Her list: Ann Brashares’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern, and two Sonia Sones titles, One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies and What My Mother Doesn’t Know.

Good thing she has never read any vampire YA. Her head might explode.

–Jane, *boom*

Right.

This is a great plan guys. Really. I assure you that the people that switched over to ebooks are not going to plunk down $30 for a huge book when a couple months (or some Internet searching) will get them the same book as an ebook for $10 (or free). I also assure you that a large number of the people who used to buy hardbacks now have ereaders.

I am sorry that your publishing structure is threatened by technology. Please learn to move on and adjust your company strategy or you will go drown in your own bad decisions. Pulled under by that 10 pound tome no one really wants to buy anymore.

The Smart Bitches, as always, have the best response.

For the record, I still buy some hardbacks, but not to read and only for authors I really love. I collect them for my shelf and there are very few I am willing to do that for anymore.

–Jane, no longer shackled to paper

Chachbag

–Jane, and the Internet does not forget

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed,” West said. “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph.

The book supposedly contains gems of advice and even blank pages in the 52 page tome.

But what really, really makes me laugh the most… He had to have a co-author. Seriously.

A co-author to write tidbits this:

“I feel like to misuse, overuse or abuse someone is negative. To use is necessary and if you can’t be used, then you are useless.”

–Jane, who in the what now?

It is likely that the administrators of Ryerson University do not know what was actually going on within the facebook group and do not understand how the students were using the technology. This is a classic example of cutting of your arm because you have a hangnail on your finger.

–Jane, doubts many of the “adults” in this situation have spent time in facebook

The Smart Bitches, they are smart you know, have uncovered a huge plagiarism scandal by bestselling romance author Cassie Edwards. If you go to their website, you can view the serious of posts, all collated at the top of th home page, or use the handy PDF Cassie has created.

What amazes me about the entire thing is the backlash they are receiving, as if plagiarism is not a big deal. People are telling the Bitches they are “mean” for exposing Cassie Edwards. Plagiarism is stealing. Taking someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing. Wikipedia has a very nice article on plagiarism.

As an educator, I spend a lot of time explaining plagiarism to students because they have often never been taught the fine line of stealing when creating academic work. That lack of knowledge has bled into all aspects of our life. As information creators, we are responsible for the words we say are our own. In an age when it is very easy to check your words against the largest database in the world, the Internet, people should never be surprised when they get caught.

I have some advice for Ms. Edwards and Signet: just admit you screwed up and make amends. Legal spin and rhetoric are not going to release you from looking like idiots, but you can avoid looking like douche bags and assholes. If you fess up and are honest, you may at least gain some respect back for being adults about your mistakes. If you choose not to, well, you may find you loose all credibility and many of your customers.

–Jane, plagiarism is no joke

As an explanation, and example, of oppression by the ruling classes, here is a woman, Dennis, and King Arthur, of the Britons:

WOMAN: Order, eh — who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away! Did you here that, did you here that, eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn’t you?

–Jane, ALA is the tart that gave Michael Gorman a sword

On Being a Hypocrite

Two things recently popped up that make my want to wash my hands of the constant hand wringing and “I am better then the common man” librarianship that seems to be the common backlash against innovation and free thought. One involves me personally.

I believe Michael Gorman was sad that we were not talking about him anymore and thus wrote the most ridiculous thing he could imagine. Jason Griffey firmly slams many of Gorman’s arguments. I would only add two things.

There is this sentence:

The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print.

It made me wonder if Mr. Gorman ever studied coterie writing and if he found that too to be lacking. I wonder if all of the minority scholars, many of them unable to publish for years because of their gender or race, are less valuable because they were not readily accepted into the Authority of Print.

Secondly, Mr. Gorman managed to insult my belief structure as well as lambaste a form of communication which he himself used to publish this ridiculous tripe. Good Job.

On Taking Things Out of Context to Make a Scholarly Point and Thus Making Yourself Look Less Than Scholarly

This bothers me more because I was used as an example of why blogs are bad at the most recent NASIG conference. In a presentation at NASIG, the speaker was bashing blogs because of our trivial writing and cited, of all things, this post I wrote after CiL.

Updated: Here is the link to the presentation summary from NASIG. And another. (thanks to kgs and Kathryn).

I find it amusing that the speaker would use me as an example at all. There are more trivial blogs out there. My blog is semi-professional to begin with and I never claim to have any authority except over myself. But for a scholar, to use that post, instead of this one, or this, or this, in a presentation at a national conference to say that all librarian bloggers are trivial is harmful and wrong. A lie one might say.

Taking things out of context and making them more important than they truly are does nothing to prove your point. That CiL post was trivial. I wrote it that way and I do not claim to have any authority because of it. What it does prove is that you are afraid.

You are afraid that I have been given a voice. You are afraid that people actually read what I have to say. You are afraid because I am young and do not buy into your pedagogy of librarianship. You are afraid that I am stealing some power you believe you hold. You are afraid of change and the turning of the seasons. You are made of fear and you think that your fear can hurt me.

I am not afraid. You can not take away my ability to write what I choose and give it voice in a place where people can read it and respond. Your fear is what gives me authority.

–Jane, “I will not be moved.”

I am not sure what I can even say about this without sputtering in disbelief. I do admire this group’s dedication even if I think they are hilariously crazy. Please do not throw rotten vegetables at all Christians. Some of us are quite reasonable. I promise.
Of course, the Smart Bitches have used this opportunity to create a cover snark using one of the dioramas, because what is funnier then Adam and Eve doing it in some lily pads?

–Jane, nothing

…will punish the legitimate, transparent companies, which sell essays, but which warn students that they must not be used dishonestly.

Not used dishonestly? What does Mr. Wilson think that students are doing with his essays if not using them to cheat? Whatever planet of fantasy he lives on, I think I would like to join him.

–Jane, has bags packed