Stanford has acquired the business archives of Canyon Cinema, including Canyon's Cinemanews, the main organ of the independent filmmaking community, in addition to letters, memos, posters and exhibition records. The details of the acquisition are available in the Stanford News Service story. A scholarly study of Canyon Cinema and its founder Bruce Baillie has also been published and is available in Green Library.

As the new Engineering Library approaches completion, a detailed informational site has been put up with full background and updates.

Well, we all complained about how hard it was to find Life Magazine on Google Books. The cries have been heard and Google has created a browse site that allows you to look at all the magazine titles and runs in Google Books.
You can also get a full list by going to Advanced Search, clicking the Magazines radio button (don't put anything in any search box, and leave All Books checked); then hit Google Search. Again, you can switch between List View and Cover View (links in the top right of results page).

The story and the links are on the Google Books blog.

There is a witty and educational essay on the history of astronomy in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. It's by Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize physicist. It's a meditation of the nature of what's known as Big Science -- that is, science supported by governments for reasons of enlightenment and/or power. Of the sciences, astronomy has the longest history in this regard, going back to the ancient Middle East when centuries of time and attention were expended watching and measuring the movements of the shadow made by a pole stuck in the ground [called a "Gnomon"]. Mr. Weinberg continues his tracing of the history, progress and misdirections of governmental interest in scientific research from this pole down to the Hubble telescope and beyond. The basic issue in the essay is what makes good science when lots of money, time and politics are involved in the process.