World Digital Library

wdl2Anoth­er big dig­i­tal archive went live this week. Backed by the Unit­ed Nations, the World Dig­i­tal Library wants to cen­tral­ize cul­tur­al trea­sures from around the world. Man­u­scripts, maps, rare books, musi­cal scores, record­ings, films, prints, pho­tographs, and archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings — they will all be absorbed into this grow­ing online col­lec­tion, and users will be able to nav­i­gate through these mate­ri­als in sev­en dif­fer­ent lan­guages (Ara­bic, Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Por­tuguese, Span­ish and Russ­ian). The col­lec­tion (to which Google con­tributed $3 mil­lion in 2005) now hosts about 1,250 arti­facts, a frac­tion of what it will even­tu­al­ly include. The ini­tial col­lec­tion fea­tures some gems. Take for exam­ple the Tale of the Gen­ji, a Japan­ese text from the ear­ly 11th cen­tu­ry that’s often con­sid­ered “the first great nov­el in world lit­er­a­ture.” You can also take a close look at some Ora­cle Bones from Chi­na cir­ca 1200 BC. Or how about these icon­ic pho­tos from The Great Depres­sion or these shots of the great Jack­ie Robin­son. To learn more about this new dig­i­tal archive, read this piece in The Wash­ing­ton Post.

Web 2.0 to Book Deal in 3 Minutes

After Seth Har­wood got his MFA at the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop, he began pub­lish­ing in tra­di­tion­al mag­a­zines and jour­nals, as most young writ­ers do. But those pub­li­ca­tions were slow to launch his career. Things changed, how­ev­er, once he start­ed pub­lish­ing online. And they real­ly changed when he released his crime nov­el Jack Wakes Up as a free pod­cast (via iTunesRSS Feed, & MP3) and dis­trib­uted it through social net­works. Web 2.0 broad­ened the reach of his work, attract­ed fans world­wide, and ulti­mate­ly land­ed Har­wood a nice book deal with Ran­dom House. (RH will be pub­lish­ing Jack Wakes Up in print ear­ly next month). In the short video above, Har­wood gives you a quick look inside the mak­ing of his pod­cast, and how it brings expo­sure to his work. If you’re an up-and-com­ing writer, there’s cer­tain­ly some­thing here to think about. You can find out more about Seth’s work at SethHarwood.com.

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Mark Twain’s New Book

Mark Twain died near­ly a cen­tu­ry ago but that has­n’t slowed him down. Twain has a new book com­ing out today. It’s called “Who is Mark Twain,” and it brings togeth­er 24 pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished sto­ries, one of which you can read over at The Wall Street Jour­nal. The piece is enti­tled “Frank Fuller and My First New York Lec­ture.” Here you go. Served up fresh.

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J.G.Ballard on Sensation

J.G. Bal­lard, the author of Crash and Empire died at 78 this week­end. Here we have a short inter­view from 1986 where he talks about how vio­lent sen­sa­tions now lubri­cate our mod­ern world. It’s this line of think­ing that finds its way into Crash, a con­tro­ver­sial book that David Cro­nen­berg brought to the big screen in 1996.

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Good Novels For Hard Times

Not long ago, I flagged a piece by Leon Wieselti­er called “The Tol­stoy Bailout,” and it makes a great case for why great books mat­ter, espe­cial­ly in these hard times. As he put it, “In tough times, of all times, the worth of the human­i­ties needs no jus­ti­fy­ing. The rea­son is that it will take many kinds of sus­te­nance to help peo­ple through these trou­bles. Many peo­ple will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on out­er ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of mean­ings…. We are in need of fis­cal pol­i­cy and spir­i­tu­al pol­i­cy. And spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, lit­er­a­ture is a bailout, and so is art, and phi­los­o­phy, and his­to­ry, and the rest.  … Regres­sion analy­sis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of con­sumer behav­ior can teach. These are the hours when the old Pen­guin paper­backs must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.”

With that in mind, I present you with a handy list, “Good Nov­els for Hard Times,”  just pub­lished by the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle.

You may also want to vis­it our list of Life Chang­ing Books, as deter­mined by our read­ers.

World’s Most Interesting Bookstores

intriguingbooksstoreMirage­book­mark has gath­ered some notable pho­tos from uncon­ven­tion­al book­stores around the globe.

The col­lec­tion takes you from Hol­land to Paris, Helsin­ki, and Por­to (Por­tu­gal), then to San Fran­cis­co, Buenos Aires, Cal­cut­ta and beyond.

Worth pay­ing a vis­it.

Twitter in the University Classroom

From The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion’s “Wired Cam­pus” Blog:

“Cole W. Cam­plese, direc­tor of edu­ca­tion-tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices at Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty at Uni­ver­si­ty Park, prefers to teach in class­rooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and anoth­er to project a Twit­ter stream of notes from stu­dents. He knows he is invit­ing dis­trac­tion — after all, he’s essen­tial­ly ask­ing stu­dents to pass notes dur­ing class. But he argues that the addi­tion­al lay­er of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will make for rich­er class dis­cus­sions…

Once stu­dents warmed to the idea that their pro­fes­sors actu­al­ly want­ed them to chat dur­ing class, stu­dents begin float­ing ideas or post­ing links to relat­ed mate­ri­als, the pro­fes­sor says. In some cas­es, a shy stu­dent would type an obser­va­tion or ques­tion on Twit­ter, and oth­ers in the class would respond with notes encour­ag­ing the stu­dent to raise the top­ic out loud. Oth­er times, one of the pro­fes­sors would see a link post­ed by a stu­dent and stop class to dis­cuss it.

Get the full sto­ry here, and feel free to tell us about oth­er edu­ca­tion­al uses of Twit­ter. Just add them to the com­ments below. Last­ly, you can find us on Twit­ter here.

New Mega Author Web Site Now Online

Not­ed by the LA Times:

With­out per­mis­sion or advance notice, Filed­ByAu­thor has cat­a­loged the infor­ma­tion of about 1.8 mil­lion authors into indi­vid­ual pages. There are biogra­phies, pho­tos, links to pur­chase books from online retail­ers and links to share the author’s Filed­By page through a dizzy­ing list of social net­work­ing sites. And every­one is there, from the novice self-pub­lished author to Stephe­nie Mey­er.

The not so favor­able LA Times piece con­tin­ues here. Get the Filed­ByAu­thor web site here.

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