Announcing EthicShare

EthicShare, a project generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, seeks to create an online resource for practical ethics scholars by providing both a work space for online collaboration and an aggregation of information (including, to date, 287,237 journal articles from PubMed, 16,713 records from OCLC, and 2,389 different RSS feeds from popular news sources, as well as legal cases, government documents, and more). The website was created by an interdisciplinary team including librarians, bioethicists, and computer scientists and is a new model for supporting online scholarship.

Searching in EthicShare is simple using the main keyword search bar, located on each page, or the advanced search box. Facets are provided on the side of the search results page to give you ways to narrow your results. There are also ways to save citations, have conversations with groups of colleagues, and suggest new information sources. For additional information about the EthicShare project, including information on its history and supporting organizations (including the Council on Library and Information Resources and the National Library of Medicine), please see the “about” webpage: https://www.ethicshare.org/about.

EthicShare is free to use. Access to the literature database does not require an account, but you will need one to participate in the discussions and to save citations and preferences. Account creation is simple; you just need to create a username and password. This will allow you to participate in all of the collaborative and sharing functions. Please register by going to http://www.ethicshare.org. Click on “Create a Free Account” at the top right-hand corner and follow the instructions.

Philosophy joins social networking

Social networking websites such as Myspace.com and Facebook are nothing new to many students in this recent generation.  Philosophy Talk – a radio tak show hosted by two Standford professors has long had its presence on the web, but now you can even join that conversation right on facebook!

Presuming you’re not already a member of the facebook community, you’ll have to sign up to become a member (which is free) and then subscribe to Philosophy Talk.  It’s a snap! 

And if you need a motivation, you can find me there as well.  How’s that for staying connected with your liaison!

Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives

This is Kevin Timpe’s newest book (publication 09/23/2008). Thought the book itself has not been reviewed, it has been discussed in detail on I-Phi. If you are interested in ordering this book for our collection, please contact Contact me.

EpistemeLinks

EpistemeLinks is one of the most comprehensive (and certainly most current) online resource for philosophers.   This EpistemeLinks, Inc. project, a not-for-profit corporation, is in its 12th year.

The web site contains over 19,000 catogrized philosophy links.  In addition to its simple and friendly design, the web site’s has some great attributes such as the “Special Futures” section, which introduces useful tools such as links to annotated bibliographies and custom search engines, and its Job Links.

Philosophy and Humor

Plato and Platypus walk into a bar .. sounds like the begining of a joke? Well, not exactly. This is the title of a book the introduces philosophy through humor and received great reviews. Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein receiv rave reviews for this collaboration…read more.

Philosophy makes it to videogaming

A new book has popped up on Amazon.com titled The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy, edited by Luke Cuddy (release date November 28, 2009). The book discusses The Legend of Zelda, the first video game to get the treatment from any of the philosophy publishers…read more.