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I do not understand the point of curated databases
Lately I’ve been volunteering to do usability testing for Yale’s library. Well, “volunteering” is probably too generous a word, since Yale pays pretty well, in the form of iTunes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. I like the gift cards, but I love the excuse to rant about what I do and don’t like about…
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Resources for the sporting male
At the Providence Public Library a few days ago, I ran across a copy of The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York. The book gives excerpts and essays from a cache of recently rediscovered newspapers for the “sporting male.” Seeing the book reminded me of one of my favorite online resources, the…
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Blogging the Beinecke
Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities is a blog featuring amazing finds from Yale’s phenomenal Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. I like the lesbian pulp novels, the Revolutionary War-era lottery tickets, and the WPA textbooks from the 1940s. The blog is maintained by Tim Young (curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts collection) and Nancy…
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Getting meta in the classroom
I’ve been going through some old teaching evaluations and in between cringing (“I hate Miriam!”) and patting myself on the back (“I love Miriam!”) I was struck by one student’s comment. This was for a film theory section. I think generally the class was successful, but it a) was a theory class and b) took…
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Libraries I like: Brown’s Friedman Study Center
I liked Yale’s Mudd Library for its endearing obsolescence, but for the Study Space of the Future, you can’t beat the Friedman Study Center in Brown University’s Science Library. The Friedman Study Center, which opened in 2007, is a 24-hour study space designed by the Architecture Research Office. It’s in the basement of Brown’s Science…
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My favorite tools: Record and edit audio with Audacity
Audacity is a great choice when you need to edit audio. It’s free, but it’s also pretty full-featured: it can record audio, import and export different file formats, and edit sounds. You can even use it to change the pitch of a recording without altering the tempo, remove static or hiss, or create sound effects.…
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Wax cylinder recordings
(Via MetaFilter.) Syracuse University has started digitizing its Belfer collection of cylinder recordings. So far it has 293 online, but they’re hoping to get 6,000 recordings digitized by the end of the year. You can search the recordings by keyword or browse them by subject (e.g., “Elks (Fraternal Order)” and “Foot’s resolution, 1829”), and you…
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Dropbox: Sync and share files across multiple desktops
If you work on multiple computers, you probably need a way to get ahold of your files and documents. You could email them to yourself, put them on a USB drive, or use a file server, but it might be easier to use a free service called Dropbox. This service allows you to stick a…
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Spring rejection season
It’s springtime! Which is great, except it’s also the season of rejections: fellowships, jobs, postdocs, conference presentations. You don’t hear about other people’s rejections, but they’re as much a part of academic life as coffee and procrastination. For all of us in rejection mode, here is something that will help.
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Technology and hyperbole
I’m a little creeped out by the messianic quality of a lot of talk about technology and society. Take the TED talks. Don’t they have a weird, hucksterish vibe? I love me some social networking and whatnot, but spare me the long-tail-tipping-point-world-is-flat-crowdsourcing-flashmobs rhapsodizing.