Google, in cooperation with several dozen research libraries worldwide, is digitizing books at the rate of 3,000 a day. The noncommercial Open Content Alliance is scanning at a more modest pace but gaining ground, especially among institutions who chafe at some of the restrictions imposed by Google and its competitors. LibraryThing, an online book…

People connect on Facebook by asking to "friend" one another. A typical user lists at least 100 such connections, while newbies are informed, "You don't have any friends yet." A humbling statement. It might make one want to find some. But friending students can be even dicier than befriending them. In the real world, casual professors may ask…

In the 1990s, the giant mining company now known as BHP Billiton drew worldwide condemnation for the environmental damage caused by its copper and gold mine in Papua, New Guinea. Its mining practices destroyed the way of life of thousands of farming and fishing families who lived along and subsisted on the rivers polluted by the mine, and it was…

"Creative nonfiction" is gaining ground as the descriptor for what has also been called "the fourth genre." The first word gives some people fits. They get all caught up in "creative" and assume it only means "invented." Instead of using "creative" as the qualifier, some call the genre "literary" or "narrative" nonfiction. Those are both…

A transformation is occurring that will have a major impact on how academic science is done and how scientists are trained. That transformation--driven by declining federal funds, as well as by the rising cost of technology and the need for costly, labor-intensive interdisciplinary approaches--is from small science to big science. It is…

The underlying goal of the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition, known as iGEM, is to figure out whether biological organisms and devices can be built from a collection of standard, off-the-shelf parts, just as someone might build a kit plane or car. For the undergraduates, it's an opportunity to construct whatever creature…

This article reports that "The Norton Anthology of English Literature" has new competition in a genre with an uncertain future. The first edition of the Norton appeared in 1962. Since then, the mighty tome has gone through eight editions and introduced generations of undergraduates to the joys (or sorrows) of Chaucer, Milton, and Keats. For many,…

At the University of Chicago, the third Monday in November began with an hour of violence. Around 12:30 a.m., an assailant fired a shot at a staff member who was walking on the campus. At 1:15 a group of men robbed two female students on a nearby street. Just before 1:30, Amadou Cisse, a doctoral student, was shot and killed while walking to his…

On a mid-June day this year, 70 college and university presidents gathered in Washington and formed a conference of executive Isaiahs, preaching the message that the threat of global warming required American higher education to fundamentally change the way it did business. The presidents signed a pledge to make their campuses "climate neutral" as…

How colleges should report crimes on and near their campuses is a high-stakes question that, for the first time, a federal appellate court has tried to answer. Colleges are required to issue "timely warnings" under the federal campus-crime law known as the Clery Act, but how fast those warnings should come and what kind of information they should…

College has traditionally been a transition to adulthood, with campus life and academic experiences providing students with knowledge, tools, and challenges that create a sturdy foundation on which students build their personal and professional lives. According to the author, that foundation is eroding because parents are the ones now wielding the…

In this article, the author asserts that technology is not the answer to digital piracy at colleges and universities. Citing the three most common explanations given for copyright infringement--that students cannot always get what they want, cannot always use what they can get, or think the price of what they can get is unfair--he asserts that the…

On Election Day in 2006, some students at the University of Texas at Austin were prodded by startlingly personal calls from Democratic Party supporters. As political campaigns look to corral young voters, those calls could be a harbinger of things to come in 2008: campaigns going after students through contact information that public colleges are…

While both the author and Norman Finkelstein were reviled by American Zionists for their opinions regarding Israel's policies in the occupied Palestinian territories when they came up for tenure, the author ultimately gained tenure at an Israeli university, while Finkelstein was denied tenure at an American one. Drawing on this experience, the…

Citing her own difficulties in gaining access to digital repositories that would have made her research on "New Women" much less time-consuming, the author argues here that the digital divide between the ivory-tower haves and have-nots will be a defining one for the current generation of scholars. The inequity in ease of access, she asserts,…