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Discrimination in reference services: A critical review of “Are virtual reference services color blind?”

Here is a review of Pnina Shachaf and Sarah Horowitz’ 2006 article “Are virtual reference services color blind?“. It is an unobtrusive study of e-mail reference which purports to discover discrimination against Arabs and African-Americans based on the names appended to e-mail queries.

While I found the study very interesting, I also thought it was […]

The Problem of Philosophy in Library Classification: With examples from Bliss

Some thoughts on my essay on Bliss Bibliographic Classification (BC1)

If we are building a library or bibliographic classification, then Philosophy presents a problem, particularly if we are building our classification on the lines of consensus with science and education, that is, matching our main classes to the university disciplines.

What is the relationship between Philosophy […]

Statistics are fun for everyone

So, I have this required class, called Research Methods, which is supposed to instruct one in the ways of evaluating research and designing research proposals. All from a Social Science perspective.

This is fine; I come from Humanities where research involves reading until it is the night before the due date and spewing whatever logical […]

Sociologist Richard Sennett and the public life of the Internet

From somewhere in my Google Reader I got a link to an article called “Say Everything” by Emily Nussbaum from the New York magazine. It documents the usually amazement with the public Internet lives of the younger generation, and in that way the article is not generally amazing itself. I will confess […]

Bookshelves

I don’t really order my bookshelves, kind of sinful for someone with my interests. While this presents problems when I am looking for a quote in the middle of writing, I enjoy looking at their mis-mashed order. I often just like to make mental connection between the works.

Now, discuss.