Humanities News | University of Illinois

Despite the increased popularity of geek culture and the ubiquity of computers, the geek’s close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Whether you’re looking for a picture book, an age-appropriate nonfiction title or a page-turning thriller, let the 2008 edition of the Guide Book to Gift Books, now available as a downloadable PDF file be your book-buying guide.

What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive? The framed photograph will inevitably fade and yellow over time, but the digital photo file may be unreadable to future computers – an unintended consequence of our rapidly digitizing world that may ultimately lead to a “digital dark age.”

Many have speculated that the election of a black president would signal the arrival of a “post-racial” America, a country moving past its problems of race. But we’ve been here before, says University of Illinois historian David Roediger, the author of several books about race in U.S. history, including one published this month. Many previous events and forces have likewise promised and failed to resolve issues of race in the U.S.

It may not have the circulation of the Huffington Post – yet – but University of Illinois English and linguistics professor Dennis Baron’s “The Web of Language” is the best-read blog published using software created by the university’s Web Services.