Googlexandria: Robert Darton wrote a provocative review of what has been happening with Google’s digitalization project and the effects it will have on libraries and literary and scholarly culture. Darton does a good job at connecting all the strings in the political economy of academic publishing:

…the average price of a chemistry journal is $3,490; and the ripple effects have damaged intellectual life throughout the world of learning. Owing to the skyrocketing cost of serials, libraries that used to spend 50 percent of their acquisitions budget on monographs now spend 25 percent or less. University presses, which depend on sales to libraries, cannot cover their costs by publishing monographs. And young scholars who depend on publishing to advance their careers are now in danger of perishing.

Skipping a few steps, Darton goes on to explain the unfolding consequences of a class-action against Google Books Project Gutenberg, and the resultant ITunes-esque system of digital book access Darton foresees. Is Google the ambivalent savior of the digital divide? Or the benevolent monopoly? Only the future will tell.

Ahh, it is Anthropology after all…Ok, so this came out a few weeks ago. But I normally listen to NPR podcasts while I cook dinner, and I have gotten behind while writing and eating take out. I found this January 9 broadcast of an interview with Clay Shirky interesting not just because both Shirky and the interviewer said several times that there need to be more anthropological studies of online social life (oh, what funding proposal gold!). It also is one of the first talk radio discussions of new media technologies that I can recall that emphasizes the social effects on technology and not the other way around.

Calling for New Voices: Jovan at Culture Matters posted a call for non-English language contributions to Anthropology Quarterly. In order to recommend an article be translated and included in “Polyglot Perspectives,” send the editors a 1-2 page proposal of why the article should reach an international (or, em, international English-speaking) audience.

Something to Sing About: Lorenz at antropologi.info reported on Pakistani anthropologist and activist Samar Minallah’s work documenting the destruction of schools for girls and her creation of one of the first Pashtun lullabies dedicated to girls.

Between the Lines One Finds Hope: Ok, let’s not spend too much mental labor on the evaluating rhetoric of Obama’s first few days in office. But Jim Johnson at (Notes on) Politics, Theory and Photography wrote a nice evaluation of Obama’s inaugural address and narrates his reaction to it in real time.