Anniversary of the Assassination
The end of “Camelot” occurred on November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was slain by a sniper while riding in an open automobile at Dallas, Texas during his campaign for re-election. Come check out Todd Library’s collection on his life and death.
In a press release, the organizers called the list “the most diverse to be announced in its five year history, showcasing a panoply of tales from right across Asia.â€
Here’s the full list:
• JAMIL AHMAD, Pakistan – The Wandering Falcon (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• TAHMIMA ANAM, Bangladesh – The Good Muslim (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• JAHNAVI BARUA, India – Rebirth (Penguin India/Penguin Books)
• RAHUL BHATTACHARYA, India – The Sly Company of People Who Care (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
• MAHMOUD DOWLATABADI, Iran – The Colonel (US: Melville House, UK: Haus Publishing)
• AMITAV GHOSH, India – River of Smoke (John Murray/Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• HARUKI MURAKAMI, Japan -1Q84 (Harvill Secker)
• ANURADHA ROY, India- The Folded Earth (Quercus/Maclehose Press/Hacehette India)
• KYUNG-SOOK SHIN, South Korea – Please Look After Mom (Alfred A. Knopf)
• TARUN J TEJPAL, India – The Valley of Masks (HarperCollins India/4th Estate)
• YAN LIANKE, China – Dream of Ding Village (Grove Atlantic)
• BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Japan – The Lake (Melville House)
“What this longlist shows is that if we are looking for books of the epic scale and stature of the great European nineteenth century novels, we must turn to Asia,†David Parker, chair of the directors of the prize. He says the nominees “have a scale and ambition we don’t often see in Western writing these days. Could it be that as the world’s economic centre of gravity is moving eastwards, so too is its artistic energy and ambition?â€
My university recently convened an emergency “summit” for librarians, tutors, and concerned faculty members to solve a citation crisis. Our library help desks reportedly cannot complete their core mission of assisting students with information literacy (finding, choosing, and using sources) because students keep pestering them with questions about how to format obscure citations: “I’m analyzing poetry for my ‘Punk Literature’ seminar. Using MLA style, how do I cite a limerick scribbled in the third-floor toilet?”
Meanwhile, the writing center stinks of fear as students struggle to decipher APA, MLA, AP, and Chicago (or is it Turabian?) documentation styles, which seem as alien and absurd to them as using a typewriter. Academic departments and even whole colleges consistently beg the library and writing center for workshops to rehabilitate their worst citation transgressors. Bibliographic citation has apparently eclipsed perfect grammar and the five-paragraph theme as the preoccupation of persnickety professors.
What a colossal waste. Citation style remains the most arbitrary, formulaic, and prescriptive element of academic writing taught in American high schools and colleges. Now a sacred academic shibboleth, citation persists despite the incredibly high cost-benefit ratio of trying to teach students something they (and we should also) recognize as relatively useless to them as developing writers.
Agree or disagree?
via Citation Obsession? Get Over It! [The Chronicle of Higher Education].
The Digital Public Library of America doesn’t exist yet, but it’s closer to becoming a reality.
At an energized meeting held here at the National Archives on Friday, representatives from top cultural institutions and public and research libraries expressed robust support for the proposed library, which would create a portal to allow the public to get easy online access to collections held at many different institutions.
Two foundations said they would together give $5-million in grant money to help get it up and running by April 2013. A major European digital library announced it will work with its planned American counterpart to make their technical structures compatible. And nine technology teams showcased online frameworks they built for a “beta sprint” contest to develop ideas for the technical framework the library will require.
But organizers and observers made it clear that there’s still a long way to go before the digital public library goes online, and that its final shape—and just how public it will really be—remain up in the air.