Library of Congress blogging…

…while I’m waiting for my books to come up (and so I can find some of these links when I return home):

* My nightmare.

* If you have to allow guns on campus, this is the way to do it (and I’m not just kissing up).

* Note to Historiann: Don’t you think this might have something to do with the fact that the Colorado budget situation is only marginally better than California’s?

* I remain in the “All Reading is Good Reading” camp, but this still doesn’t strike me as good news.

* Speaking of nonfiction reading, I finished this on the plane yesterday, and couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Ford Massacre outside River Rouge (1932).

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

My wife tells me that she doesn’t like Jamie Oliver, but I bet I could get her to DVR this show if she watches this:

It’s probably because he’s not writing about food.

James McWilliams has written his first post at Freakonomics that hasn’t left me looking disgusted while slapping my forehead. It’s about research databases, and here’s his core point:

Given the range of documents that came up, it’s safe to say that—had this powerhouse of a search engine not done the digging for me—it would have taken decades for me to find these obscure references to weeds, most of which are buried in documents living in a vault under some research library in Boston or Philadelphia (I live in Texas).

This experience is becoming increasingly common for those of us who work in the humanities and social sciences. And while I think there are many downsides to relying too heavily, or exclusively, on this form of research, there’s no doubt that it allows the engaged scholar to pursue questions in a much more streamlined (and inexpensive) manner. Which brings me to my question—one that I ask with some trepidation in light of the recent shootings at a University of Alabama faculty meeting: Should publishing requirements for tenure go up for scholars in the humanities and social sciences?

Here’s the core of my response from the comments (which isn’t all that different than what I wrote here):

I don’t think it’s tenure requirements that should go up; it’s publishing standards. Knowing what you can get on the databases or just Google Books, I will never again be impressed solely by someone’s research in newspapers or any other old published sources. What will really matter now (and really should have mattered even before all these technological changes) is how well people connect all their facts to the overall point of their studies.

Hopefully, in this new era, publishers and peer reviewers will pay more attention to how well historians write, rather than just how much information they can accumulate. Indeed, I would argue that the hardest (as opposed to most time-consuming) task of the best historians has always been knowing which evidence to include rather than finding that evidence in the first place.

After all, what’s the last monograph you read that you wished was fifty pages longer?

Cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It turns out that Florida Atlantic is not the only school in that state that’s decided to downsize tenured professors through budget cuts. The situation at Florida State (via Washington Monthly‘s College Guide) is even worse:

Florida State University lured Mike Wetz away from the University of North Carolina with the offer of an assistant professor position in FSU’s highly regarded Department of Oceanography.

Wetz’s first day at FSU was Dec. 23, 2008. Less than six months later, in June 2009, Wetz received a layoff notice.

Wetz had done nothing wrong, by all accounts. He was one of five faculty members in his 15-person department whose positions were being eliminated as FSU decided to merge oceanography, geological sciences and meteorology in the wake of massive reductions in state revenue.

Two of his colleagues being terminated are tenured, which traditionally means their positions are secure.

Geological sciences fared even worse, losing six of 13 positions including four tenured faculty. No positions were eliminated in meteorology.

Since, as Washington Monthly explains, tenure protects people not the positions they hold, Florida State can do this. Whether they should is another matter:

FSU invested considerable resources in fall 2008 when it hired Wetz, Brian Arbic and Amy Baco-Taylor in oceanography and Davis Farris in geological sciences. Approximately $1 million in “start-up” fees were earmarked for the four new faculty members, who have all received layoff notices.

“Universities that hire a bunch of young people and then lay them off quickly afterwards, obviously something went wrong there,” said Arbic, who has accepted a position at the University of Michigan. “How many other universities around the country are taking the drastic step of laying off faculty? I think you’ll find it’s not a very long list.”

Who in their right mind would now take a tenure-track position at Florida State if they have any other choices, knowing what the administration there thinks about job security?

In celebration of my trip to the Library of Congress on Thursday…

…The Huffington Post presents the most amazing libraries in the world.

Glenn Beck throws Theodore Roosevelt under the bus.

I’ve generally found Glenn Beck’s childish, ill-informed diatribes against Progressivism really interesting in a “how many factual errors can you make in one rant” kind of way. This one is no exception:

He scribbled “progressivism” on the board and said it afflicts Republicans as well as Democrats….

In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a “guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.” He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that “we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

I look forward with bated breath to reading Beck’s forthcoming defense of tainted meat, denying women suffrage and child labor.

Even Lewis Hine staged a photograph every once in a while.

from Making Both Ends Meet: The Income and Outlay of New York Working Girls by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt.

On socialism.

Somebody really ought to tell this guy that a book about the history of socialism is not the same as a socialist book. And come to think of it, somebody ought to tell conservatives everywhere about the results of this poll.

Late Update: This is very good:

[O]wning a book means an intellectual curiosity, not blind allegiance to what’s inside it.

This whole post on this stupid “controversy” is well worth a read.

“College Makes You Liberal.”

That’s the headline over at Political Wire, covering a bit from Fox News reporting on a new study by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute that says recent college graduates are more liberal on social issues like gay marriage, but less knowledgeable about civics.

There are lot’s of problems with that conclusion, and even more with the way Fox News spins it (see Political Wire for that video clip). What fascinates me though is the relationship that’s being created here. These are two of the study’s major findings:

* While College Fails to Adequately Transmit Civic Knowledge, It Influences Opinion on Polarizing Social Issues…
* Civic Knowledge Increases a Person’s Regard for America’s Ideals and Free Institutions

Some of us actually think that support for gay marriage is an excellent sign that college students understand freedom and America’s ideals better than the Intercollegiate Studies Institute seems to think they do.