ex-libris

Ex-Libris is from 1998, so its been kicking around for a while. I borrowed this copy from my small lending library we have at my office. It pre-dates this blog so I wasn't sure if I had read it or not, but I do recall reading Ross King's Brunelleschi's Dome years ago, and it was very good--you can find it in the right-hand column in my 'great' list--so I thought I may have. But no, I don't think I did, or at least I don't remember reading it, tho the first part did seem familiar. After looking back at the blog, I did find two others Domino (which I didn't finish) and Leonardo and the Last Supper, which I did finish. In that review, I noted a few other books from Ross King that I had read, but this isn't one of them.

So if I was looking for a pattern in my reactions to Ross King's writing, I would say that I tend to like his novelized historical books, versus his historical novels. It seems like when his work is based more on a single historical work and how it came to be, he does better than straight fictional stories, even if those stories do include a fair amount of historical research and content. I would put Ex-Libris in the latter category, but that said, I liked this one better than some of the others. I may have read this one, I guessed that I did in my review of Domino (linked above) but I didn't remember then either. Forgettable is probably not a great attribute for a book, but perhaps its apt here.

If this one had a draw back, its that it has so much research and history, that it was, at times, a little hard to follow. There were so many interlacing facts, spread out over a hundred or so years, that it would take a college history class to untangle them, never mind understand them in context. So I did what I assume most readers who aren't 17th century historian would do, I ignored most of it, tried to remember the high points, and assumed that King would help fill in the blanks as we went along, which he obligingly did.

This story is about the power of knowledge, the concentrated power of libraries as fonts of learning, and the various historical powers that struggled to control, ban, censor, and contain that knowledge and keep its power for themselves. It was also a powerful reminder, for me, of why public libraries are the great democratizers, as they have taken that power from the rich and wealthy few that used to hoard it for themselves, and delivered it into the hands of the people.

If you enjoyed King's books on the duomo in Florence, and the frescoes by DaVinci and Michelangelo, you'll enjoy this one too, just not as much.

biblio tech

The full title of this book is BiblioTech: why libraries matter more than ever in the age of google. This book is from 2015, and when I got a fair way into it, I thought that maybe I had just waited too long to read it, given that what John Palfrey is discussing here is how libraries stand against cutting edge technology. So perhaps its was because the technology he was analyzing is from 2015, and that's what made his arguments a little weak.

Nope.

Its because the majority of of what John Palfrey says in this book is included in the book reviews. Here an example from Goodreads, which I assume is written by... who, the moderators? crowd sourced like a wiki? Who knows, its not attributed:

"... John Palfrey argues that anyone seeking to participate in the 21st century needs to understand how to find and use the vast stores of information available online. And libraries, which play a crucial role in making these skills and information available, are at risk. In order to survive our rapidly modernizing world and dwindling government funding, libraries must make the transition to a digital future as soon as possible -- by digitizing print material and ensuring that born-digital material is publicly available online."

He also says it will be difficult, and it will cost money, and therefore we as readers and library supporters need to support libraries so they can take on this task, collectively.

That's it. Its an 8 minute speech, tops.* Its a pamphlet. In BiblioTech, he just repeats this nine times, in chapters 1 through 9, and the repeats it again in chapter 10, which he helpfully titles "Conclusion." Each chapter focuses on a different point such as how preservation, cloud computing, or networking tie into the problem and the solution he's suggesting, but each of these points is included in nearly all of the chapters. "hey john, how can we spin this crimson article up into a book?"

By the time I was three-quarters through, I was pretty sure that each chapter was written as an stand alone essay in support of the main message. And probably with enough time between them, that he wasn't exactly clear on what he'd written in the others.

Here was the clincher for me: Each chapter has a quote taken from history or literature that one assumes is designed to set the tone for the chapter. The quote at the beginning of Chapter 9: Law, is from an 1813 letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson. It reads:

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Ah, learnin' I get it. We share what we know, and it helps others without harming us. Sharing knowledge should therefore be freely undertaken. Gotcha, good one. Inspiring, actually. Pretty sure I've heard it before though... where was it? Oh, yeah, 9 PAGES EARLIER, in Chapter 8: Education, word for word, same quote. 

That's just sloppy. you come on up here and write we must support libraries on the blackboard three-hundred times, smartypants.

All good ideas. Make a bullet list and print them on a bookmark. Don't waste my time.

