I've been asked to give some words of advice for young women entering library/information science education. Does anyone ever take... advice? The advice we give is usually what we would do or would have done if we had the chance, and the advice that's taken, if ever, is often what we wanted to hear in the first place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The university is no longer a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work at a measured pace and contemplate the universe. It is bi...g, complex, demanding, competitive, bureaucratic, and chronically short of money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is the element that distinguishes applied science from basic. Surprise is what makes the difference. When you are organized t...o apply knowledge, set up targets, produce a usable product, you require a high degree of certainty from the outset. All the facts on which you base protocols must be reasonably hard facts with unambiguous meaning. The challenge is to plan the work and organize the workers so that it will come out precisely as predicted. For this, you need centralized authority, elaborately detailed time schedules, and some sort of reward system based on speed and perfection. But most of all you need the intelligible basic facts to begin with, and these must come from basic research. There is no other source. In basic research, everything is just the opposite. What you need at the outset is a high degree of uncertainty; otherwise it isn't likely to be an important problem. You start with an incomplete roster of facts, characterized by their ambiguity; often the problem consists of discovering the connections between unrelated pieces of information. You must plan experiments on the basis of probability, even bare possibility, rather than certainty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
WHEREAS no provisions have, as yet, been made by the World's Columbian Exposition Commission for securing exhibits from the colore...d women of this country, or the giving of representation to them in such Fair, and WHEREAS under the present arrangement and classification of exhibits, it would be impossible for visitors to the Exposition to know and distinguish the exhibits and handiwork of the colored women from those of the Anglo- Saxons, and because of this the honor, fame and credit for all meritorious exhibits, though made by our race, would not duly be given us ... RESOLVED that for the purpose of demonstrating the progress of the colored women since emancipation and of showing to those who are yet doubters, and there are many, that the colored women ... are making rapid strides in art, science and manufacturing, and of furnishing to all information as to ... what the race has done, is doing and might do, in every department of life, that we, the colored women of Chicago request the Columbian Commission to establish an office for a colored woman whose duty it shall be to collect exhibits from the colored women of America ... [ellipses in source]LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We naturally remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here, as a sort of classic among books of American travel.... He is a travele...r who does not exaggerate, but writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for history. His story is told with as much good faith and directness as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the argument to a great poem on the primitive state of the country and its inhabitants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made... any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today--but the core of s...cience fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20...th century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked ...for no spell to cast over nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »