The Case for Books (2009) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Quotes edit see section history

• “Publishers’ judgments, informed by long experience in the marketplace of ideas, determines what reaches readers, and readers need to rely on it more than ever in an age of information overload. By selecting texts, editing them, designing them to be readable, and bringing them to the attention of readers, book professionals provide services that will outlast all changes in technology.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Because now that anyone is free to print whatever they wish, they often disregard that which is best and instead write, merely for the sake of entertainment, what would best be forgotten, or, better still be erased from all books.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• libraries were never warehouses of books. They have always been and always will be centers of learning. Their central position in the world of learning makes them ideally suited to mediate between the printed and the digital modes of communication.

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• The staying power of the old-fashioned codex illustrates a general principle in the history of communication: one medium does not displace another, at least not in the short run.

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• The more I learned about Google, the more it appeared to be a monopoly intent on conquering markets rather than a natural ally of libraries, whose sole purpose is to preserve and diffuse knowledge.

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• The Founding Fathers acknowledged authors’ rights to a fair return on their intellectual labor, but they put public welfare before private profit.

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• Google employs thousands of engineers but, as far as I know, not a single bibliographer.

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• Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.

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• I would argue that news has always been an artifact and that it never corresponded exactly to what actually happened.

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• I am convinced that the Internet will transform the world of learning. The transformation has already begun. Our task, I think, is to take charge of it so that we maintain the highest standards from the past while developing new ones for the future.

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• Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary sources for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves.

  Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Robert Darnton (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Z.116.A2.D37 2009
• Dewey: 002.09

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Books & Reading › Online Books
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Books & Reading › History of Books
• Books › Reference › Publishing & Books
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › History

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history