* It is a speech, you can find it on YouTube and other places. Its over an hour! Criminy! I'm sure you can find it yourself.

midnight library

I'm not sure when or even why I added The Midnight Library to my reading list. My reading list, by the way, is in a few forms: a list I keep on my public library account, occasionally a written note when I hear something from someone, perhaps on the radio, and most often, photos of book covers that I see in my travels. 

This one came from my library account reading list, and tho I sometimes add a note about where I heard about it, this title has no note. I'm guessing I heard about it on the radio. This book was on the NYT Best Sellers list for a while, and so it probably got some radio time.

A quick look on The Books tab here, confirms that I haven't read anything else by Matt Haig, at least in the last 14 years. This book was located with the travel books at the library, which I though was interesting. I assume that was a kind of marketing ploy, like putting some bananas near the cereal at the supermarket. There was some traveling, certainly, in this book, altho it was mainly confined to the spiritual plane between the infinite versions of the multiverse. I will concede, however, that whilst visiting said alternate realities, the physical location of our protagonist, Nora Seed, did vary on occasion.

Confused yet?

Its simple, really; The Midnight Library is an examination of lives unlived. Its a what-if book, that allows Nora Seed to examine how her life may have been were she to have made different choices; and through her, we are encouraged to examine our own lives, our regrets, and our potential alternate lives. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, and how he was able to reexamine his past, present and future lives as an outside observer, and to take from that what he could. Nora Seed is given a similar opportunity, sans ghosties. sort of

Its hard to give you a better idea without spoilers, and perhaps I've gone too far down that road for some. This was an entertaining, fast read. It started out rather depressing, but I had a feeling it would be okay in the end (I'm an optimist!) It did get better, but it was cloudy day or two at the beginning. If you are already depressed, this may help, but you've have to slog down into the valley before coming up into the sun on the other side. Stick with it, if you think you're up to it.

Based on some of the other titles from Matt Haig, this is his sandbox. I'll leave it to you to decide if you want to read more of his stuff. If this one helps, the others may as well. For me, I think it helped me to understand depression and regret a little bit more, but, like A Christmas Carol, it puts too rosy of a glow on what the possibilities are for folks that are struggling, and if I were struggling, I'm not sure if I'd see this as a positive, or if I'd see it as sweet, but unrealistic fantasy for those who have to deal with regret and despair. cheer up bunky! it could be worse, and it might even get better!

Yeah, I'm not sure that's the kind of thing depressed and/or despairing folks can effectively onboard, but I'm not an expert, you do what's right for you. On balance, I enjoyed it.

barbershop libraries

From their InstaGram (without permission)

Today I heard a story about Barbershop Books on public radio. Barbershop Books is the brainchild of Alvin Irby, a ex-kindergarten teacher, and stand-up comedian, who decided to do something about encouraging--inspiring, even--black boys to read. In an interview, Irvy made a point about the reading that is assigned in schools, that has always bothered me, the negative storylines in books assigned to young people to read. My kids understood the formula, and made jokes about it, before they finished elementary school, which runs through grade 6 in my town. Here's how they described the books they read, year after year: victim of Nazis, victim of racism, or victim of Nazis AND racism.

Irvy summed it up this way (I'm paraphrasing) What are the role models black boys read about in school? Old, dead, black men who's stories don't touch their lives, and that they can't relate to. Irvy has curated a select list of 15 books that he installs on a shelf somewhere in a participating barbershop. Books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and The Snowy Day.

These are books want to read, can relate to and are fun. The idea is to encourage reading, by making books available in a safe space. Irvy has chosen barbershops because they typically are home to men. Men interacting with one another in a comfortable, friendly, normal way. Young and old. Many of them father figures. Ingenious.

This is library.

Here's the mission, in their own words (used without permission):

"In an increasingly global and knowledge-based economy, poor reading skills among young black boys today will produce black men who are unprepared to compete in the workforce of tomorrow. Four key factors contribute to low reading proficiency among black boys: (1) limited access to engaging and age appropriate reading material; (2) lack of black men in black boys’ early reading experiences; (3) few culturally competent educators; and (4) schools that are unresponsive to black boys’ individual learning styles."

Visit Barbershop Books, and see for yourself. Kudos to Alvin Irby and Barbershop Books.

united states of beer

First off, thanks so much to the folks in Erving, who were nice enough to bring this book for us to help celebrate my office's 20th anniversary. The book came with a wonderful bottle of beer for us all to enjoy as well.

