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I knew earlier this week that I’d be blogging today so, when I work up, my mind was in composition mode. I was so busy thinking about what I would write that the empty plastic water bottle went into the sink rather than the trash and a fork went into the oatmeal. NPR did straighten out my attention for a while when they discussed new information that is being found regarding Emmett Till’s murder. In the grand scheme of things, his brutal murder didn’t occur that long ago. It was during our modern times when information could be easily recorded and distributed. Records from the trial disappeared ages ago and those who witnessed the courtroom scenes are still being sought after to find out what happened in that room. I remember my time down there in the Delta, visiting those historic sites and meeting people who were there then. I’d love to take students down there. One real difference in being an academic library rather than a school librarian is a diminished access to students.

I have to wonder that if things from that time could disappear so easily, now secure is our information today when we’re encouraged to place our images, music and writings in cloud space that it owned by someone else. We argue debate whether to plan new purchases for print books or ebooks as if personal comfort is the key factor. Who owns those ebooks and journal articles (even after we think we’ve purchased them) and how accessible ebooks will be as platforms change over time are things we really need to question. Granted, ebooks do provide greater accessibility to information for those with reading difficulties.

GoogleReader is gone. Other RSS aggregators disappeared as folk turned to GoogleReader and now, it’s disappearing. Soon, iGoogle, a Google homepage that also serves as an aggregator will be gone, too. iGoogle is very similar to MyYahoo, which still functions. I’ve decided to use Feedly to gather my RSS feeds and I’m finding it a bit clunky and it seems I’ve lost some of my favorite blogs. I need to spend some time finding them again, tweaking the site and creating a display that makes sense to me. At the same time, I’m still wondering about WordPress and blogging. Is there future limited? Well, in this day and age, it certainly is, but just how limited and, what next?

Maybe I’d feel better about the lifespan of WordPress if they sold out to Facebook or Amazon. By the way, today is the last day to get a free LibraryThing account if you’re disappointed in the GoodReads takeover. My LibraryThing account is so old that I don’t remember either the username or password! Something else to add to the ‘to do’ list!

The space between ebooks, Google and Amazon has me wondering about the data, both my personal data and that which becomes available to me,  these giants access. As Marc Aronson states  “There are obviously privacy concerns here, concerns about how we are seeing reading (though reading has been collective at other times in its history, indeed one debate among historians of reading is exactly when reading shifted from being primarily oral to primarily silent), and concerns about overvaluing the now.”

Yet and still, basic Internet access remains a critical issue. To the rescue is Connect2Create, a campaign to get major Internet companies to provide discount service, equipment and training to low income families in need. Mindshift writes “The program offers low-cost devices and Internet service, as well as access to digital literacy training programs around the country, hoping to give access to the estimated 100 million Americans who have no broadband connection at home and another 62 million who don’t use the Internet at all.”

Tarie recently share information on the Bangkok Book Awards: ” Each shortlist includes at least one book by a Thai author and one book by an international author, books set in different parts of Thailand, and at least one book in translation from Thai. You can check out the picture book shortlist here.“

From Debbie Reese  “Minnesota Public Radio has a story up today that showcases how Heid Erdrich is using video format for her poetry. The video they have up is STUNNING!”

I visit Anali’s First Amendment for things like this single serving cheesecake (I gain weight just from her yummy photos!) but I end up finding this opportunity to teach writing in Ghana. I would so love to do that, even more than the cheesecake!

I’ll be posting April’s new releases by authors of color this week! One book I’ve previously missed is Justin Scott Parr’s Sage Carrington, 8^th Grade Science Slueth. Such a cute book!

I hear we’re expecting a snow and rain mix tomorrow. I really hope this slow to warm spring means fewer and milder spring storms.

I hope you enjoy your week ahead!

Yesterday, Mark V. Tushnet author of Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns, introduced us to the gun-rights argument. Today Tushnet takes a closer look at the gun-control position. Be sure to check back tomorrow for part three in this series.

Gun-control proponents support their position with several arguments. First, the text: The Second Amendment does refer to the militia, and the gun-rights position deprives the Amendment’s preamble of any operative significance, which is unusual in constitutional interpretation. But there’s more to the textual argument. The Constitution refers to the Militia in two additional places. It gives Congress the right to laws providing for the calling forth of the Militia, and it reserves to states the right to appoint the officers of the Militia. These references clearly deal with the state-organized Militia, and we ought to interpret the Second Amendment to use the term in the same way. The Second Amendment would then prohibit Congress from disarming the state-organized militia – and would thereby preserve the ability of those militias to resist an oppressive national government. (more…)

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Michael J. Klarman, won the Bancroft Prize in 2005 for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, is an abridged, paperback edition of his original masterpiece, which focuses around one major case, Brown v. Board of Education. In the original essay below Klarman, who is the James Monroe Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, explores political backlash.

While we ordinarily think of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) as contributing to the creation of the modern civil rights movement, Brown’s more immediate effect was to crystallize the resistance of southern whites to progressive racial change, radicalize southern politics, and create a climate ripe for violence. Indeed, prominent Court decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution have often produced political backlashes that undermine the causes that the rulings seem to promote. (more…)

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Exciting news at OUP! James McPherson has won the The Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The award recognizes and honors the lifetime contributions of a living author for a body of work dedicated to enriching the understanding of American military history including military affairs.

Echoing all of our feelings Niko Pfund, Vice President and Publisher, Oxford University Press said, “Oxford University Press warmly congratulates Jim McPherson on his receipt of the first Pritzker Military Library Lifetime Achievement in Military Literature Award. Few scholars more consistently combine first-rate scholarship with accessible historical writing, and few authors are more of a pleasure to publish. We are delighted that so richly deserving a writer and thinker has been chosen to inaugurate this prestigious award.”

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