Blogs

A recent post by Emily Ford at In the Library With a Lead Pipe asked us to think about what we do and why we do it. That’s a wonderfully clear way to ask how our philosophy of librarianship is applied in daily practice and how the things we do articulate our beliefs, for better or worse.

E-book textbook rentals sound like an amazing idea. Neither the textbook rental market or the digital textbook concept have brought the price of quality textbooks down as fast as we'd like. But combine digital with rental, and perhaps we've achieved some real disruption.

We’ve got a huge moving van in front of our house now, and we have until Friday to pack it with all the boxes of stuff we’ve been preparing for months.

Over this past summer, I've been leading a team of archaeologists from the Campus Archaeology Program in a massive archaeological survey across Michigan State University's campus. The goal of the project was to check the area for artifacts and historical features in the landscape prior to construction.

Have you checked out Boundless yet? The idea is either brilliant or criminal, depending on your perspective.

A have a lot of friends and colleagues who are doing extremely well in their careers. I am more than a little envious.

I've just spent the last hour and a half working on my semester plan, and I'm not done yet. I've filled in as many appointments on my calendar as I know about, looked over my class schedule and meeting schedule, and done my best to figure out when I'll be working on my research. According to my semester plan, I have at least three days a week when I can do something -- anything! -- to advance my current project.

Yesterday, I posed (and pointed to an answer for) the question I've used to stop many an economist dead in his/her tracks. But I shouldn't pick on economists (at least not on this count). Most people in most professional concentrations are readily stymied if asked to justify or explain what they do in terms of first principles. Sustainability folk are no different. Ask "what's sustainability for?" or some variant thereon. Then prepare to ignore a certain amount of stammering and nervous weight-shifting.