The United States of Beer, sub-titled: A Freewheeling History of the All-American Drink, is by Dane Huckelbridge, and is a follow-up to his previous endeavor, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit. I think that he learned a lot about beer, doing his research for his bourbon book, and luckily for us, he decided to turn that research into this fun little book about America's beer history.

For the uninitiated, bourbon and beer are related; The first step in making whiskey, is to make beer (without the hops) and then distill it. Beer is therefore whiskey's daddy. It also predates the development of whiskey by millennia. Seems like a good place to start any history project, but just how closely beer is intertwined in the history of this nation is remarkable. But its as simple as one of the first (of many) take-away facts from this book: 

TAKE-AWAY FACT 1: People couldn't drink the water, it wasn't clean in most of Europe. What people drank--men, women, children--is beer. All day, every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At home, and at work.

For centuries.

Huckelbridge walks us through the history of the nation from New England, to the South, to the Mid-west, to the coast. Each of the regions begins with its history, and importantly, where the predominant immigrants come from, and the beer styles they brought with them. Huckelbridge describes the traditional European beer, and its own history, and then the version the new American make for themselves when they arrive, working with what they have.

TAKE-AWAY FACT 2: American versions of European beers were (and are) often very different from their beery ancestors, because the conditions, and ingredients in America are not the same as they were in the countries of origin. 

By the time we get to the Mid-west, America has been around for a while, and the Germanic folks who began to move into the Mid-west brought lager beers with them, and eventually the lighter, crisper Pilsner style beers. But these beers were not (NOT) the pale, yellow, watery beers that are the standard American Big Beer company products we have today. So you know what that means...

TAKE-AWAY FACT 3: American pale lager used to be deep, rich, and flavorful. We ended up with yellow, watery American beer--produced, by the way, by some of the same companies that originally produce those better beers--due to mass marketing, and cost cutting to stay in business through prohibition.

There are lots more, and obviously, the changes to the standard American lager happened slowly, and Huckelbridge walks us through it all, ending with the history of beer making on the west coast, and how a small company in San Francisco kicked off the rebirth of American microbrews in the mid 1960s.

Read this book, while drinking a beer.

 

madame rose

Madame Rose - Belgian Style Wild Ale, by Goose Island Beer Co. of Chicago, IL, is not something that I would have gone out and purchased for myself, without knowing a little more about it, so I'm sharing my thoughts on this heady brew so that you'll feel more comfortable about picking up your own bottle.

And I think perhaps you should.

This fine bottle of oak aged wild ale was a gift of the fine folks out in Erving, MA on the occasion of my office's 20th anniversary party, held last week. Thanks to Barbara and Steve who came to help us celebrate, and carried this fine bottle (along with a nice book I'm looking forward to reading, complete with some bookmarks!)

Clicky-click on the picture of the label to expanderize mon frere! Its says that this is a 2016 release, wild ale, aged in wine barrels with cherries. Crazy, right? The rear label states that this was bottled a year ago, yesterday, and has an ABV of 6.7%, along with a suggestion to enjoy in a wide mouth glass (which we are), a warning that it contains wheat (good to know) and that it can be bottle-aged for up to 5 years (fat chance.) We all enjoyed a little of this here to end out the week, and the first sip was taken in a toast to Erving, and their successful town meeting on Wednesday night. Here are my thoughts on this beer:

Rich amber, honey color with a foamy, full, cream colored head. Active carbonation, that tickles the nose, similar to a natural sparkling water. The aromas are extremely bright: citrus, caramel, and jam, with background notes of the sea. The taste is very tangy; lemony in its intensity, lemon pith, steeped fruit, and tart syrupy quality. Smooth and sparkly on the tongue, but after further tastings, the carbonation drops off. The finish is long, slightly bitter and tart, with a soft oak and smoke taste that lingers pleasantly.

Update: After 15 or 20 minutes, after the oak and smoke fades, I was left with the taste of cherries. That deep, tannin laden taste of the red-black cherry skins. It just keeps on giving.

Thanks again to the folks in Erving, and congratulations to you all!

two words for public libraries

My office recently hosted a  library visioning round table discussion on the future of libraries. The topic: Library as Place.

The Wordle (at left) grows from a simple question we asked our participants:* What are two words you think of, when you think of the future of libraries? Community, Flexibility, and Opportunity were the big winners, but all of those other words are great too! This simple question comes from a summary paper of a conference at the Library of Congress in 2014, whose participants were also looking into the future of the library. Some of the participants seemed disappointed that they didn't come up with original words, but I think the fact that a few words were repeated is terrific, and shows that within the library service industry, its pretty clear which direction we're heading. Just looks at some of the other terms that came up: Diverse, Adaptable, Transformational, Evolving. Those are good words!

