It might not be video games, the internet, or even the Kindle that finally kills reading. The latest issue of Scientific America suggests that someday we might simply upload texts directly to our brains. Science fiction? Not necessarily.
"I’m a man with a mission in two or three editions."
At the risk of making this a music kind of week, in celebration of of MTV's excellent MTV Music website, which archives most every video ever made in a slick and uncluttered interface, I offer my favorite book song of all time:Elvis Costello |MTV MusicWhat are your faves?
Handle This Book!
From Thursday's New York Times on university librarians incorporating their rare book collections into undergraduate coursework:“These objects are a link to the past, and they have a power that is undeniable,” Mr. Pollack says after class. “But these materials also are wonderful teaching tools that pose questions about how we know what we know.”This represents a new way of thinking: rare books should be a hands-on experience.“We’re not running a museum,” Mr. Pollack says.Rare books and manuscripts, once restricted to scholars and graduate students in white gloves, are being incorporated into undergraduate courses at institutions like the University of Iowa,...
Alibris Announces "Alibris Inventory Demand"
Americana Exchange Monthly reported recently on a new program Alibris will be offering most of its sellers, "Alibris Inventory Demand." The service: offers three types of data. Foremost is their historical sales data, which provides actual sales prices transacted on the Alibris and Alibris partner sites (such as Borders Marketplace). Next, it provides current pricing data, such as highest, lowest and average prices currently listed, along with the number of copies for sale. Finally, they provide what they call the "Alibris Sales Index," which rates the likelihood of an item being sold. As Alibris explained in their press release:Utilizing such...
Princeton – Bloomsbury
Princeton is a band from Santa Monica, CA who released their debut EP Bloomsbury this summer. The four-song disk is - as they explain - "based on the lives of four members of the influential Bloomsbury intellectual collective of the early 20th century. The songs are about Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey." The whole disk can be streamed from their Myspace page (and available for a mere four bucks from iTunes). It's fun stuff, bound to appeal to the bibliophilic: clever, catchy, lush and literate. They remind me of Vampire Weekend (with whom they've performed),...