Universities are and have always been vast copy machines. Evolved from medieval monasteries and their vast libraries and scriptoria, universities have always had as central functions of their mission the copying, transforming, and preserving works of art, thought, and science and making them available to their patrons.

More recently, universities have found cause to make copies of books, articles, films, photographs, maps, and other materials in forms easily accessible to students through electronic reserves or course-management systems. In one of the most exciting recent copying projects, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has led a consortium called HathiTrust Digital Library that includes Cornell and Indiana Universities and the Universities of California, and Wisconsin at Madison. The consortium provides a vast online catalog of works scanned via Google Books, with full-text …

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The New York Times Magazine has posted its cover story for this Sunday. It’s an attempt at a comprehensive account of the deposition and reposition of the University of Virginia’s president, Teresa A. Sullivan, in June.

The article, written by Andrew Rice, gets much right. It captures the confusing pace of those two weeks fairly well. Rice was able to interview many of the principals, including the rector, Helen E. Dragas, head of the UVa Board of Visitors. Dragas has been reluctant to revisit the drama. And to this day, she has refused to fully explain her actions. Needless to say, she has yet to apologize to the students, faculty, and alumni whom she harmed and insulted. But the closest to a revealing explanation comes in the Times article. It’s worth reading for Dragas’s comments alone.

Rice came to UVa over the summer to get the “real story,” as he told me when he…

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