The Journal of Electronic Publishing is back online after a three-year hiatus. The new edition of the peer-reviewed online journal focuses on the impact of search engines on the publishing world. "Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, AOLsearch, and all other search engines are our own personal idiot savants, giving us data without intelligence, facts and not knowledge," writes the journal’s editor, Judith Axler Turner, a former writer and editor at The Chronicle. "That tells me that our next big challenge is to harness the power of the search engines to support real communication and meaningful sharing."
The journal is produced by the Scholarly Publishing Office of the library at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
4 Responses to What Search Engines Mean for Publishers
dank48 - January 11, 2012 at 11:20 am
How about “quiz”? According to an article in Verbatim long ago, the word was introduced into the language when a couple of the boys were having a few, and someone bet someone else he could introduce a word into the language without bothering to invent a meaning for it. The bet was taken, and the ambitious albeit, one suspects, none-too-sober introducer went about London with a piece of chalk, scrawling “quiz” on walls, tables, and so forth. Since restrooms provide privacy, restroom walls got a lot of attention.
In a matter of weeks, we are told, everyone was wondering what the hell “quiz” might mean, and this let to the word’s meaning.
It’s probably just folk etymology, but it makes a good story, and–to borrow from R. A. Lafferty’s “Education among the Camiroi”–even if it’s not true, I’ll continue to believe it until something better comes along.
Laura Payne - January 11, 2012 at 11:39 am
I love that both of these lists are from Universities in Michigan, one of which I attended. Thank you for sharing.
greensubmarine - January 11, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Reminds me of Eddie Izzard’s take on the overuse of the word “awesome”:
“I saw an advert for ‘awesome hot dogs, only $2.99.’ [...] America needs the old version of awesome, because you’re the only ones going into space. You’ve got a bit of cash and you go up there, and you need ‘awesome’ because you’re going to be going to the next sun to us. And your President’s going to be going ‘Can you tell me, astronaut, can you tell me what it’s like?’ ‘It’s awesome, sir.’ ‘What, like a hot dog?’ ‘Like a hundred billion hot dogs, sir.’”
beedhamm - January 12, 2012 at 12:23 pm
I’ve been hoping that the sneering “Guess what?” right before an assertion would disappear.