“It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.” Mark Twain
Journal-Ranking System Goes Down Under Weight of Controversy
May 31, 2011.
We ask on “I Wonder Wednesday” –
ISI’s impact factor is very important to our library in deciding whether or not to subscribe to a journal. Yes or no. http://www.against-the-grain.com/2011/07/i-wonder-wednesday-isis-impact-factor/
Johan Bollen (Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University) spoke in Charleston several years ago about the MESUR project – Metrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources — http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html.
So I was very interested when I saw this article on the Web.
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Private-Equity Firm to Buy Blackboard for $1.64-Billion
July 1, 2011, 2:48 pm
by Josh Keller
Is it good to have private equity firms in our space? Seems to me that they don’t stay long and they just raise the price of the company or group that they purchase. Am I right? Who knows?
That’s just my undocumented observation/opinion. Other opinions are welcome. How about it?
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New Journal on Christopher Marlowe
June 28, 2011, 12:22 pm
Always interested to hear of new publications. Marlowe Studies: An Annual concerning the British poet and playwright. Was interested to read that the first issue is in press for print debut next week and online distribution is a possibility in the future.
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Spelling Mistakes “Cost Millions” in lost online sales
by Sean Coughlan
July 13, 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854
John Riley just sent this link to me. It’s about Britain, but I can tell you for sure that it’s also the case in America. The author says that lost online sales figures can’t be estimated at this time. I know that none of us is perfect and I cringe when I open an Against the Grain because I will always find a typo. Still the online world, with its love of speed is not always known for its precision. And I find that I make a lot more spelling mistakes when I send emails and articles online even when I proof them religiously. Reminds me of the wonderful Matthew J. Bruccoli, now deceased, who used to write for ATG. He said that he could never see typos ‘til the column was printed out.
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Students Say Tablets Will Transform College, Though Most Don’t Own Tablets
May 25, 2011, 12:01 am
James J. O’Donnell (Provost at Georgetown University and speaker at several Charleston Conferences) sometimes posts observations on Liblicense about the number of people who are using computers and those who aren’t on airplanes. As a lover of the printed word, I am interested in this myself. I have an iPad but I do not read books on it, at least not yet. How many people on an airplane or at a conference are reading using a Kindle and how many are using an iPad or other tablet device, or how many are reading printed books and magazines? Usually the print crowd wins out. But lately I have been noticing that almost everybody has an iPad! Interestingly enough in this Pearson Foundation survey of 1,214 college students and 200 high school seniors, students had an interest in tablet devices but only a handful them actually owned a tablet device. Will the tablet “fad” will subside?
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