Thursday August 09, 2007

Interviews touching upon book data

There's an  interview today over at Inside Higher Ed that caught me eye. Scott McLemee, my favorite writer there (he mostly covers the 'big idea' intellectual side of academic news) has a short interview with Aaron Swartz of the Open Library project.
http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/08/mclemee

What struck me as interesting was hearing two people outside the regular library world discuss so many familiar issues in depth. Also worthy of note was that Swartz mentioned McLemee's interview with Franco Moretti  about a year and a half ago. I remember Amanda French mentioning Moretti somewhere; that's how I first found out about him though I've never gotten around to reading his work - though I really want to. What connects all these ideas are how they deal with manipulating data, albeit for different purposes, that surround, and perhaps inform, books.