Cites & Insights 2005 index available

The cover sheet and indexes for Cites & Insights 5 (2005) is now available (one cover sheet and two indexes totalling 18 pages).

This completes volume 5.

If your institution actually binds print volumes of C&I, I'd love to hear from you.

Cites & Insights 5:14 available

Cites & Insights 5:14, December 2005, is now available for downloading.

This somewhat oversized 28-page issue (essays also available as HTML separates from the C&I home page) is, to use a seasonal metaphor, a post-Thanksgiving feast for the mind, with two big helpings of scanning-related goodness, a turkey of a story, a small side dish of crow, and a dessert helping of odd/old flicks.

Enough of the metaphor, here's the details:

• Perspective: OCA and GLP 1: Ebooks, Etext, Libraries and the Commons - the first of two essays on the Open Content Alliance and Google Book Search/Google Library Project. This shorter essay consists entirely of my own perspectives on the two projects and related topics.


• Following Up: Mea Culpa - While this section includes several "following up" notes, the "mea culpa" regards "Analogies, Gatekeepers and Blogging"--Seth Finkelstein and Jon Garfunkel have convinced me that I'm not qualified to deny the existence of "gatekeepers" within the biblioblogosphere. Read why.


• ©3 Perspective: Sony BMG: DRM Gone Bad - How an innovative, customer-oriented consumer electronics company can also be a Big Media turkey.


• Perspective: OCA and GLP 2: Steps on the Digitization Road - The big essay (roughly 10K words, 13 pages, and the reason this issue's so big: Quotes and comments on developments within these complementary projects, organized by topic.


• Offtopic Perspective: SciFi Classics 50 Movie Pack, Part 1 - a little leavening to finish the issue. From Hercules and Gamera to the Wasp Woman and Pia Zadora, mini-reviews of 26 movies (the first six discs of a megapack that now goes for $20), a few of which deserve the "SciFi" label. Be your own MST3K script writer!

Note: While this is the final issue for volume 5 of Cites & Insights, it is not the end of the volume. The index (a volume title sheet and index) will appear in the reasonably near future, for those few (?) who actually bind Cites & Insights.

Cites & Insights 5:13, a special issue, available

A special Mid-Fall 2005 issue of Cites & Insights (5:13) is now available. (Well, Fall begins September 22 and ends December 20; November 1 is about as "mid" as you can get.)

This 20-page issue consists of two Perspectives:

• Life Trumps Blogging (pp. 1-4), which is most definitely a pro-blogging essay, but recognizes priorities.


• Library Futures, Media Futures (pp. 4-20), which combines my comments on Blake Carver's LISNews "Libraries and Librarians In A Digital Future: Where Do We Fit?" essay; excerpts and comments from and on "Jeremy, Dan, Luke, and Walt," a multiway e-conversation about the future (yes, the Perspective includes last names for everyone); and some notes about other voices on media and library futures.

Update November 2:

Jeremy Frumkin correctly points out that I miskeyed the URL for his blog, and would be happier if I pointed out the specific links to the two posts discussed in the second essay above.

The Digital Librarian is at http://digitallibrarian.org (with an “a” in digital; Jeremy can spell, even if I can’t).

The two quotations are, respectively, 5 years? and Follow-up on 5 years.

The HTML version of the essay has been modified to add hotlinks for those two posts (and to correct the spelling of the blog’s address), and–although my standard policy is to not make myself look better by fixing errors once publication has occurred–I’ve corrected the spelling in the PDF version as well.

My apologies for the error and vague citations.

I have a formatting question about this issue, specifically the monster essay. In order to make it fit, I used 9.5-on-11.5 point Berkeley Book for quoted excerpts instead of the 10-on-12 point that I usually use (body text is 11 on 13). Is this too small for comfortable readability? If people generally say it's OK, I may leave it that way...

[Yes, you can pick up either Perspective as an HTML separate from the home page--but if you plan to print at all, please use the PDF. The second Perspective in HTML form requires more paper all by itself than the whole issue in PDF, and it's nowhere near as readable, in my opinion. Hey, I paid good money for Berkeley Book...]

Predicted arrival date for what should be a slightly more "normal" December issue: No earlier than November 17, no later than December 1. How's that for precision?