New Acquisitions

The following are some of the books and DVDs that I could not resist buying while I was in Toronto because:

1. They are not readily available in Manila; and
2. Even if they were available in Manila, I could not have acquired them at the low prices at which I bought them.

Except for the DVD, I did not buy any of these at full price. I actually got two of the books at a 3-for-$10 sale (that's Canadian dollars!), and the other two at less than half price. And they're not used books!

	I bought In the Stacks: Short Stories About Libraries and Librarians (edited by Michael Cart) primarily because I had heard so much about Jorge Luis Borges's "The Library of Babel." I'm happy to report that, after my first reading, there is so much more that this book has to offer. I will be posting my reviews of individual stories soon.
	Desk Set [DVD; starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn] tells the story of a librarian who cannot and will not allow herself to be replaced by a machine (sound familiar?).
	The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (M. Mitchell Waldrop) takes readers through a "history of computers from the 1930s to the 1970s, with an emphasis on Licklider," one of the more important pioneers in the development of the computer.
	Library: An Unquiet History (Matthew Battles) offers a history of libraries and how they survived through the ages by changing with the times. I hope some of the stories will be applicable to the future.
	In The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester), I hope to gain a better understanding of why Bill Buxton called the Oxford English Dictionary the "first major open source project" at SLA 2005.