The overall discussion centered on what public libraries are doing to fill the role of Third Place in the lives of their patrons and users. Whether its for more formal, structured learning and programs, or more casual, drop-in use, the idea that libraries serve in this capacity more and more is a trend that seems to be increasing, even as libraries continue to shed the outdated model of a 'warehouse for books.' It seems pretty clear to those of us who use public libraries, that their need is just as central and vital to the education of the citizenry, even as the services they offer grows and expands to meet the needs of our increasingly interconnected, digitized, and virtual society. And that's really where the magic is: libraries provide that real space, with real human connections, in a world that is increasingly moving away from these types of connections. People want--and I believe, need--these connections, and are looking to the library as one place to get them.

The most pressing need from the library's point of view, is getting that message out to the segment of the populace that still views the library as they did when they were kids. Public libraries are notoriously bad at self-promotion and marketing. Given their budget constraints, and the expertise of the folks running the place, its no wonder that marketing is not something they excel at. Its just not in their wheelhouse, and the budget isn't there to hire the professional help they need to get the message out.

So we meet, we talk, we share, and we attempt to get a ground swell rising. What is the best way to share all of the wonderful things libraries can do? Some of the suggestions from our participants included interesting ways to bring the public into their space, hopefully including some that wouldn't normally come to the library. Ideas included:

Volunteer Fair - All of the local groups that need volunteers set up tables, and potential volunteers shop around for a cause they'd like to help.
Technology Fair - Tables where you can learn about various on-line databases the library offers, along with STEAM, audio/video editing, maker, telescopes, Girls Who Code, and other things available at the library.
Indoor Green Market - At the library, even a baby animal petting zoo in a plastic lined pen!
Town Government Fair - Tables for each department, staffed by town workers who explain what they do and how you can get services.

These programs, and so many others; from programmable robot dance contests, to simple brochures at the desk titled "I Didn't Know You Had That!" are helping to chip away at the old notions many still hold about what their library is, and what it could be. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Our public libraries are what we make them, and if we don't do it, no one else will.

Then where would we be?


* My personal thanks to all of the wonderful folks who came out last week to the Lunenburg Public Library last week. We had a great discussion, and I learned a lot. And thanks to Lunenburg for hosting us!

discovery of witches

This book is from a few years ago. I discovered the third book at one of the libraries I'm working on--if I get there early, or if they aren't ready for me, I sometimes have few minutes to take a look at the new books. I don't usually spend a lot of time with the book jacket, I just try to get a feel for a book, so I didn't realize it was part of trilogy: the All Souls Trilogy written by Deborah Harkness. I took a picture of the third book, and when I looked it up in my library, I found the trilogy.

Harkness is a little different than your average witch/vampire book author; she comes at this from a very successful, non-fiction historical writing, by all accounts. Harkness teaches history at the University of Southern California, and has won a number of awards for her historical writing. She has also done pretty well in the past with a wine blog. According to her bio she has also lived or worked in many of the places that figure large in this book as settings. They say write what you know, sounds like good advice. The main protagonist in this story is a historical writer doing research in libraries for her new book. Books, libraries, writing, history, collegiate life, scholarship, mitochondrial DNA, and wine all figure into the story. Harkness is definitely writing what she knows and it shows. A Discovery of Witches shows a depth not often found in stories in this genre, based on my limited experience. Good on you Deborah Harkness.

Diana Bishop is spending her time in the library these days, researching alchemy for her new book, and thinking about a scholarly presentation she needs to make in a few months, when she stumbles across something in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, something that hasn't been seen for 150 years. Suddenly, she has a lot more attention that she'd planned on, and from the types of people she didn't expect to run into at the library. She pretty quickly realize that she's opened up a major can of worms, and... we're off.

Harkness's sense and understanding of history, the research required to do what her protagonist does, and the background to this fantastic story are effortlessly painted in. That first-hand understanding is what I think, gives this story its formidable sense of depth and place. The science, magic, wine discussion, and secret society slant fill the picture in nicely. This is a wild romp, and its got some of the same elements we've seen in other stories of this ilk, but its smarter. Reminds me a little of David Mitchell's take. I'd put this is the same read-alike category.

