Category: recommended reading

les faits de la fiction

Bryan McKay has been rocking my world ever since I ran across some of his gender studies essays in is blog Les Faits de la Fiction. He’s articulate and surprisingly self-aware for a member of the dominant paradigm, which is challenging many of my preconceived notions of gender inequity warriors.

Bryan McKay has been rocking my world ever since I ran across some of his gender studies essays in is blog Les Faits de la Fiction. He’s articulate and surprisingly self-aware for a member of the dominant paradigm, which is challenging many of my preconceived notions of gender inequity warriors.

surprise laugh

One of my favorite non-librarian/library weblogs is This Fish Needs a Bicycle. Heather Hunter is a youngish woman living in NYC with a talent for storytelling. Using anecdotes from her life, she has created a following of readers from around the country, and quite possibly around the world. I have become one of those dedicated … Continue reading “surprise laugh”

One of my favorite non-librarian/library weblogs is This Fish Needs a Bicycle. Heather Hunter is a youngish woman living in NYC with a talent for storytelling. Using anecdotes from her life, she has created a following of readers from around the country, and quite possibly around the world. I have become one of those dedicated readers, patiently waiting for the next post to land in my Bloglines folder. Today’s entry left me laughing out loud, and it is highly recommended for cat owners.

In other news, I’m working hard to meet a deadline at the end of this week for my contribution to a book on electronic resource librarians. More on that later if I ever get the darn thing written.

recent articles read

I’ve been catching up on some professional reading.

I’ve read a few articles recently that I’ve found quite interesting and would like to share some thoughts on them.

Van de Sompel, Herbert, et. al. “Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve.” D-Lib Magazine. 10:9 (2004), doi:10.1045/september2004-vandesompel [open access]

I was immediately intrigued by what the creator of OpenURL (and his co-authors) might suggest as a technological solution to the current problems with scholarly communication. I couldn’t follow all of the technological details (they lost me at the flow charts and diagrams), but I was pleased to read this in the conclusion: “The NSF has recently recommended funding the authors of this paper to investigate these problems, building on our collective research and development. In a future article we will discuss our current work in moving toward a network overlay that promotes interoperability among heterogeneous data models and system implementations. We will describe our architectural vision for addressing the fundamental technical requirements of a next generation system for scholarly communication.”

Antelman, Kristin. “Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?.” College & Research Libraries. 65:5, 372-382. [open access]

The author set out to find data to confirm or debunk the common assumption that open access articles have a greater research impact than those which are not open access. She looks at four disciplines in different stages of open access development, and all of them have had a history with the use of pre-print articles. The data she gathers leads her to conclude that open access articles do have a greater research impact than those which are not freely available. I would like to see these types of studies extended to other disciplines, but I am pleased to see that someone out there is gathering data for the rest of us to share with the teaching/research faculty in the discussions about scholarly communication we should all be having.

Siebenberg, Tammy R., Betty Galbraith, and Eileen E. Brady. “Print versus Electronic Journal Use in Three Sci/Tech Disciplines: What

Lexington area BookCrosser recomended reading

At last week’s Meetup of the Lexington area BookCrossers, one of our agenda items was to share five of our favorite books as recommended reading. I took notes, and the following is the collective list we created: Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding Citizenship Papers by Wendell Berry Clay’s Quilt by Silas House Comfort Me … Continue reading “Lexington area BookCrosser recomended reading”

At last week’s Meetup of the Lexington area BookCrossers, one of our agenda items was to share five of our favorite books as recommended reading. I took notes, and the following is the collective list we created:

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Citizenship Papers by Wendell Berry
Clay’s Quilt by Silas House
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
He, She and It by Marge Piercy
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
I’d Rather Laugh : How to Be Happy Even When Life Has Other Plans for You by Linda Richman
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Thread That Runs So True: A Mountain School Teacher Tells His Story by Jesse Stuart
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Truman by David McCullough
Walking Home: A Woman’s Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail by Kelly Winters

the giver

I read The Giver last night.

Things have gotten a bit busy around here, obviously. I promise to start posting more regularly once I get caught up.

I read The Giver last night. Several friends have recommended it to me in the past, and so I finally got around to reading it. There are elements of a typical teen novel in this book, but there are enough adult concepts to make it interesting. Is utopia worth the price of love and choice?

Bryson v. Winters

A fellow Where’s George? person recommended “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson because I had enjoyed reading “Walking Home” by Kelly Winters. I hate to admit it, but I was not very impressed with Bryson’s tale of his Appalachian Trail experience. Maybe it’s a gender thing. Bryson spent more time focusing on the … Continue reading “Bryson v. Winters”

A fellow Where’s George? person recommended “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson because I had enjoyed reading “Walking Home” by Kelly Winters. I hate to admit it, but I was not very impressed with Bryson’s tale of his Appalachian Trail experience. Maybe it’s a gender thing. Bryson spent more time focusing on the hardship of the Trail and the politics surrounding the Trail than he did on the culture and life on the Trail. When I was reading Winter’s story, I felt transported into the trail. It was almost like I was hiking along with her through out. On the other hand, I had to force myself to finish Bryson’s story. Should I ever choose to hike the trail, his is the last type of personality I would want to be hiking with me.

Oh, I almost forgot…

I just finished devouring “Walking Home: A Woman’s Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail” by Kelly Winters. That doesn’t sound very nice, does it? Devour is the only way I can describe the feeling I had when I was able to take a lunch break at work and read more of the book. Even though I … Continue reading “Oh, I almost forgot…”

I just finished devouring “Walking Home: A Woman’s Pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail” by Kelly Winters. That doesn’t sound very nice, does it? Devour is the only way I can describe the feeling I had when I was able to take a lunch break at work and read more of the book. Even though I was sitting in a relatively comfortable room, scarfing down my lunch, I could feel the pain of hunger, the ache in my joints, and the general wearyness that she described throughout the story. At the same time, I could feel a cool wind on my face, and smell the crisp scent of wet woods and dirt.

I have a friend whom I have lost touch with who is probably hiking the AT right now. At one point, I thought about going with her. In the end, I knew that thru-hiking was not my path (for now). It was good to be able to read Kelly’s story and imagine what it might have been like had I gone with my friend.

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