Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

While browsing through Bookforum.com yesterday, I came across Robert Darnton’s “Google and the Future of Books,” from the latest issue of the New York Review of Books.

Darnton offers an interesting analysis of Google’s recent settlement with the Authors’ Guild, taking us through an historical examination of the Republic of Letters and the development of copyright law, and how this applies to present times.

Quite fascinating, and worth reading, especially since he raises some excellent questions about the power we are giving Google.

Good morning, readers!

Over the break, a reader forwarded me this fascinating post on open access publishing for philosophical journals by Richard Chappell.  The post, and the discussion below it, opens some very interesting questions about pushing for more open access publishing in philosophy.

What do you think, readers?  I myself am in favor of more open access publishing — do you think it’s a good idea to pursue?  What can be done to promote it?

Good morning, readers!

Thanks to those of you who have sent in suggestions — they are greatly appreciated.  Please keep them coming in.  I’m happy to receive them.

A few days ago, I received a suggestion in which the reader asked the question: “Which feeds, mailing lists, webpages, etc. should one monitor to get ALL of the information on new publications?”  The reader, interested in early modern philosophy, and Kant in particular, wants to know if there is a way in which one can be informed of the latest publications from publishers, without having to search through publisher catalogs and Web sites.  It’s a very good question — here’s what I’ve found in answer to it.

I have not, to date, located one aggregator site or place that lists every new publication in philosophy.  Given the large number of books published every year — including philosophy — I’m not sure how feasible creating such an aggregator site or resource would be.

However, there are several resources that, used together, will likely give you a fairly robust list of new philosophy publications.  The majority of the books provided by these resources will be in English, though other languages (most notably German and French) will appear also.

• Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  This is a great site to learn about new philosophy books.  Oftentimes, I learn about books of potential interest from reading the reviews.

• Philosopher’s Index. This database is probably the closest thing to an aggregator site at present, though it is far from complete.  The database does list books among its records, and with the CSA Illumina interface, you can view records by book, book chapter, article, book review, and so forth.

Example — You want to search for recent books on Kant listed in Philosopher’s Index.  When you login, go to the Advanced Search Screen, if this is not set as your default search option.  Enter in “Kant” for your search term in the first line, setting the limiter to “Keyword.”  (Why?  Because this will focus the search more on books that specifically deal with Kant, rather than those that merely mention him off-hand.)  Next, go down to the “Date Range” field, to limit your search to the last year or so.  I chose 2007-2009 as a range.  Below that, in the Philosopher’s Index Indexes & Limits section, click on the “Browse Publication Type” link, and in the window that opens, click on “book,” then “Add to Search.”  When that window closes, click on “Search” and you should get 329 results, which are subdivided into books, chapters/essays, and book reviews, respectively.

• Book Reviews in Journals. Many philosophy journals carry book reviews, which are worth checking out, some more extensive than others.  (The Review of Metaphysics has an especially in-depth one once a year, for example.)  For those interested in Kant, e.g., Kant-Studien offers book reviews.  Thus, I’d suggesting checking out whatever journals focus on your interests, as they may let you know about the latest and greatest books in your area(s) of interest.

• Philosophical Books. This is a great journal to read in order to learn about new books being published in philosophy.  As the blurb on the Wiley-Interscience site reads, “Philosophical Books carries extensive discussions of major new publications in all areas of analytic philosophy.  The journal includes: book symposia in which two or three writers discuss a book and the author replies; articles discussing recent work in particular fields; full-blown critical notices; and short, one-page reviews”  I’d check this journal out on a regular basis.

• Publisher Web Sites: E-mail and RSS Feeds. Many publisher Web sites now offer the option of signing up for periodic e-mails and RSS feeds of notifications of new materials.  I’ve known several scholars who have done this, who then let me know so that we can look into acquiring the book for the Robbins collection.  A quick look reveals that Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press all offer e-mail alerts and RSS feeds.  So these might be worth subscribing to.  Other university and academic presses will likely have them as well.