I'm looking forward to picking up the next installment tomorrow.

strange library

The Strange Library. With a title like that, how could I not pick this one up. I've read a few of Murakami's books and while this has some similarities, it's really a thing all its own; more of an art project than a novella. I'm curious about what this book looks like in the original Japanese version. you know what, using the magic of the interwebs I'm going to see if I can do that virtually right now. Boom. *

The form of the book from the artwork and design of the top to bottom overlapping front cover captures the imagination immediately. A quick flip through the heavy pages, printed in a large typeface font, and illustrated full pages tells us that we're in for a wild ride.

I don't think it's a spoiler to say that this is one strange library that our young protagonist has stepped into, but I wasn't prepared for furries, labyrinths, spirits, and cannibalism. That's a lot to squeeze into a little novella like this. I'm not sure how he did it but I think the larger question is: what does it mean?

Before I blab what I think, I'll say that I don't think my speculations represent spoilers either, but if you'd rather not hear what I think I'd skip to the next paragraph. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what Murakami was trying to say while I read--it only took an hour or so to read this--but since then I've been wondering. Maybe libraries represent education, learning, and/or empirical data vs. spiritual understanding. Perhaps that's why a spirit arrives; to provide guidance. The kind of guidance book larnin' alone can't give us. If so, is that why cannibalism? Our minds being filled with information only to sate the consumption demands put upon us by other, similarly 'educated' people? Or maybe the lesson is: we should be careful what we choose to learn so that we aren't being programmed against our will. A call to think for ourselves. Even when it comes to thinking about WHAT we think about. Not sure if that's it or not, but these seem like interesting questions in any case. yeah, that was me patting me on the back for being so deep

So I would read this book if I were you. If you see it in the library, you could just find a comfy spot and read it right there. and Then get something else Murakami wrote and take it home.



* Originally titled Toshokan kitan and published in six arts in 1982 in a periodical, and later published as a complete novella titled Fushigi na toshokan, according to this Murakami translation blog.

library as third place

In his popular book, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg gives us this idea of a 'third place' as a place we can gather, talk, socialize and build community. If your home and those you live with are your first place, and your workplace and co-workers are your second, your third place is the place you go to exchange ideas, spend time, think, and talk. Together.

image: Stanford University's Peer Community of universities in graph form, from the  Stanford University Libraries Digital Humanities, used without permission.

This is not a book review. I have yet to read Oldenburg's book myself,  but I understand the concept. Its not that hard after all; Oldenburg is essentially telling us something we already know instinctively. But by drawing our attention to this third place, and discussing how it fulfills a critical function in society, he has raised this term to the level of a generally accepted nomenclature in fields of study such as urban planning. And lots of examples are cited, from pubs to coffee houses to churches to barber shops. In fact, coffee houses are often cited as the incubator of the Age of Enlightenment across Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. There are even some geeks out there talking about--and using--virtual third places. The point is, these are spaces we need, and if we don't have them, we make them.

I've done some projects in Western Massachusetts for towns that are strictly residential. There is no general store, no gas station, no coffee shop, or pub. I hear stories from the people there who tell me, in all seriousness, that they see their friends and neighbors once-a-week and the transfer station. Yeah... the dump. This is a public place; its outdoors, and normally open for a few hours each week on a weekend, and that's where people chat, catch up, trade gossip, and share town information, and lots of times there is a place for swapping items that a little too good to throw away. I know of one small public library that gets lots of their puzzles from theirs.

Which is a good segue to my question: why aren't public libraries included in the normal list of 'third place' examples? It seems like a natural. Even those small towns I talked about have a church, temple, synagogue, etc. where people can gather; and religious facilities are often included on the list of third places, even though they aren't strictly, in my opinion, a third place unless you consider their extra-curricular activities such as social hour. The library doesn't have the structured worship that calls for the attention of its attendees on a particular subject, patrons are free to do what they choose, making it perfectly suited to be our third place. The only thing I can think of is a mostly outdated notion that the library is a quiet place, and not meant for discussion, debate, and the exchange of ideas that make a third place and build community. If this is really the case, we need to fix that.

I agree that especially in world where connectivity, increased pace of living, and the electronic barrage of attention seeking stuff in our lives, having a truly quiet place is important, and I believe that public library can fulfill that roll AND be a vibrant, active and engaging third place. There is no reason why quiet spaces for study, projects, and reading can't live in the same building as noisier activities. In fact, public libraries have always had areas that are louder than others. The entrance, and circulation or information desk, and the surrounding lobby areas of libraries have always been more active and noisy. The opening and closing of doors, foot traffic on the often harder and more durable floor finishes in front of doors, patrons speaking to circulation librarians, hunting through catalogs, whether computerized or (ugh) card! The cafés that have begun to appear in libraries, thanks to forward thinking librarians like Nolan Lushington, have capitalized on this idea, but some libraries have been slow or skittish to adopt them for fear of messes to clean and coffee machines to operate. Automatic coffee machines have been a boon for dispelling this notion, and we are now beginning to see folks sitting at the library, sipping coffee and chatting with their neighbors and friends.

