Congressional Hearings on Copyright issues are underway in Washington this summer. Maybe they'll do something useful, and we'll be able to get more midcentury books. Not that I don't love reading older stuff, but let's have a bit more parity, please.
University of California going open access, affecting up to 40,000 research papers a year.
Is the ebook boom over? Sales growth of ebooks have slowed, and there are a few theories about why. I find myself agreeing. As someone who turned into an avid ebook reader on both an ereader and a tablet, it's clear that there are some drawbacks to electronic versions that the software developers still haven't addressed. It makes me wonder if the real problem with ebooks is that the software is designed by people who don't actually read books very much.
Should legal codes be behind a paywall? Or should they be free to the public? There’s a court case working on that question right now.
Teeny tiny book is finally read. Given how hard it is to read, it's remarkable it was even produced!
If you haven’t seen them before, ACRL’s Keeping Up With... series gives short overviews of hot topics in libraries and academia.
And what “gender-flipped” book covers would look like. I'm now imagining a copy of Pride and Prejudice with Darcy and Wickham on the cover, but that may just get me lots of Twitter hate. Jane Austen seems to bring that out in some people.
Finally, a note on all the speculation about Jeff Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post. I find myself a bit skeptical, like John Cassidy. But I've always had a prejudice against anything that starts to smell like a monopoly. We'll just have to wait and see.
