relevant were it not for the social changes which made its adoption so widespread. Contrary to a McLuhan-influenced approach to technological determinism frequent in today's discussion about online culture, a tool is just a tool before society adopts and adapts it.
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Needham proposed to investigate why Chinese inovation did not spread to the rest of the world, but I don't know that he ever did.
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Add Sticky NoteThe Internet dates from 1974, at least as a term.
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The reason this is important to point out is that many commentators tend to talk about the Internet as something of an overnight sensation from the mid-1990s. I went online for the first time in 1993 and it was already clear that the Internet had been in existence for a while. But the "Internet Revolution" was in a very early phase.
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And it took off when it was commercialized; but let's also give a tip of the hat to html/
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Yes, HTML and HTTP were quite important in the Internet revolution. But my point is that, whatever the technology, it will only take off if it finds "fertile ground." (I like mixed metaphors.)
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Add Sticky NoteFrench historians call la longue durée
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Didn't realize this concept wasn't prominent in English.
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Add Sticky Noteemphasizes continuity instead of change
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Foucault over Kuhn.
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Add Sticky NoteThe Onion
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One thing I love about The Onion, and one reason I've blogged about it so many times, is that it forces readers to apply critical thinking. Some thing with satire in general, but The Onion has a high rate of insightful stories.
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Add Sticky Notestory about the Chinese view of the United States
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Not that inaccurate a depiction of Chinese perspectives on the United States, it seems. Otherwise, the Beijing Evening News wouldn't have picked the story.
The same applies to the U.S. media outlets: if the U.S. opinion about the Chinese perspective on the United States had been incompatible with this story, they wouldn't have picked it up.
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Add Sticky Notereporters spend more time tracking blogs than they do checking out traditional source
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Interesting point in the debate about journalism vs. blogging. Bloggers and other readers also spend a lot of time tracking blogs, and they do so with their own approaches to critical thinking. Apart from the acuracy question, this tendency to track blogs diminishes the value of journalism by displacing the standpoint from which critical thinking is applied.
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Add Sticky NoteI would argue that news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.
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I sincerely hope they teach this in "J-School."
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Add Sticky Noteorients the reader
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Which is precisely one of the ways journalism makes it so hard for readers to apply critical thinking.
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Add Sticky Notetheir training
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What I've heard about "J-School" so far makes me want to read or do a critical ethnography of journalism.
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Add Sticky Notelearned to distrust everything
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Media literacy and critical thinking.
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Add Sticky NoteOn August 31, 1980, when Lech Walesa signed the agreement with the Polish government that created Solidarity as an independent trade union, the Polish people refused at first to believe it, not because the news failed to reach them but because it was reported on the state-controlled television.
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Love it!
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Add Sticky NoteI used to be a newspaper reporter myself
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One neat thing about former reporters is that they tend to be fairly good critiques of journalism.
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Add Sticky NoteThe poker game acted as a filter for the news.
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Sounds extreme but it's a very efficient image.
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Add Sticky Noteevery name was followed by a B or a W
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wow.
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Add Sticky Notesurprised by historians who take them as primary sources
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But I thought historians were specialists in recontextualizing sources? At least, that's what I learnt about «critique des sources», a while back.
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construed
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Add Sticky Noteisolated paragraphs rather than "stories"
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Problems often occur during the transformation of those isolated snippets into narratives. Seems like the Post-Industrial era will give more prominence to the Eighteenth century model.
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Add Sticky NoteLondoners had learned to mistrust their newspapers
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Nice.
Of course, contemporary readers in the United States have learnt to mistrust their newspapers too. But this mistrust is very selective.
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with a note warning that they probably were false
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Add Sticky Noteit bears pondering
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Especially in scriptocentric contexts. There is a tendency for literacy-focused people to assume that the written text is stable. Those who favour orality tend to be quite clear about the instability of information and may put more weight on direct transmission.
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skeptically
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read our daily newspaper more effectively
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Add Sticky Notethe most important works in the English language
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Pardon?
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O, I could prophesy,
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
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To a French-speaker, the idea of an author having produced the most important works in a language is quite odd. I have nothing against Shakespeare and I know his work has been very influential, but I may have a different notion of "importance."
