I have a rocky relationship with the practice of maintaining a personal blog. There are plenty of people I admire in academia, the arts, and tech, who blog as a form of scholarly communication, yet I have been hesitant to throw my hat into the ring. Fermenting one’s ideas in private is important, and I […]
Author Archives: Ben Fino-Radin
Jonathan Swift on Information Diets & Skimming
“The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold: either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole […]
Goth in the library
Gargoyles, Chimeres, And The Grotesque in French Gothic Sculpture By Lester Burbank Bridham, with an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram Copyright 1930, Architectural Book Publishing Co., Inc. 108 West Forty-Sixth Street, New York
Pennsylvania Hex
Today at the library while perusing the catalog – I stumbled upon this. It is a bound pamphlet published in 1945 (original printing), and is a fantastic source on the mysterious Hex, the circular patterns that traditionally adorned Pennsylvania Dutch barns. They are popularly thought of as possessing mystical powers, perhaps to protect livestock, or […]
Born This Way
Just returned from a brief trip down to Altlanta, GA to see the the Rushdie papers, and meet the great people at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. Really inspiring to say the least.