• Ask Your Friendly, Neighborhood Librarian. Seriously!  I get a number of catalogs on a regular basis, so, if you ask me to keep an eye out for certain topics, persons, and the like, I’d be very happy to let you know when something new comes out.

Are there other resources out there that my readers use which might be of help?  What about non-English philosophy books?

Good morning readers!

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post about MindPapers, an online bibliography of approximately 18,000 published papers and online papers in the philosophy of mind maintained by David Chalmers and David Bourget.  Chalmers maintains several directories of online philosophy papers on his Web site, with the help of others.

It seems that Chalmers and Bourget have a new philosophy paper directory project in mind, according to a recent post on Chalmers’ blog, Fragments of Consciousness:

Now back to philosophy.  Or at least, to philosophical taxonomy. David Bourget and I are finalizing a new project for access to online work in philosophy.  To a very rough first approximation it will be like MindPapers generalized to all of philosophy, although there will be many significant differences (it will be less ambitious in some respects, more ambitious in others).  More on that when it goes public, hopefully within the next month or so.

Chalmers and Bourget are requesting help with setting up and refining the taxonomy which they will be using to organize the papers.  So, if you would like to review the taxonomy and offered suggestions, take a look at Chalmers’ post for instructions on where and how to do so.

A hat-tip to Manuel Vargas, on The Garden of Forking Paths, for this information.

Good morning, readers!

Many of you are likely aware of, and perhaps are (heavy) users of, Google Book Search.  For those who don’t know, Google Book Search allows users to search for full-text, scanned copies of millions of books, many of which are out-of-print or hard to find.

However, Google Book Search has not been without controversy.  Some of the books which have been scanned into the database are still in copyright.  This hasn’t made the publishing industry or authors happy, because they view Google Book Search as a violation of copyright, which means no revenue from royalties and such that authors and publishers are owed.  Google, on the other hand, saw their scanning project as falling under the “fair use” clause of copyright.

Needless to say, the upshot of this led to a lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild against Google.  Two days ago, after a few years of negotiations, the Authors Guild and Google reached a deal.*  All sides have come to an agreement that allows Google Book Search to continue while paying authors and publishers (back) royalties for their work.

Why is this important to philosophical research?  Well, from what I’m reading, it looks like the deal will benefit all the interested parties — Google will be able to keep the books it has scanned in the database, and continue to add even more books to its database, which means that more texts become available to researchers.  It also means that publishers and authors will get paid what they’re due, and which may make them more amenable to contributing to the database.

Additionally, beyond the mere pragmatic aspects of the settlement, it also raises some interesting questions about the nature of texts, and our interactions with texts, something touched on in a slightly different context by Peter Brantley, in “Homes for Good (Orphan) Books.”

How do we, as philosophers, engage with and access philosophical texts in pedagogy, writing, and research?  There are some interesting and as yet barely discussed questions around these issues.

Thoughts, readers?

Update 11/03/2008: There has been some additional discussion on Peter Brantley’s blog, which is worth reading.

*A hat-tip to the family member who forwarded this on to me.

Last year, I wrote a post about the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), along with one about the Philosophy Research Network. These are great places to find current research, papers, and works-in-progress in a variety of fields, including philosophy, and I have found these sites to be very useful.

Readers who are curious about the SSRN might find this article by Noam Cohen from the New York Times about the SSRN to be of interest. Here is the introduction:

FIRST came the Amazon book rankings, and word leaked out that perhaps some vaunted writers spent more time than you would think checking how popular they were, hour by hour. Then newspapers started tracking the most popular articles on their sites and journalists, it was said, spent more time than you would think watching their rankings, hour by hour.

But would you believe that academics could become caught up in such petty, vain competition? Of course, you say. Still, short of hanging out in the stacks at the library and peeking over shoulders, the pursuit of that particular vanity had to wait for the Internet, and the creation of the Social Science Research Network, an increasingly influential site that now offers nearly 150,000 full-text documents for downloading.

