Random House has announced that it will be creating a Web site to market selected titles as print on demand. This has come under criticism in a number of quarters, not because POD is not fully appreciated but because of the truism that no trade publisher has a brand that means anything to a consumer. [...]

On one side we have user-generated content (UGC), exemplified by Wikipedia; on the other we have traditional publishing, which is characterized by an editor or series of editors (acquiring editor, developmental editor, copy editor, production editor), who review submitted material and make judgments as to its shape, argument, and suitability for publication. UGC is on [...]

I was Googling for something completely different today, using four terms and a “quoted phrase,” and had pared down the jillions to only 38 results. At the bottom of the first page of results was an oddity: My Favorite Books. I happened to notice the url:
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/booklist.html
And thought: Stanford, Sergey…. and clicked on it. And [...]

Over the past week or so, I’ve been watching my daughter, who is a high school sophomore, doing research for a history paper on Danton and the French Revolution. The teacher told the kids to find, as sources, at least two books, two arcticles, and two reputable website (which, by his definition, doesn’t include wikipedia). [...]

Having gotten caught up to some extent in the Open Access debate over research publications, I am continually astonished by the lack of objectivity and the sheer partisanship of many of the participants. For those unfamiliar with Open Access or OA, this is the principle of “information wants to be free” applied to the [...]