March 13, 2008
What We’re Reading: March 13, 2008 Edition
It’s been a busy week of reading on the web, and we’ve gathered quite a range of articles and blog entries. We start off with Stan Katz at the Brainstorm blog looking at why the public should care about history, and how the National History Center and AHA play a part. Then, read a number of perspectives, in the First Monday online journal, about Web 2.0. For fun, we’ve linked to news of a new movie about a college professor, appropriately titled “Tenure.” Other topics include possible state park closings, intellectual history in grad school, a survey from the Getty Institute, birthday wishes for H-Net, large-scale digitization projects, and (believe it or not) more.
- History Matters
Stan Katz, on the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog, looks at the issue of why the public should care about history, by examining the roles of the National History Center and the AHA. - Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
The always interesting online journal First Monday offers “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0" in its current issue. Alongside some thoughtful analyses of the "social, political, and ethical implications of Web 2.0," the series ends with a heartening reminder that "in our age of everything new and everything now we could use a little history." - ‘Tenure’: The Shooting Script
The Chronicle’s Footnoted blog has posted a portion of the script to an upcoming movie called “Tenure” about a college professor competing for tenure (professor to be played by Luke Wilson). The best part about this post is that Footnoted has cleverly linked lines in the script to a variety of academics’ blog posts. - California May Close 48 State Parks
The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced last week on its PreservationNation blog that 48 state parks in California may be closed in response to the state’s budget crisis. “Of particular concern to us is the fact that historic parks are over-represented on the hit list,” says National Trusts’s Anthony Veerkamp. - Studying U.S. Intellectual History In Graduate School
Tim Lacy offers some helpful and cautionary advice about studying intellectual history at the graduate level. Aside from its intrinsic value, it raises a useful question about whether our history doctoral programs site should be expanded to include this kind of practical advice for specific fields of history. - Research Databases Survey
This survey, from the Getty Research Institute, “asks questions about how scholars, students, and professionals in the humanities—especially in the field of art history—find scholarly literature.” Contribute your experience by March 27th. - Happy 15th Birthday to H-Net and H-Urban!
From the H-Urban Discussion Logs comes this interesting history of the H-Net listserves, which quietly marked their 15th anniversary on February 25, 2008. - Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization (PDF)
The Council on Library and Information Resources offers a very thoughtful assessment of large-scale digitization projects such as Google Books and Microsoft Live Search Books. While the report is a bit more detailed than many in the profession would be interested in, it highlights the many issues and considerations that the library community is trying to sort through in the rush to create a vast digital library. - What History Teaches Us About Copyright Injunctions and the Inadequate-Remedy-At-Law Requirement
In this article, Tomas Gomez-Arostegui, assistant professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School, “argues that the Supreme Court’s reading of general Chancery custom is inapposite in copyright cases, and that, as a matter of historical practice, the Chancery never inquired into whether a copyright plaintiff had an adequate remedy at law.” Hat tip. - This Week’s List: History
The history section of the Chronicle’s weekly list of new publications. - Lincoln expert speaking at UI celebration
News, from The News-Gazette, of past AHA president James McPherson giving the Lincoln Bicentennial Lecture at the University of Illinois on Wednesday of this week.
Contributors: David Darlington, Elisabeth Grant, and Robert Townsend
