“Flooded with data as we are, each day brings even more innovations and technologies to help us mine, sort, and generate even more information. Asking about the future of libraries is another way of asking where this big, hot mess of information is taking us.” Justin Wadland reviews three books on libraries and attempts to predict the future of these institutions in a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Meanwhile, Florida Polytechnic University has just opened and its library has no books at all.
Libraries: Future and Present
Scottish Book Sculptures
Someone’s been leaving book sculptures in Scottish libraries. They’re exquisite.
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Citation, Please
Fun Fact: British radio and television presenter Alan Partridge (a fictional character played by Steve Coogan) is referenced in not one, not two, but seven entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, you cheeky Brits.
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Shitty Mentor Subgenre
Is it just a kind of literary Stockholm Syndrome? This essay from Electric Literature explores why writing students idolize such horrible mentors. For more on what it means to be a mentor, here’s an essay from The Millions.
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Guilty As Charged
“Why do readers, those who are bereaved and those with happy families alike, love orphans?”
“Informational Text” vs. Fiction
“The Common Core State Standards in English, which have been adopted in 46 states and the District, call for public schools to ramp up nonfiction so that by 12th grade students will be reading mostly ‘informational text’ instead of fictional literature,” writes Lyndsey Layton. Is this the end of The Catcher in the Rye?