Are there days at your academic library when it appears that a war is going to erupt between the students who just want solitude and quiet and those who want to do…well, whatever they feel like doing? And what they feel like doing just might be socializing (probably loudly), playing cards, using computers to watch [...]

I’ve become a little cynical about politics of late, but the recent Senate vote for an appropriations bill that includes mandatory deposit of publications resulting from NIH-funded research has cheered me up.
As I mentioned earlier, Senator James Inhofe (who famously called global warming a “hoax” and is currently celebrating the failure of the Dream [...]

I have my browser home page set to del.icio.us, and yesterday top on the hot list was an article from SFGate claiming that “the next generation of kids might be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history.” It went on to list the many shocking things that students don’t know and claimed:
We are, [...]

I believe there are two kinds of worry: the worry that you’re failing to live up to the world’s expectations and the worry that you’re failing to live up to your own. The first is the worry that you got an “F”; the second is the worry that you haven’t gotten a 100. When I [...]

“I have great news for both of us! You care about increasing student retention and I care about getting more funding and staff for the library. Now you can make both of us happy.”
“And how do I do that?” asks the Provost.
“Well” says the library director, “I just read a new research study that confirms [...]