8 Responses to Library.nu shutdown

1. Chathan says:

   March 7, 2012 at 2:18 am

   yes I read this piece the other day. I especially liked his tying in of Occupy themes to the circumstances of the library.nu demographic.

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2. Chathan says:

   March 7, 2012 at 2:21 am

   Not to mention the general critique of the blood-sucking publishing industry that continually puts important academic titles (like, say, Mark Neocleous’s Administering Civil Society) out of reach of the average minimum wage-earning (if lucky) college student. Probably one of the first pieces in the mainstream media that I’ve seen to acknowledge the problem. Perhaps I’m mistaken.

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   • Lukáš Makovický (@SchizoPolis22) says:

     March 7, 2012 at 6:37 am

     Holistically, not sure if the board of directors of Palgrave or Harvard University Press really have much of a clue about which of the books they publish per year might do an extra dose of enlightenment if put out in mass paperback. Would say it relates to the broader economy of knowledge and the (for a lack of better word) calculative / market ‘nihilism’ that has been penetrating the distribution of academic knowledge within the ‘society’. Just consider that the place with highest placement of PhDs in the US is bloody Rochester (orthodox rational choice dump). Maybe, in a Bataillean sense, we might need a more ‘restricted’ economy of knowledge with more relative ‘waste’ / ‘sacrifice’, instead of, as the commentary argues, an acknowledgement that the supply and demand are far apart.

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3. Lynne says:

   March 7, 2012 at 8:02 pm

   The Al-Jaz piece was based on a series of well-known inaccuracies about the library.nu situation and what was/wasn’t done by publishers. But the piece’s writer refused to post my comment pointing out the facts. So while it was an interesting piece, it was quite fictional.

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   • stuartelden says:

     March 7, 2012 at 8:50 pm

     Perhaps you would be willing to share the criticism?

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4. David says:

   March 10, 2012 at 6:01 pm

   come to the http://en.bookfi.org/ and upload your ebooks.

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5. bitter lemon says:

   March 12, 2012 at 9:23 pm

   How regressive is it for geographers to not have our own pirate sharing server? Yes, of course this sounds ridiculous…haw..haw..silence…then comes.. but we have jobs, wife, kids, cars (and of course ideals next to the graduation robe in the basement). But doesn’t anyone remember Antipode? Was that “proper” when it came out? Stuart, I think the first time I read your work was off Gigapedia. I might never have learnt that as a discipline geography was more than Columbus and Vietnam wars, had it not been for the wonderful collection of books on gigapedia. Every time I followed the breadcrumb trail from one bibliography to another, gigapedia was always there to keep feeding my curiosity.

   And now, nothing.

   The discussions on our listserv are all empty noises: You can simply write to the authors to request an article (books too?). Right, and find the free Encyclopedia Britannica from 1914 when you want to look something up. When will you old geographers realise that the picket lines are not on campus anymore, but right here, on the interweb.

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6. stuartelden says:

   March 14, 2012 at 12:54 pm

   I think that most stuff is available still in some form, but yes, in the first instance ask the author. I don’t have digital copies of all my books, but I do of most of the articles and some chapters, and I’m always willing to share when I can. I have also been uploading material to this site fairly frequently – like most academics I want to be read, and academic publishing is very definitely not a way to make loads of money. I’ve been doing what I can, within constraints, to open up material in the journal I edit. So I’m not sure I’m really the appropriate target – and by the way, what do you mean by old?!

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