Tag Archives: books

February 18, 2013, 11:00 am

Organizing Our (Analog) Library

The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone. Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself. 
–Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”

[This is a guest post by Jonathan Sterne, an associate professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His latest books are MP3: The Meaning of a Format(Duke University Press) and The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge). Find him online at http://sterneworks.org and follow him on Twitter @jonathansterne.--@JBJ]

Over the winter break, my partner Carrie Rentschler and I spent a few days organizing our library. For humanist academics who spend so much of their time engaged with books, we don’t really …

January 9, 2013, 8:00 am

Open Thread Wednesday: Do You Buy Books at Conventions?

By Brian Croxall

Last weekend, two of the largest academic conferences of the year took place: the annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). A good portion of the ProfHacker team was at one of these two gatherings, giving presentations, listening to talks, and tweeting up a storm.

One of the staples of these two conventions (as well as any other that I have ever attended) is the book exhibit. Academic publishers bring their most recent titles to show off, hoping to sell a few copies that might turn into larger course adoptions. The sales are often made more attractive by the inclusion of a discount of 15%, 20%, or even 30% off list price. As Jason and I wandered around the MLA’s book exhibit on Saturday, we not only took in the amazing demonstration of the ChronoZoom beta by Microsoft Research but also shared something like the following …

February 15, 2012, 8:00 am

Building Books for Mobile

By Anastasia Salter

Mobile devices and tablets are at the center of new debates on interactive textbooks and educational applications–and, thanks to the growing interest, there are many options for development tools. As Jason Farman described last week, there are lots of exciting ways to integrate mobile devices and tablets in the classroom. Developing your own mobile resources, or inviting your students to try it, is possible even without coding experience and is a great way to see for yourself the possibilities and limitations in these applications.

Fundamentally, building in HTML5–with the Canvas, JavaScript and JQuery Mobile–allows for development across devices. HTML5 can replace proprietary extensions, and avoid the native environments of any of these devices. But there are some tools to consider across some popular platforms, particularly for easily building interactive books:

Android: …

February 7, 2012, 3:00 pm

Unglue a Book: Crowdfunding to Liberate Published Works

By Konrad Lawson

Over the past few years I have seen some fantastic projects reach their funding goals on the crowdfunding service Kickstarter and create some wonderful films, products, software, and websites. The proposed project picks a sum of money they need to accomplish some aim, promises to produce certain results if they get what they ask for, and doesn’t receive a penny unless their funding goal is met.

What if there was a similar system that let us, the community of readers, buy books out of indentured copyright? Or, from the publishers perspective, what if there was a system that paid you to allow a digital edition of your work enter free into the wild? Let’s say you get a book published, it has a good run and is popular, but is now only making you a very small trickle of income. The book goes out of print, and ebook sales are way down. If you own the rights to the work, and someone…