Tuesday Links

Good morning. I'm still editing the Forest, but here are a few links of interest:

I interview my first-ever real-life College Guy for Guys Lit Wire. This is the first in a series of monthly interviews designed to find out what 18 to 23-year-old guys are reading and why.

Did you catch this extremely scary story about the AP and citation costs at Boing Boing? Read it and weep, folks. Cory wrote the post at Boing Boing, so I think I can safely post his concluding sentences here which I think are right on the money:

• "The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it."

Bingo.

Seriously, do head on over right now and read this post. Scary, scary stuff.

And I have a practical question: What counts as a quotation to the AP? Is a paraphrased sentence--such as 'head on over and read the AP article on X'--count as a quotation? Or do they only count direct quotes as quotations?

(Jen Robinson wrote in with a link to more information here at the Washington Post's TechCrunch. I love Michael Arrington's decision on AP's new policy. Head on over and read.)

Last but by no means least--don't miss Alkelda's book chat with Tadmack over at Saints and Spinners!

I just know you all want another internet time waster, right?

Are you looking for another way to waste time online? Then check out Verve--a new kind of blog browser.

I was asked to sign up because I live in a place with very few blogs. Verve combines tags (a nice limited collection that includes books, reading, and art) with Google map technology. So you can jump from blog to blog in, say, California, or Scotland, or Iowa, or Chile and stumble upon something random and interesting.

Enjoy. I'm sure you'll thank me later.

Two Interesting Web articles/posts

Two very different posts/articles have got me thinking about these internets of ours. One of them I read via my Reader, and the other in the New York Times. Both really show how technology and the internet have changed the way we work, read, and live.

First up: I really like Kassia Krozser's response at Booksquare to yet another article on how bloggers (and publishers) are ruining the book pages in the States. This is such a tiresome debate, and Kassia explains why. (Then again, Kassia could be merely reacting, instead of carefully considering context and various points of view. Just kidding.)

Now from the New York Times: "At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web," by Patricia Cohen. Here's the upshot: "Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs."

I think this is an exciting proposal and I hope it passes. Imagine if scholarship made it to the web. There would be more room for debate and discussion. Moreover, time to "publication" could be six months instead of six years as it often is in the Humanities. While I do see issues for scholars working with human subjects or in the biological sciences, I think online scholarship is the future in the Humanities. I'll be watching the vote with great interest.