Not surprisingly, there are some big questions raised by the SSRN about quality control and the worth of the materials posted therein:

The research network raises the same big questions about what is lost and what is gained by removing the barriers to being heard in the public square. Is music distributed on MySpace, without benefit of a record label’s guiding hand, better or worse? Is journalism helped by the wide reach of bloggers, or hurt as professionalism disappears? Is it good that research that has not been reviewed by peers can be found so easily and looks just the same as gold-star approved work?

Do readers have an opinion on this subject? What do they think of the quality of the materials on the SSRN?
A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

Given the skyrocketing costs of journals, both in print and electronic form, the concept of open access publishing has been growing in popularity for a long time, especially in the sciences. By moving to this model, high quality research becomes more easily available and in a more timely fashion.

However, the humanities have been slower in adapting this model. While there are exceptions — like the journal, Philosophers’ Imprint, and the humanities sections of the Social Science Research Network — by and large there has not been as great a development of open access journals, books, and the like in the humanities.

So, while reading “American Libraries Direct” last week, my eye caught an article about the new Open Humanities Press, from the Chronicle of Higher Education: “New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut.” (A Harvard PIN and ID are required to view this article.)

As the article notes:

The nonprofit operation—described by those involved as “an international open-access publishing collective”—makes its official debut on Monday with a roster of seven already-established journals in critical and cultural studies and related fields: Cosmos and History, Culture Machine, Fibreculture, Film-Philosophy, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Parrhesia, and Vectors. Each journal already publishes in an open-access format, and each will retain full editorial independence. The press will provide editorial and technical-development services, using the Open Journal Systems software created by the Public Knowledge Project, and it will help with distribution and promotion….

Those involved with Open Humanities Press hope to expand beyond critical theory, perhaps even beyond journals and into open-access monographs, once the enterprise has a reputation for what Mr. Ottina called “rigorous academic quality.”

“Ultimately,” he said, “the goal is to get as much academic content into an open-access distribution model as possible.”

Even though the project is focusing on cultural studies at the moment — a topic likely of little interest to many of the analytically-oriented — I do think it’s something of which the analytically-oriented should be aware. Is there some way that we might get philosophy journals on this platform? Something to think about…

Good morning, readers!

Regular readers of this blog will remember a post from early April, where I wrote about the question of whether or not scholars should embrace Wikipedia, and another post from February, where I wrote about Google’s alternative knol offering.

Can wikis be made to work for scholars, rather than being an annoyance, or something to ban from student papers? Can wikis be made part of classroom instruction in fruitful and viable ways? Andy Guess explores these questions and more in an intriguing article from InsideHigherEd.com. (A hat-tip to “American Libraries Direct” for this article.)

How might a wiki be made part of a philosophy class? Now there is a very interesting question. Would it be modeled on something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? I don’t know. But it’s a question worth considering. And how does all of this relate to scholarly publishing? I’m very curious about these questions, and would love to get some discussion started in the comments box (a not too subtle hint!)

For Harvard faculty who might be reading this post: the iSite software has, as one of the widgets that can be placed on a course Web site, a wiki. I have not used or set up one of these before for a philosophy course. However, if you’re interested, please let me know, and we can discuss it. We may be able to get some help from ICG as well.

From InsideHigherEd.com: Lindsay Waters, executive editor for the humanities at the Harvard University Press, writes “A Call for Slow Writing.” In this essay, Waters makes a case for establishing the journal article, rather than the book, as the standard for tenure, as well as working on improving the quality of writing in journal articles.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

Coming on the heels of Harvard’s recent decision to create an open-access repository of FAS faculty research, here’s a blog post by Danah Boyd on why she will never again publish in a journal that does not offer open-access. Take a look at what she writes — do you agree with her? What can we do in the era of high-cost journals whose prices keep going through the roof?

Boyd also makes several observations about the changes in the way that scholarship is being practiced, and how research is published, recognized, and evaluated. What do you think of her observations?

For the record — I do agree with a good deal of what she writes. But all of these thoughts are part of a larger, ongoing conversation about scholarly publication and research, and a conversation that has only just begun, in my view.

A hat-tip to ALA’s “American Libraries Direct” for the link to Boyd’s post.