From the author of the highly praised The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things comes another captivating history of the seemingly mundane: the book and its storage. Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn't. As a result, readers are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Unimpeachably researched, enviably written, and charmed with anecdotes from Seneca to Samuel Pepys to a nineteenth-century bibliophile who had to climb over his books to get into bed, The Book on the Bookshelf is indispensable for anyone who loves books.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, ICADL 2007, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in December 2007. The 41 revised full papers, 15 revised short papers, and extended abstracts of 10 poster papers presented together with three keynote and three invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 154 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections.
Since 1994, Nancy Mulvany's Indexing Books has been the gold standard for thousands of professional indexers, editors, and authors. This long-awaited second edition, expanded and completely updated, will be equally revered. Like its predecessor, this edition of Indexing Books offers comprehensive, reliable treatment of indexing principles and practices relevant to authors and indexers alike. In addition to practical advice, the book presents a big-picture perspective on the nature and purpose of indexes and their role in published works. New to this edition are discussions of "information overload" and the role of the index, open-system versus closed-system indexing, electronic submission and display of indexes, and trends in software development, among other topics. Mulvany is equally comfortable focusing on the nuts and bolts of indexing—how to determine what is indexable, how to decide the depth of an index, and how to work with publisher instructions—and broadly surveying important sources of indexing guidelines such as The Chicago Manual of Style, Sun Microsystems, Oxford University Press, NISO TR03, and ISO 999. Authors will appreciate Mulvany's in-depth consideration of the costs and benefits of preparing one's own index versus hiring a professional, while professional indexers will value Mulvany's insights into computer-aided indexing. Helpful appendixes include resources for indexers, a worksheet for general index specifications, and a bibliography of sources to consult for further information on a range of topics. Indexing Books is both a practical guide and a manifesto about the vital role of the human-crafted index in the Information Age. As the standard indexing reference, it belongs on the shelves of everyone involved in writing and publishing nonfiction books.
A striking poetic debut that brilliantly illuminates and celebrates the intersection of poetry and science, and the ways they can mediate our discovery of the world and our place in it. Originating from her living room, backyard garden, university office, or the field sites in boreal or tropical forests, the poems in Madhur Anand’s captivating debut collection compose a lyric science; they bring order and chaos together into a unified theory of predicting catastrophes, large and small. Anand’s ecologist poetics are sophisticated and original; her voice is an “index,” a way of cataloguing and measuring the world and human experience, and of illuminating the interconnectedness at the heart of all things. Narrating the beauty of her perceived world, the poems unabashedly embrace the scintillant language of scientific evidence as they interrogate crises of personal and global concern. The result is a poetry that is as complex as it is compassionate. Anand’s modernist intervention into “nature” poetry is a sparkling addition to poetics in Canada and beyond.
The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve has captured the worldwide attention of biologists, conservationists, and ecologists and has been the setting for extensive investigation over the past 30 years. Roughly 40,000 ecotourists visit the Cloud Forest each year, and it is often considered the archetypal high-altitude rain forest.This volume brings together some of the most prominent researchers of the region to provide a broad introduction to the biology of the Monteverde, and cloud forests in general. Collecting and synthesizing vital information about the ecosystem and its biota, the book also examines the positive and negative effects of human activity on both the forest and the surrounding communities. Ecologists, tropical biologists, and natural historians will find this volume an indispensable resource, as will all those who are fascinated by the magnificent wonders of the tropical forests.
