Inneresting 36
issue 36
January 22, 2021
Research and writing go hand-in-hand. This week, we look at some sources and methods for finding the facts.
Wikipedia was an accident
In his oral history of Wikipedia, Tom Roston looks at how the world’s ubiquitous free online encyclopedia arose from a series of wrong assumptions, lucky breaks and hard decisions.
Ask the rights questions
Often, the best place to find an answer isn’t in a book, but from a specialist or participant in an event. Steven Harper has interviewing tips for writers when doing research for their novel (or screenplay).
There ain’t no party like an archivist party –
Because an archivist party cites its sources.
Caity Weaver looks at Archives Hashtag Parties, where museums, government agencies, and historians share material from their archives around a different topic.
The sweet spot for archive hashtag party guests, Ms. Parkinson said, is “learning something new about something you already knew about.”
These are a great opportunity to grab story ideas, or to learn about research resources!
Amanda Gorman.
The New York Times has a lesson for students about this year’s inaugural poet, the tradition of Occasional Poetry, and plenty of links to background information.
While intended for high schoolers, it’s a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn more about Gorman and her remarkable writing.
Call now! Librarians are standing by…
The New York Public Library has a retro alternative for kids craving storytime: dial-a-story. New children’s stories are available weekly via a phone call or subscribing to their podcast feed.
Highland How-To: Cite Your Sources
Highland 2 isn’t just for writing screenplays and novels. You can also use it for non-fiction and academic writing, as well!
One helpful tool is the formatting Highland uses for Endnotes. You can use a double-parenthetical anywhere in your document to add the text for an endnote, and Highland will collect them, number them, and add them at the end of your document.
An example sentence full of rich, insightful prose.((The endnote citing your source))
You can also specify where in your document you want endnotes to appear by using the {{ENDNOTES}}
tag.
To find out more about Highland 2, check out our Knowledge Base!
Other Cool Things
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” made an appearance during President Biden’s tribute to those lives lost to COVID-19, and Jayson Green has an essay about how that song, and Cohen in general, summed up the national mood for the last five years.
Rebecca Jennings writes for Vox about how everybody learning Sea Shanties is fun, but it’s also another example of how the pandemic is causing us to cycle through memes and trends at an accelerated pace.
Peter Slattery pulls back the curtain on White-Noise Spammers on Spotify: Companies that recycle “ambient” tracks with generic names to get millions (and billions) of streams.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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