We're almost there, so what else can we do to get the word out? How can we leverage this need to build community into building support and patronage for the library? Outreach. In a recent discussion with several public librarians I was involved in, it was the consensus* that public libraries are poor self-promoters. They do very little advertising, other than on their website or their blog. Some use inexpensive ways to get the word out, such as program notes on bookmarks they make and insert into checked out materials. But  these types of strategies have the same failing: they only reach existing patrons. Who else goes to the library's web site?

I'm not an advertiser, so I'm not sure what the solution is for librarians, but I do know that as patrons we can help at the grassroots level. We can ask our friends and neighbors to meet us at the library. When we say to our friends, do you want to go for a cup of coffee, what are we really asking? We're asking to spend time, to catch up, maintain our connections. The coffee is just a facilitator, and the coffee shop is just a place to meet. Its our third place. Lets take our friends to the library. Our library, or their library. Heck! They may even have coffee there. Or a talk, lecture, author reading, musical program, or learning event. If we're lucky, we may even introduce our friends to the library they didn't know they had.

And establish our library as a third place, and increase its worth in our communities. Its got to be better than the town dump.

* It was the consensus of our discussion group, which included 16 public librarians from 4 states.

snow crash

I got the heads-up on Snow Crash after visiting Christopher Moore's web site. I went looking for Moore's web site after reading his Sacré Bleu. I wanted to send him an email telling him how much I liked it--that is the first and only time I've contacted an author after reading a book--and Moore was kind enough to write back. Moore has Snow Crash listed on his "Chris's Picks 1" page, along with a little blurb about it. I read that and decided I had to read Snow Crash; I've read a few of Neal Stephenson's books, and they were good so what more did I need?

Stephenson seems like a deep thinker to me. He really puts the time into both research and thinking through how his characters react to the world around them. This grounds his plots in reality and gives them weight, which is especially important in SF, where suspension of disbelieve is so critical. I've said this about Neal Stephenson before: he can really work a complex storyline into a manageable read that doesn't get bogged down and really pushes the story along. But the ideas are BIG!

Snow Crash has a definite cyberpunk twang to it, but all of the action doesn't take place in cyberspace, or the Metaverse, as Stephenson calls it. The action happens in the real world and is supplemented by action in the Metaverse. The main protagonist is a katana toting hacker who helped to write the code for the Metaverse, and his sidekick ends up being a skateboard riding courier who takes her chances flying through traffic grappled to moving vehicles.

What's it about? Computer viruses, biological viruses, dissolution of American society, franchise economy, the birth of a super-library, the birth of organized religion, the birth of human language, nuclear testing on aboriginal peoples, the pizza-delivering mafia, and, you know, how all of those things tie together.

Sound crazy? Yes. It is one of my favorite recent reads.

Read this book. Push someone out of the way if you have to.

ebook library?

Lovers of traditional bound books go on about the look, feel, even the aroma of books. The very physicality of them is both pleasing and comforting to traditionalists. But the difference between books and eBooks goes beyond their look, feel and reader interface.

Image: Ed Stein, Rocky Mountain News. Used without permission.

Once a text is unbound, its clearly easier to search, modify, transport, quote, reference, and store; which all seems great for consumer side buy-in. And the buy-in has been tremendous. In early March this year, a Harris Poll found that nearly three in ten Americans (28%) uses an eReader such as the iPad, Kindle or Nook. Up from about 15% the summer before. Yeah, roughly double in about 6 months.

In her recent article for Library Journal, Andromeda Yelton brought up some interesting points about the differences between ebooks and analog, or paper books. you see, right off the bat, I avoided saying 'real' books At issue are the electronic strings attached to these digital texts--strings that lead back to the seller, the publisher, the library... and beyond that, who knows, maybe even the government. She states: "In fact, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, the government does not even need a warrant to seize data in the cloud." I just type it, I didn't independently check to see if its true

One of the article's Yelton cites is Alexandra Alter's Wall Street Journal piece; "Your E-Book Is Reading You" That just sounds creepy, but try this on for size. In the first paragraph, Alter drops this one on us, just to get our attention:

"Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second [Hunger Games Trilogy] book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them."

