Reviews in Process/Published

• Humanities Computing by Willard McCarty
• Ambient Findability by Peter Morville
• Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW? by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins (ill. Keith Aoki)

Potential Works To Be Reviewed

Cultural Studies

• Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture
  • Ted Friedman
  • December 2005
  • New York University Press
  • "To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems....Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow."
  • http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=fF3DeR3DW0&isbn=0814727409&itm=4

• Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse
  • Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine (Eds.)
  • July 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "Theoretical and practical perspectives from a range of disciplines on the challenges of using digital media in interpretation and representation of cultural heritage."
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10921

Literature: Criticism/Narrative/Poetics

• Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization
  • George P. Landow
  • 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "For the third edition he includes new material on developing Internet-related technologies, considering in particular their increasingly global reach and the social and political implications of this trend as viewed from a postcolonial perspective. He also discusses blogs, interactive film, and the relation of hypermedia to games. Thoroughly expanded and updated, this pioneering work continues to be the "ur-text" of hypertext studies."
  • http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/8902.html

• New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories
  • Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss (eds.)
  • June 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "By adding new media poetry to the study of hypertext narrative, interactive fiction, computer games, and other digital art forms, New Media Poetics extends our understanding of the computer as an expressive medium, showcases works that are visually arresting, aurally charged, and dynamic, and traces the lineage of new media poetry through print and sound poetics, procedural writing, gestural abstraction and conceptual art, and activist communities formed by emergent poetics."
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10918

• A Kaleidoscope of Digital American Literature
  • Martha L. Brogan with assistance from Daphnee Rentfrow
  • Council on Library and Information Resources and Digital Library Federation
  • September, 2005
  • "This report will be useful to anyone interested in the current state of online American literature resources. Its purpose is twofold: to offer a sampling of the types of digital resources currently available or under development in support of American literature; and to identify the prevailing concerns of specialists in the field as expressed during interviews conducted between July 2004 and May 2005."
  • http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub132abst.html

Publishing/Scholarship

• The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship
  • John Willinsky
  • October 2005
  • ISBN 0-262-23242-1
  • MIT Press
  • "Questions about access to scholarship go back farther than recent debates over subscription prices, rights, and electronic archives suggest. The great libraries of the past -- from the fabled collection at Alexandria to the early public libraries of nineteenth-century America -- stood as arguments for increasing access. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story -- online open access publishing by scholarly journals -- and makes a case for open access as a public good."
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10611

Gaming

• First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game
  • Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Eds.)
  • April 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "Isn't it possible, though, that many hugely successful computer games -- those that depend on or at least utilize storytelling conventions of narrative, character, and theme -- can be seen as examples of electronic literature?"
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10810

• Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture
  • T. L. Taylor
  • March 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps--as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space."
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10770

• Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
  • Ian Bogost
  • February 2006
  • MIT Press
  • "In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests that any medium--from videogames to poetry, literature, cinema, or art--can be read as a configurative system of discrete, interlocking units of meaning, and he illustrates this method of analysis with examples from all these fields."
  • http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10917

Copyright/IP Issues

• Technology and Copyright Law: A Guidebook for the Library, Research, and Teaching Professions Second Edition
  • Arlene Bielefield, Lawrence Cheeseman
  • April 2006
  • Neal-Schuman Publishers
  • "In this updated version of Technology and Copyright Law the authors expand on new developments in the world of copyright, including those in the areas of legislation and case law."
  • http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/4/534.html

• The Public Domain
  • Stephen Fishman
  • April 2006
  • NOLO
  • "The 2nd edition is completely updated and revised, and includes information about the Supreme Court's decisions in the Eldred and Dastar cases. This book is indispensable to anyone who deals with creative works, including publishers, Web designers, writers, musicians and composers, artists, librarians, photographers and film makers."
  • http://www.nolo.com/product.cfm/ObjectID/CF0946AF-06EA-46EF-A2FC0F9F99DB505D/catid/DAE53B68-7BF5-455A-BC9F3D9C9C1F7513/310/276/

• Copyright Law and the Distance Education Classroom
  • Series: Working Within the Information Infrastructure #1
  • Tomas A. Lipinski
  • Jan 2005
  • Scarecrow Press
  • "...Providing a step-by-step explanation of the law and how it impacts these pedagogical issues, Lipinski discusses instructor ownership issues, a general application of "fair use," and other issues that will inevitably arise when technology, intellectual property, and education all intersect."
  • http://www.scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0810851717

• Copyright in Cyberspace 2: Questions for Librarians
  • Gretchen McCord? Hoffman
  • Neal-Schuman Publishers
  • 2005
  • "Copyright expert, attorney, and Texas Library Association President-Elect Gretchen McCord? Hoffmann, author of Copyright in Cyberspace (2001) addresses the challenges of providing information in an increasingly digital—and litigious—world."
  • http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/0/500.html

• The Center for Intellectual Property Handbook
  • Kimberly Bonner
  • 2006
  • "Edited by the staff of the University of Maryland’s renowned Center for Intellectual Property—an organization dedicated to providing educational services in the field of copyright and higher education—the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of the resource is guaranteed."
  • http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/3/533.html

• Acquiring Copyright Permission to Digitize and Provide Open Access to Books
  • Denise Troll Covey
  • October, 2005
  • Council on Library and Information Resources and Digital Library Federation
  • "What are the stumbling blocks to digitization? Is copyright law a major barrier? Is it easier to negotiate with some types of publishers than with others? To what extent does the age of the material influence permission decisions? This report, by Denise Troll Covey, principal librarian for special projects at Carnegie Mellon University, responds to many of these questions."
  • http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub134abst.html

• Copyright Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Pre-1972 Commercial Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives
  • June M. Besek
  • Council on Library and Information Resources
  • Commissioned for and sponsored by the National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress
  • December, 2005
  • "This report addresses the question of what libraries and archives are legally empowered to do to preserve and make accessible for research their holdings of pre-1972 commercial recordings, the large aural legacy that is not protected by federal copyright. As the first in-depth analysis by a nationally known expert in copyright law, this report will also be a timely and authoritative aid to the many librarians and archivists who face decisions daily about how to establish priorities for sound preservation."
  • http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub135abst.html

Technical

• Using XML: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians
  • Kwong Bor Ng
  • 2006
  • Neal-Schuman
  • "Today, more and more database companies and digital projects are using XML (Extensible Markup Language). Library professionals — especially technical service librarians, metadata librarians, system librarians, and library webmaster — who want to stay current, need this book."
  • http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/7/537.html

• XHTML and CSS Essentials for Library Web Design
  • Michael Sauers
  • 2005
  • Neal-Schuman
  • "Sauers, an Internet trainer for the Bibliographical Center for Research, also includes two quick reference guides to XHTML and CSS code. Increase the efficiency, usability, and potential of library Web sites with the help of this readable and practical guide."
  • http://www.neal-schuman.com/db/9/479.html

History - done digitally

• The History Highway: A 21st-Century Guide to Internet Resources Fourth Edition
  • Dennis A. Trinkle; Scott A. Merriman (eds.)
  • April 2006
  • M.E. Sharpe
  • "Description: Save yourself and your students hours of research time. Now extensively revised and expanded, The History Highway is widely recognized as the one essential tool for students, teachers and researchers seeking a reliable guide to history sites on the web."
  • http://www.mesharpe.com/mall/resultsa.asp?Title=The+History+Highway%3A+A+21st%2DCentury+Guide+to+Internet+Resources%2C+Fourth+Edition

-- KimTryka? - 10 Feb 2006