Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 170.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Steve Krause <skrause@ONLINE.EMICH.EDU> (14)
Subject: Re: 16.167 commercial & individual notices of
publication
[2] From: Aimee Morrison (32)
<ahm@ualberta.ca>
Subject: commercial research
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 06:59:35 -0700
From: Steve Krause <skrause@ONLINE.EMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 16.167 commercial & individual notices of publication
Willard--
I quite frankly don't understand what all the fuss is about with postings
of notices of publication and such. This mailing list is different than
others I'm on in that it really isn't much of a "discussion," at least in
the way that my other groups are "no moderation/post a message about
anything/almost anything goes" discussion groups. Rather, I've always
thought of this group as primarily about announcements, be they for
(supposedly) non-commercial academic enterprises or (supposedly) commercial
presses. So I for one hope these things keep coming.
--Steve
-- Steven D. Krause Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature Eastern Michigan University * 614G Pray-Harrold Hall Ypsilanti, MI 48197 * 734-487-1363 * http://krause.emich.edu--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 07:00:05 -0700 From: Aimee Morrison <ahm@ualberta.ca> Subject: commercial research
hello all,
i've been thinking about advertising and books, and being an academic and being a computing humanist in the 'digital age.' i've had a couple of spin-off ideas from the original discussion.
1. i get a lot of paper spam from presses that both excites and depresses me: mostly, i can't afford what's on offer, but i'm grateful to hear of recent publications in my field, and that this information has cost me nothing in the way of research time. however, this practice does add to the terrifying feeling that no matter how fast i read, i'm falling ever further behind. this has a somewhat salubrious side effect, in that it encourages me to try to keep on top of things. peer pressure. similarly digital notices -- even being *aware* of recent work makes me feel more engaged in my field. i'd like to keep commercial spam out of my life, but the kinds of forwarded--member-vetted--notices we get here don't bother me at all.
2. i don't know about the rest of you, but one of my new(ish) research tools is amazon.ca. ditto university press web sites, and abebooks.com, and other booksellers. when i'm trying to get on top of a topic, i hit three or four major library catalogues, periodical databases, and, increasingly, these commercial sites. i have to say, my research is definitely more effective for this addition of commercial materials. i know a *lot* of graduate students who use the commercial booksellers as research tools. it stands to reason they'd be effective: a lot of money goes into making the sites easy to use and very helpful, so that you'll buy things. for every book from amazon that i buy, though, i probably visit the site 10 times just to do research on books i later get out of the library. interesting.
any thoughts? aimee
. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Aimee Morrison "Nothing in education is so PhD Program, Dept. of English astonishing as the amount of University of Alberta ignorance it accumulates in the ahm@ualberta.ca form of inert facts." -- Henry Adams
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