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textual stability never existed in the pre-Internet eras
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Add Sticky NoteQuestions sur l'Encyclopédie
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Étrangement, j'en avais jamais entendu parler!
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Piracy
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unconstrained
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Add Sticky Notedeconstructionists avant la lettre.
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Interesting way to put it. Another would be to say that deconstructionism took its source in the "unconstrained market" of ideas, regardless of liberal concepts of property.
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Add Sticky NoteBits become degraded over time.
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I'm quite sure this is inaccurate. The point is well-taken but its expression is misleading.
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Add Sticky Notenow has
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This sentence makes it sounds as if the algorithm were new yet PageRank was the very basis of Google, before the foundation of the company.
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Add Sticky Notenot a single bibliographer
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This would bear verification. At the very least, Google probably collaborates with bibliographers (who may not be on its extensive payroll). If no blbliographer works on Google Book Search, there should be attempts on the part of bibliographers to make their ideas known to Google.
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Add Sticky Notemargin notes
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Those are, indeed, very interesting. I seem to remember that Google had said something about somehow preserving marginalia, but it might be wishful thinking on my part.
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Add Sticky Noteindulging my fascination with print and paper
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Fair enough!
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Add Sticky Noteromanticizing or of reacting like an old-fashioned, ultra-bookish scholar who wants nothing more than to retreat into a rare book room
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Makes for an interesting character.
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Add Sticky NoteI love rare book rooms, even the kind that make you put on gloves before handling their treasures
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This makes me think of Liz Losh's research on libraries.
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/
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Add Sticky Notethe research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus
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It sure does. Which doesn't mean that it needs to be preserved like a relic. It can easily be refreshed, updated, complemented, supplemented...
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28 Jul 08
Garret McMahonAn article by Robert Darnton from The New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008
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25 Jul 08
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22 Jul 08
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20 Jul 08
Katie Dayby Robert Darnton -- "Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.'
libraries future history change digital google information imported_from_delicious
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18 Jul 08
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15 Jul 08
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13 Jul 08
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11 Jul 08
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10 Jul 08
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06 Jul 08
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How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
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04 Jul 08
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01 Jul 08
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30 Jun 08
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23 Jun 08
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22 Jun 08
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19 Jun 08
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18 Jun 08
mary lukanuskiAn article by Robert Darnton from The New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008
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17 Jun 08
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dtweneyA more nuanced and bibliophilic reading than Carr's of the effect of Google (and earlier information tech, like books) on how we think
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16 Jun 08
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13 Jun 08
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Lambert Heller"As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future."
darnton essay article nybooks lang:en year:2008 library history digitization
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Now, I speak as a Google enthusiast. I believe Google Book Search really will make book learning accessible on a new, worldwide scale, despite the great digital divide that separates the poor from the computerized. It also will open up possibilities for research involving vast quantities of data, which could never be mastered without digitization. As an example of what the future holds, I would cite the Electronic Enlightenment, a project sponsored by the Voltaire Foundation of Oxford. By digitizing the correspondence of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson—about two hundred volumes in superb, scholarly editions —it will, in effect, recreate the transatlantic republic of letters from the eighteenth century.
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Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital re-positories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.
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09 Jun 08
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08 Jun 08
netlex franceby Robert Darnton, historian and Director of the Harvard Library. A wide-ranging overview of the status of libraries in the modern world -- The New York Review of Books
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07 Jun 08
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dave sgonechinaI would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts.
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05 Jun 08
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Ray MatthewsArguments for the sustainability of research libraries and print collections in the age of Google Book Search
libraries digital_libraries Google_Book_Search New_York_Public_Library
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Pierre MounierDarnton défend les bibs ; pas d'argument très nouveau
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Students today still respect their libraries, but reading rooms are nearly empty on some campuses. In order to entice the students back, some librarians offer them armchairs for lounging and chatting, even drinks and snacks, never mind about the crumbs. Modern or postmodern students do most of their research at computers in their rooms. To them, knowledge comes online, not in libraries. They know that libraries could never contain it all within their walls, because information is endless, extending everywhere on the Internet, and to find it one needs a search engine, not a card catalog. But this, too, may be a grand illusion—or, to put it positively, there is something to be said for both visions, the library as a citadel and the Internet as open space.
