“Music distribution has evolved so much in 35 years that a succession of once-thriving platforms including vinyl records, 8-track players, and cassette tapes have all been consigned to spots in our cultural history museum. Digital music in particular has squeezed almost all other forms of listening out of the running, even relegating CDs to the arts-and-crafts pile. But the introduction of MP3s and other digital formats did help to halt the success of CDS, which had plateaued in terms of sales in the middle years of last decade.”

I tried to plagiarize this passage, but I wasn’t able to do so easily. It ended up being very difficult to plagiarize.  I like writing my own thoughts and ideas. I also think it is morally wrong to take other people’s work and claim it as my own.  I know it bothers me even when people ask me for my notes because I took those notes and it is their fault that they didn’t pay enough attention in class to take notes.  This workshop that we just did in the library was interesting.  I never tried to plagiarize something before.  I realized that it was very difficult to plagiarize purposefully.

But what if someone plagiarizes accidentally? Should they still be charged with the same crime as someone who purposefully plagiarized? I don’t think so…

Plagiarism of Francis Bacon’s “Of Studies:” One example of a library making use of the digital age is the University of Virginia, whose Electronic Text Center fostered innovation through technology and set an early precedent for the creation and use of digital materials by scholars in the humanities. The goal of the E-text Center is to support the creation, dissemination, analysis, and preservation of digitized and born- digital works. The New York Public Library also offers access to e-books through Amazon Kindles. The Cushing Academy has discarded or donated all of their books in favor of computer kiosks, flat-screen TVS, and millions of virtual books. Some at the school see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology. Others, however, who cannot imagine a library without books, are going to miss them.

During our plagiarism workshop, for the third activity, all I did was copy and paste random lines from three different sources into a paragraph. This was my result:

If you’re on the go a lot, you know how heavy regular titles are, particularly if you intend to finish one book while you are out and need to bring another book with you. eBooks allow you to bring a whole library with you wherever you go. You can switch between titles with ease and the weight is lighter than a standard paperback. Bringing hundreds of books with you wherever you are means you never have to plan ahead for that long trip or even the bus ride across town. When you’ve finished one book, quickly browse your library and start another! Ebooks are delivered almost instantaneously. You can purchase, download and start reading them within minutes, without leaving your chair. You don’t have to go to a bookstore to buy them, neither wait for them for days, weeks and sometimes more to arrive in the mail. Those who own a lot of books know how much space they can take up, but with a reader, your bookshelf is located on a small handheld device, your computer or on both. This will save you a lot of storage space and also means you have a backup online if something happens to your books. With disk space quickly becoming a commodity, and the size of portable device hard drives getting bigger and bigger, it’s conceivable to think that you could have your entire library with you and have it accessible to your fingertips. When you buy an eBook, your reward is instantaneous. Whereas if you order a book online you have to wait for it to arrive before the fun begins.

Brooks Winchell offers one answer in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Helpful?

I was reading an article today about a bookstore that is in the process of closing. I found a quote within the article that I found very interesting. It stated “Publishers make deals with Amazon that they don’t make with anyone else.” I was surprised by this statement because I never really realized how much Amazon has really stepped into the book market. Although I associate Amazon with the kindle, I never really understood just how much of a stake Amazon has in the electronic book market. I think it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with other bookstores and to see if Amazon continues to grow and be successful with the increasing popularity of e-books.

After reading this article and writing the blog post, I decided to do a little research on Amazon and I found that Amazon is actually a dominant contributor in the e-book world. I think it is so interesting how important electronic reading is to Amazon’s profit, yet I had no idea how much of a stake Amazon really had on the electronic book market.

I wanted to talk a little bit about Oprah’s book club in my blog post so I decided to do a little more research and I was surprised to learn that Oprah’s book club was actually discontinued for a year because Oprah could not keep up with the reading while still searching for novels she liked. This was extremely surprising to me because this is the reason why she started to book club to produce novels that encourage people to read yet she could not seem to do it herself? I think this is why I have such an interest in the idea of Oprah’s book club because it seems to just be a marketing campaign to me at times. When I thought about it a little deeper, I realized that Oprah was actually increase many authors books sales. I found it interesting to see how Oprah can just pick up a book and people suddenly feel the need to buy it and many buy the book in hard copies. I actually praise Oprah for her decision to start this club. This club goes back to the real impact books have on people. It represents the true meaning of picking up a book and flipping through the pages.

For my portfolio, I was hoping to talk about the social and technological change from hard copy books to electronic books. I wanted to discuss why this change has become so important to our society and how people are reacting to it. For example, JK Rowling’s opposition originally to allowing her books to produced electronically. I thought this would be a great topic to look into because I could really explore the social changes brought on by electronic books like the difference in book releases for books produced electronically and the impact this change is having on bookstores both the positives and negatives.