Collins Unbound

The future of the book. Where are we (and the books) going?  Read on about intriguing changes and future possibilities in The New Yorker article by Ken Auletta: Publish or Perish. Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business?

How do you get all this data? Good thing Puget Sound is a member of ICPSR! Established in 1962, ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) is an international consortium of about 700 academic institutions and research organizations, that provides leadership and training in data access, data curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

How do you navigate all of this data? Collins Library was fortunate to have staff from ICPSR come to campus last Friday to provide training on how to search for, download, and utilize the datasets found in their archive.  Faculty and librarians from Puget Sound, the University of Washington Seattle and Tacoma campuses, Pacific Lutheran University and Saint Martin’s University attended a very informative session that assisted us in answering those questions and many more.

How do you use all of this data? ICPSR also promotes educational activities including their ‘Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research,’ a comprehensive curriculum of intensive courses in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social methodology. ICPSR also leads several initiatives that encourage use of data in teaching, particularly for undergraduate instruction.  Check out their teaching and learning site for more details.

Well over a hundred years ago, technology provoked heated arguments about the future of the book!  Read this interesting 1894 article that predicts the books’ demise, entitled The End of Books, courtesy of the University of Iowa, from Scribner’s of the periods most influential journals.

An excerpt: My friend James Whittemore interrupted me. “And what will become of the libraries, dear friend, and of the books?”

“Libraries will be transformed into phonographotecks, or rather, phonostereoteks; they will contain the works of human genius on properly labelled cylinders, methodically arranged in little cases, rows upon rows, on shelves. The favorite editions will be the autophonographs of artists most in vogue; for example, every one will be asking for Coquelin’s ‘Molière,’ Irving’s.  ‘Shakespeare,’ Salvini’s ‘Dante,’ Eleonora Duse’s ‘Dumas fils,’ Sara Bern- hardt’s ‘ Hugo,’ Mounet Sully’s ‘Balzac;’ while Goethe, Milton, Byron, Dickens, Emerson, Tennyson, Musset, and others will have been ‘vibrated upon cylinders by favorite Tellers.’

“The bibliophiles, who will have become phonographiles, will still surround themselves with rare works; they will send out their cylinders to be bound in morocco cases, adorned with fine gildings and symbolic figures, as in former days. The titles will be im- printed on the circumference of the case, and the most exquisite cases will contain cylinders specially copyrighted, editions of a single copy, in the voice of a master of the drama, of poetry, or of music, giving impromptu and unpublished variants of celebrated works.

The collections and archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provide moving insights and tributes to one of the most difficult times in recent history.   As we pause to commerate this period during the National Days of Rememberance this week (April 11-18) be sure to visit the Museum’s web site.

site credit: http://www.keithrichards.com/

Keith Richards, grizzled veteran of rock’n’roll excess has a second calling. Read more about his love for librarianship and incredible book collection in the TimesOnline article: It’s only books ’n’ shelves but I like it.