Following hot on the heels of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which joined Google’s amibitious library-digitization effort last month, the University of Virginia has signed on to the project.
Google will scan selections from Virginia’s collection of books on American history, literature, and humanities, according to campus officials. “With Google, we will be able to offer access to many more texts,” said Karin Wittenborg, the university librarian, in a statement. “For example, 18th- and 19th-century works that are rarely found can be discovered by new audiences.”
Virginia is the ninth institution to participate in Google’s digitization campaign. The Complutense University of Madrid, Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Oxford, the University of California system, and the New York Public Library have also joined the project. —Brock Read
10 Responses to U. of Virginia Joins Google’s Book-Scanning Project
johnbagnall - March 5, 2012 at 10:19 am
U r SOOOOOO Right!!!
(Excellent advice, all the more valuable for being so readily overlooked in the frustration of not finding the answer at one’s first attempt. Thank you.)
crunchycon - March 5, 2012 at 10:52 am
Ask someone who has studied English grammar and taught it (i.e., TESOL, TESL, etc. instructors). Anyone who has taken graduate-level courses on how to teach English Grammar and has taught English grammar repeatedly can tell you whether there actually is a rule or if it just “is that way” in English. English PhDs often feel they know, but not having studied grammar in its infinite details, they may not.
rgvonhorn - March 5, 2012 at 11:13 am
I spent many years as a reference librarian and much of this is concerned with how it is that we find work – people don’t know how to ask questions.
gbkelly - March 5, 2012 at 11:59 am
Buy a freshman English grammar, which you didn’t use because your college was too classy. Get it at yard sale for 25 cents, from a thrift store for a buck, or free from a dumpster. Latest ed.? Heck, they haven’t changed in 50 years except for more color, and every publisher’s says the same things as all the other publishers’.
3rdtyrant - March 5, 2012 at 12:38 pm
The best way to find a rule you don’t know? Learn about language practice in Old Frisian and Anglo-Saxon, trace those developments through the Norman Conquest, the Great Vowel Shift, and Middle English into Early Modern English, leading eventually Modern English–then you’ll have it down. It’s easy.
dank48 - March 5, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Hear, hear. The hard part isn’t getting the answer; the hard part is correctly framing the question. The suggestion to check the dictionary is a good one, of course; it’s amazing how many people either don’t bother to do so, or perhaps they don’t think of it in the first place. Checking MWCD10 for information about hopefully, I learned about “disjuncts,” a class of adverbs that let the writer comment directly to the reader; others include luckily, fortunately, clearly, frankly, interestingly, . . .
bookwomanca - March 5, 2012 at 3:26 pm
The textbook for the grammar class at our campus is over $100 — so the advice to search for a used one is very sound.
wilkenslibrary - March 5, 2012 at 8:52 pm
My favorite reference grammar is English Simplified, an inexpensive 64-page paperback ( in my 2004 Tenth edition) by Blanche Ellsworth and John A. Higgins. Look up agreement (section 23) and you will find the answer to the proper agreement for “It’s you who cause(s) trouble” at section 23L, relative pronouns: “Use a singular verb if the antecedent of who, which, or that is singular; use a plural verb if the antecedent is plural.” So is it one “you” or more than one ‘you” causing the trouble?
Commas, on the other hand, are in section 30. In 30B, you will learn that an introductory adverb clause has a comma at the end (“Because the ozone layer was thinning, …”), but that when the clause comes after the independent clause, you do not need a comma. However, for further elucidation about the use of “because,” Ellsworth and Higgins refer us to 30F, page 26. To learn the fine points, you’re going to have to find a copy of English Simplified. (I am not related to either Ellsworth or Higgins, I have never met either of them, and I receive no kickbacks for referring you to their book, which I am not even sure is still in print.)
Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
wordhelper - March 5, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Regarding that question about “It’s you who cause(s) trouble”–or for that matter, any sentence for which you are not sure of the grammar–don’t forget the option of recasting the sentence.
jffoster - March 5, 2012 at 11:36 pm
Your English Simplified (?prescriptivist?) traditional grammar is not helpful, assuming your quote accurate, which I’m sure it is.
The form causes is 3rd person whereas you whether singular or plural is 2nd person. That this is a matter of person rather than just number agreement can be seen if we use 1st person:
1. It is me (or I if you insist) who am / is causing trouble.
So which is it? am for 1st person or is for third?
I think you’ll find that native speakers of English differ on these cleft sentence forms. But I betcha more people would use is than am in the above. The “proper” agreement is what English speakers use, and if they differ, then there are two “proper” forms.