Saturday, January 27, 2007

Links &c.

- One of BibliOdyssey's posts this week was made of up some gorgeous insect illustrations from an album created c. 1660-80 by English artist Alexander Marshal (162?-1682), better known in his own time for his watercolors of flowers and fruits.

- At Upward Departure, Travis has written up a two-part post (one, two) on the thefts made by Sandy Berger from the National Archives. The first discusses the actual thefts, while the second considers the sentences as compared with several others handed down in recent years.

- Ed's got some great new posts over at The Bibliothecary, including a list of some of his upcoming reviews, and some comments on the short film "Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man," about the fellow who now runs Shakespeare & Company in Paris. Looks like quite a character, I'll have to watch the movie.

- AHA Today notes the banning of Wikipedia as a citable source by the Middlebury College history Department. Seems about right to me; I agree with both the department chair ("Even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation") and a Wikipedia spokesperson ("Wikipedia is the ideal place to start your research and get a global picture of a topic, however, it is not an authoritative source. In fact, we recommend that students check the facts they find in Wikipedia against other sources"). I tend to use Wikipedia extremely sparingly, but on occasion it can be reasonably useful. Smart move by Middlebury, I say (although I do like the commenter who asks why citing Wikipedia was ever okay...).