Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category

In the spirit of Tuesday’s Open Access Day, the American Library Association has made its flagship publication, American Libraries, openly available to the public. Previously only accessible online to members, AL issues dating back to 2003 can now be read through ebrary and HTML versions of the issues are slated for January 2009. Non-ALA members can also now subscribe to the related AL Direct newsletter. See the press release here for more details as well as the new American Libraries blog - AL Inside Scoop.

The New York Times Book Review has selected 100 Notable Books of the Year from all those books reviewed since December 3, 2006. The list is set to run in the Dec. 2, 2007 print edition of the Book Review, but you can read it online first!

Here are a few of the more interesting tomes on the list:

• HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. By J. K. Rowling. (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, $34.99.) Rowling ties up all the loose ends in this conclusion to her grand wizarding saga.
• LIKE YOU’D UNDERSTAND, ANYWAY: Stories. By Jim Shepard. (Knopf, $23.) Shepard’s surprising tales feature such diverse characters as a Parisian executioner, a woman in space and two Nazi scientists searching for the yeti.
• PORTRAIT OF A PRIESTESS: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By Joan Breton Connelly. (Princeton University, $39.50.) A scholar finds that religion meant power for Greek women.

via Micro Persuasion

“(Federal Judge Richard) Posner . . . speculates on how the Internet and other relatively new technologies will shape the future of plagiarism. He takes the counterintuitive position that plagiarism will become much harder to get away with. In fact, ’student plagiarism may be becoming less common as more colleges and universities adopt plagiarism-detection software,’ such as Turnitin (pronounced “turn it in”), an online service several thousand colleges use.”

Read the review of The Little Book of Plagiarism, by Richard A Posner at the New Atlantis.

Find many more reviews from the Critical Compendium - a daily dose of book reviews from around the world. Pretty neat! A good service addition from your library today?