Subject/Object

Steven Chabot

Winter Updates #1: Writing Book Reviews

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had something substantial to say. This goes along with me not really being interested in reading blogs and keeping up with the debates there–both in the library blog sphere and in with my feeds in general. This is not the first time I have gone through these periods of decline, and I know I am not the only one who has blanked on their blog writing.

However, there have been a lot of positive developments in my career over the last few months, and I hope to deal with them in the next few posts.

First of all, I have submitted myself to some book review editors, and I currently have two books I am reading for two different journals. The first is an academic examination of blogs and the blog sphere for The Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship. The second is a collection of unpublished writings by Kurt Vonnegut for Library Journal. The second is only the standard 200 word review, but the first is a substantial one thousand words.

I really should have tried to finish the longer one over Christmas, because now it is getting in the way of school work, but I have decided to work a few hours less this semester to fit in writing, school work and applying for jobs.

It is great to finally have a change to publish my writing. And, hopefully, I will have a peer-reviewed paper to add to them, which I will talk about in my next post.

Amazon’s Kindle and why e-books are still a far way away

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I am sure you have all read the mass of news on Amazon’s Kindle. Makes me feel secure that books will be here for a long time.

As Catherine Sheldrick Ross and others have said, reading is a social activity. Books are borrowed, lent, shared, resold and bought second hand. They are picked up on the street, left on busses and passed among families at Christmas and amongst book club members. And until these e-books have the same liberalities as hard cover books (unless publishers deliberately kill them, as I can see with textbooks), paper books will be here for a while.

Every see a homeless person with an e-book reader? Yet, I always see them with a paperback. Who can imagine a hippy backpacking across Asia with his or her well worn copy of Siddhartha in their back pocket? Yes, an idealistic idea, but not very possible with the Kindle.

So I direct you all to read dive in to mark‘s post “The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)” with some telling quotes. I’ll include one here:

Act VI: The act of learning

If they can somehow strike a deal with textbook publishers, I could see a lot of college students switching to this. Get rid of all your text books and have this single electronic device.

Ankit Gupta

School policy was that any interference with their means of monitoring students’ computer use was grounds for disciplinary action. It didn’t matter whether you did anything harmful — the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check on you. They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden, and they did not need to know what it was.

Students were not usually expelled for this — not directly. Instead they were banned from the school computer systems, and would inevitably fail all their classes.

Richard Stallman, The Right to Read

Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service