And comment on it.  It’s just a little whiff of the e-book talk from BEA.   Of course, I wasn’t there and I still haven’t figured out my own e-book position.

I can’t resist linking to this video.  But only because it’s not real violence.  Unless you are an android.  And in that case, I’m sorry.  Look at this  instead.

Probably, what I think, is that separating the design of the book from the text is a huge step backwards for humankind.  Changes in typography, white space, etc, etc, every material aspect of how that text is manifested in your actual hands is important, even if you don’t notice.  Even if you have a mind/body issue and a bad back and squinty eyes and some weird habit like chewing on your collar while you read.

If someone wants to lend me a reader, I’ll make a report.  And if I’m just permanently warped by my former job making books, even though that was many years ago, I will admit it.

I recently read Julie Hayden’s Lists of the past, which is not readily available and well worth the effort to find.  The first half is short stories of urban dwellers much like ourselves (except nobody stores liquor under the kitchen sink anymore, right?  That’s some strange habit from another era – bourbon, Windex, vodka, Ajax…).  The second half is a larger story that surfaces in individual pieces that could easily stand alone.

My recommendation to you, gentle readers, is to get the podcast from the New Yorker of Lorrie Moore reading one of these stories, Day old baby rats.  Put that in your personal listening device and listen as you move overground and underground, the literature of the city blending with the physical experience.  Let me know how it goes.

As an added bonus, on the same page is Orhan Pamuk reading Vladimir Nabokov.  The combination of Pamuk’s Turkish accent and Nabokov’s Russian perspective is hypnotic.

And finally,  the Emily Dickinson garden at NYBG.  I didn’t expect anything great, most of the flowers are familiar standbys.  But it was really, really wonderful.  Worth the trip from Staten Island.

While we are wrapping our semesters, hoping NYS will be able to pay us, scheming up new research projects and generally thinking of endings, Mother Nature reminds us that spring is the time of beginnings.  Specifically, the Mallard ducks in  Robert Wagner park have bred successfully – 10 little critters to liven up our lunch hour.

I had this impression that it might be a scathing indictment of the present state of scholarly communication.  And wouldn’t that be delightfully amusing?  The thing that really struck me about the report is the way libraries are valued by classroom faculty and by struck, I mean it made me sad.

Apparently, classroom faculty primarily conceive of the library primarily as a buyer of resources.  Not as people that increase access to those resources, or selectors, or instructors, or any of those other things that librarians care about and work really hard to do.

The second most important thing we do?  Apparently, it’s to store physical items.

I just spent two semesters hammering out student learning objectives and doing an assessment.  This process was really difficult and wonderful, exposing all kinds of gaps and opportunities for improvement, and I don’t regret any of that time.  But I would prefer it to be appreciated by the larger college community.

Wandering through the city you might notice that some trees are covered in purple/ lavender blooms.  Usually this is the Paulownia, an invasive species from Asia.  It has a cough syrup element in its scent.

You might also see wisteria, which is  a vine that can cover live or dead trees.

An interesting look at peer review from UC Berkeley via Arcades Collaborative.   I’m fairly new to Arcades Collaborative but any group that “examines and critiques social and cultural information issues” can’t be all bad.