Scott McLemee’s posts on CrookedTimber and QuickStudy are some of the first things I read in my feeds, for their no-bs analysis of media, higher ed, punk, et al. Two great recent bits on libraries, via QS:
- Quoting Nick Reville: “If libraries didn’t already exist, there’d be no way they could ever come into existence now. Can you imagine telling the publishing industry that the government was going to pay to set up buildings where they gave away their product for free?” (Moreover, is it any more certain that our current government views unrestricted public access to a comprehensive body of information as the ultimate threat?)
- Quoting former Dallas Morning News book critic Jerome Weeks, on his departure from the paper and the current state of literate culture: “[R]eading doesn’t really sound like work to you. But it is. Otherwise, we wouldn’t pay researchers, law clerks, teachers or librarians. OK, so we don’t pay them much….”