How does Amazon or Barnes and Noble know these things?

Because your Kindle or Nook told them. But you've already agreed to let them.* I'm pretty sure my books aren't talking to anyone

Non-fiction gets read a little at a time, whereas fiction books are read straight through. Didn't like a book and gave up on it? They know that too, and where you stopped. And don't highlight or bookmark anything if it may embarrass you, 'cause they're keeping track of that too. what if I was doing research? are they copying marginal notes people make? ugh

Interesting, right? But maybe more important is the lack of library in the ebook equation. That's library as an idea I'm talking about now. Library as a repository of ideas, a storehouse of knowledge. I know what you're thinking, electronic data is easier to keep, maintain, access, search, add meta-data to, sure, I hear you, but that's not what's going on with ebooks right now. They just sit out there in the cloud, and libraries--public or private--just have access to them.

According to Amazon, the Kindle 3 holds about 4 gig, which translates to about 3500 books, but if you start getting close to 1000, the performance starts to suffer. Sounds like a lot, but I've owned more books than that in my life, and I'm sure my public library is holding something like 100,000 volumes; and none of them is an ebook.

Barbara Fister who writes the Library Babel Fish blog on Inside Higher Ed, explains the problem with not having your data on hand this way: "materials that were publicly available in a pre-web state tended to evade notice; web access is wonderful, but it exposes things." And exposure makes folks nervous, and nervous folks tend to block access. When libraries had all of their material sitting on the shelves, your access, as a patron of the library, was limited only to the operating hours of the library building. I know: its so... analog. And the internet is always open, right?

Wrong. In fact, Fister's titled her blog entry: "The Library Vanishes - Again."

Relying on the internet, the Cloud, or some other off-site-and-out-of-your-control server farm to store your data is not what public libraries are traditionally built on. Preservation of data is also a hallmark of public library service. And how do you preserve data that you don't physically have?

In a blog post last Monday at the newly formed Digital Public Library of America, Carly Boxer summarizes the issue this way: "what happens if our desire to access digital records outlives the financial viability of the company storing them?" In fact, her piece is driven by fears which arose in the wake of superstorm Sandy, citing this horrifying example: the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York, which stores digital artworks, was flooded during Hurricane Sandy, and much of their digital archive was damaged and is now undergoing an emergency preservation and restoration process.

Its a little clunky, and definitely old-fashioned, but the way libraries have traditionally stored and preserved hard copies helped to defend against this type of threat. But library buildings are like any other building and they can also be flooded, burned, and knocked down, but the beauty in the system is redundancy. Lots of little libraries have similar holdings, and if one library is damaged, many, if not all of the materials reside elsewhere. That, and it takes a lot longer for a book to reach a point when it can't be read any longer. Not so with digital files. Anyone still have their resume from 1995 stored on a floppy disk?

The bottom line is: we're stuck with books; at least some of them. Even if old, out-of-print materials are scanned and digitized, any book or other printed document that has any historic interest or value will still need to be preserved. Its just the way we do.

So I am just a hold out? An older guy who still remembers the look and feel of books from my younger days? A sentimentalist? Yeah, I guess so. And I understand that I (along with folks like me) am not going to stop the influx of eReaders and other digital text advances. Frankly, I don't want to. I just think the jury is out on how we're storing, distributing, and using these technologies. Libraries, thankfully, have our interests at heart, and are helping to lead the charge.

I want to get lost in a book. I love how a good story take us away from where we are, and help us to see things in new and interesting ways. And I don't think John Green is alone in saying: “A novel is a conversation between a reader and a writer.” That's certainly the way I feel about it too, and I'm not ready to have some big tech company or publisher eavesdropping on that conversation, taking notes, and using that information to sell me things.

Feels like a need a shower. that's still private, right? ...amazon?

Update: Check out this chart which provides some info on who's keeping track of your eReading habits and how, thanks to Cindy Cohn and Parker Higgins over at Electronic Frontier Foundation.

* Section 4(a) of the Nook Terms of Use: "Privacy. You agree that we may use, collect and share information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Without limitation, we will collect, use and/or disclose information regarding you and your use of your NOOK and the Service in order to: (i) provide the Service to you; (ii) permit you to engage in activities that you initiate through the Service, such as purchasing Digital Content and reviewing products; and (iii) analyze, operate, support, maintain and improve your NOOK or the Service. We reserve the right to make changes to our Privacy Policy at any time" 

sour apples

This is not the kind of book I normally read, but this copy of Sour Apples came to me through an interesting connection. My office had a booth at this year's New England Library Association conference in Sturbridge, Mass, and just across the aisle from us was a booth for Sisters in Crime New England, who had a number of their authors there during the conference, signing books and doing give-aways.