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the residual, nondigitized books could be important.
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As Google signs up more libraries—at last count, twenty-eight are participating in Google Book Search—the representativeness of its digitized database will improve. But it has not yet ventured into special collections, where the rarest works are to be found. And of course the totality of world literature—all the books in all the languages of the world—lies far beyond Google's capacity to digitize.
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it is difficult to see how copyright will cease to pose a problem.
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Google defines its mission as the communication of information—right now, today; it does not commit itself to conserving texts indefinitely.
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Electronic enterprises come and go. Research libraries last for centuries. Better to fortify them than to declare them obsolete, because obsolescence is built into the electronic media.
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Google will make mistakes.
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Unless the vexatious problem of digital preservation is solved, all texts "born digital" belong to an endangered species.
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Nothing preserves texts better than ink imbedded in paper, especially paper manufactured before the nineteenth century, except texts written on parchment or engraved in stone. The best preservation system ever invented was the old-fashioned, pre-modern book.
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It now has a secret algorithm to rank Web pages according to the frequency of use among the pages linked to them, and presumably it will come up with some such algorithm in order to rank the demand for books. But nothing suggests that it will take account of the standards prescribed by bibliographers, such as the first edition to appear in print or the edition that corresponds most closely to the expressed intention of the author.
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Google employs hundreds, perhaps thousands, of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer. Its innocence of any visible concern for bibliography is particularly regrettable in that most texts, as I have just argued, were unstable throughout most of the history of printing.
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It is important to get the feel of a book—the texture of its paper, the quality of its printing, the nature of its binding. Its physical aspects provide clues about its existence as an element in a social and economic system; and if it contains margin notes, it can reveal a great deal about its place in the intellectual life of its readers.
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Books also give off special smells. According to a recent survey of French students, 43 percent consider smell to be one of the most important qualities of printed books—so important that they resist buying odorless electronic books.
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Most readers care about the text, not the physical medium in which it is embedded; and by indulging my fascination with print and paper, I may expose myself to accusations of romanticizing or of reacting like an old-fashioned, ultra-bookish scholar who wants nothing more than to retreat into a rare book room.
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But libraries also provide places for ordinary readers to immerse themselves in books, quiet places in comfortable settings, where the codex can be appreciated in all its individuality.
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long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
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Gerry SolomonI can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
information library2.0 informationliteracy books libraries Research
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Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google? How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
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Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google? How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
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Richard SmithAn interview with a Harvard Library about the history / current status of the library; fascinating stuff on many levels.
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04 Jun 08
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Chip ChaseInformation is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape?
imported Bookmarks article books digitization libraries information digital_library
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georgiakharperRobert Darnton, Dir. Harvard Library, opining that Google Book Search actually increases the importance of libraries (for having what's not going to be digitized, for example).
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03 Jun 08
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02 Jun 08
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Joseph KrausBy Robert Darnton. Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008, Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? Wh
Public Stiky Notes
I was using "linear" for "unilinear" but a more appropriate term would be "teleological." Darnton's description makes it sound, at this point, as if the changes were somehow oriented toward a given goal. Of course, the rest of the article goes on to problematize this. But mine was a knee-jerk reaction. And, in fact, it was more about "I don't usually like those timelines, but this one works rather well in this specific context."
I personally tend to think orality remembers very powerful but, apart from the origins of spoken language, it's very difficult to talk about breakthroughs in orality before the latter part of the Industrial Revolution (with recording and broadcasting technology). My gut feeling is that the Post-Industrial period is giving new meaning to orality.
The same applies to the U.S. media outlets: if the U.S. opinion about the Chinese perspective on the United States had been incompatible with this story, they wouldn't have picked it up.
But what is reported...this can still be weighed on the scale of truth or falsity.
Of course, contemporary readers in the United States have learnt to mistrust their newspapers too. But this mistrust is very selective.
But that the earthy and cold hand of death
Lies on my tongue...
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/
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