Notes

[Denis Salter]

Dear Colleagues:

Does anyone know the origin of Cole's notes?  Current editions
make it seem as though the series originated in Canada.
Was there a Mr Cole? Cole's bookstores are bewildered by questions.

In the U.S., I believe that they don't have Cole's but rather
Cliff's Notes.  I can't get Cole's notes and Cliff's notes
for the same book, for comparative purposes.

I can't get Cliff's Notes, so far, in Canada. Any suggestions?

I am only interested in Cliff and Cole when they are reductive versions
of Shakespeare and Shakespeare's plays.

Does anyone know if Shakespeare's plays were turned into
Classic Comics?  The comics stores here have been singularly
unhelpful. If they are still being produced, is Shakespeare in
the series?

Doubtless there is a university research library that has rare
Classic Comics of Shakespeare in its Rare Books division.


**************

I thank the many people who helped me with the letter that I
sent to *University Affairs* and that I circulated on CanDrama.
It should appear in the March or April edition, or might get
pushed into May.  I think March or April would be more
strategic.

BTW, they cut very little and, as cuts often do, they made for a
stronger letter.  It was simply too long. It will be at their
maximum of 700 words.


I think that this January issue of *University Affairs* calls
for several other letters:

1) The suggestion that the Arts (as in Liberal Arts) are not
as expensive to run as other disciplines is silly. As a colleague
said this morning, the library/libraries are one of the indis-
pensable and expensive "Labs" for the Liberal Arts.

2) The descriptions provided of the next generation of scholars who will
be "highly professionalised" make me queasy.  Some definitions are pro-
vided for what "professional" means; many other important definitions
are overlooked, and the "word" becomes (deliberately?) mystified.
I begin to think of social and genetic engineering.


3) The key issue, known since at least the beginning of the
postwar period, is that universities are not predominantly
preoccupied with the discovery and/or creation of knowledge
and its dissemination. The key issue is that they are corporations
with administrative structures that, in some areas, correspond
to corporate ones. University administrations, particularly in
ones that are governed by the top-down model, are in the business
of creating and marketing information. (Information and Knowledge
are different entities.) There is one reductive, easy, but I
think valid way to test this proposition: in the 50s to the
early 80s, students were called students; in the mid 80s to
the mid 90s they were called clients; and now they are called
consumers (of information).

4) Though the ideologically-charged vocabulary of Accountability
Criteria, Performance Indicators and the like remains out of
sight, it won't remain there for long.  I think we should think
ahead of time about what we would accept and what we wouldn't.
The information [sic] from some levels of governments and/or
from university administrations should be made available to us
soon, for the debate is going to be long and, I fear,
fractious. I would be interested in knowing how other versions
of these surveillance expectations and techniques have affected
the production of information in other cultures.  I gather that
British Professors have worked with some sort of model for several years
and universities' budgets have in whole or in part been determined by
point-rating. I do know that procedures of this type are used
at the University of Malta.


Denis Salter.

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon."
--John Logie Baird (1925)

Denis Salter
4965, avenue Connaught
Notre Dame De Grace
Montreal [Qc]
H4V 1X4
(514) 487 7309
NO FAX
cyws at musica.mcgill.ca