During a slow point, a woman from the Sisters in Crime came over to say hello and ask about the new public library we had designed for Granby, Mass. The woman was Sheila Connolly, the author of Sour Apples, and she told me that some of her stories were based in a fictional Massachusetts town, called Granford, modeled on Granby.

Connolly knew a lot about Granby from her research, and was very interested to hear about the library design. We also talked about some of the other buildings in town, including the buildings owned by the Historical Society.

On the last day of the conference, she gave us a copy of her book, telling us it was one of those set in Granby's fictional counterpart.

Sour Apples is a murder mystery set in a small town, where things like murder don't seem to be possible. Meg Corey is somewhat new in town, and has taken over her family's recently restored apple orchard, and is making a go of it as a farmer. When Meg hears that a local dairy farmer was found dead next to a partially milked cow, some things just don't add up, so she decides to look into it herself, with some help from her beau, Seth, one of the local selectmen.

The mystery unfolds bit-by-bit as Meg digs into it, and even though the local police think she's on a wild goose chase, she sticks with it, and helps to uncover the truth.

This book was fun to read, and not just because it was fun to pick out the places in town I've seen or been to. Connolly has an easy-to-read writing style, which I'm guessing may be fueled by coffee. (Meg loves coffee, she must have made two pots a day for a week!) There are even recipes in the back, including something called Apple Custard Cake. I bet it goes great with coffee

Thanks to Sheila Connolly for this book! It was nice to meet you, and make sure you come to the grand opening of the new library.

what's next at the library

Knowledge media is ubiquitous, complex, and growing at a pace that outstrips the most hardened and voracious philomath. Yet libraries continue to be our gateways to information, news, and reading material, in what is referred to by many as the most democratic institution ever conceived.

Image: School of Athens, Raffaello Sanzo, at the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

But with so much information available online, and the first computer savvy generation now filling in the lower tiers of the economy here in the States, what else can libraries do to remain relevant, while also continuing to provide services they have traditionally provided for their patrons?

I've put together a small sampling of the interesting things going on in libraries, just to get the ball rolling. The limit of what libraries can provide in the future, is really only limited by our collective imagination, but we need to want to go there, and we need to be the ones to keep that ball rolling. There are too many naysayers who would have us all believe that libraries are no longer relevant, if only because they haven't been to the library in 30 years*, and they have no idea what librarians are up to.

How to videos... at the library.
Need to know the best way to find scholarly articles for your term paper? Don't quite remember how to format a bibliography? Curious WHY doing your research at the library is BETTER than doing it on your computer at home? Talk to the folks at Coastal Carolina University's Kimbel Library, or just take a look at their in-house produced videos. really. clickey-click and take a look. fantastic stuff.

That's right. They are generating the content at the library to help their students use the library more effectively, and do better in school. you know you can right-click to open linkage in a new tab, and keep this window fresh and intellectually stimulating, right?

Fab Lab
So, you think you might like to make something at the library? Video? Podcast? Or perhaps a 3-dimensional printer would be more helpful? That, and much more is available at the Fayetteville Free Library Fab Lab in Fayetteville, New York.

Known by other names such as hackerspaces or tech shops, fab labs give folks the tools to create physical content at their library. Fayetteville Executive Director, Sue Considine, sees the library's stated mission to provide free and open access to ideas and information, in simple, but powerful terms: "...our philosophy is that libraries exist to provide access to opportunities for people to come together to learn, discuss, discover, test, create."

You've invented the next million dollar widget. Now go to the library and build it!

Fab Lab open house on April 14, 2012. Go get 'em Sue.

Guitars in the library
Patrick Sweeney, Branch Manager of the East Palo Alto Library, in Cali, had a dream: provide guitar lessons for anyone who wants to learn. Interested, but maybe you don't have a guitar? No problem, the library will lend you one. Volunteers teach the lessons, which happen pretty much every Saturday.

The guitars hang on the wall, labeled and cataloged, and each has a RFID tag. You can take one for 8 weeks, renew online, bring it back when you're done. They've got like, 6 of them!

Gando Library
We know libraries build community, and communities build libraries, but it isn't always as hands on as in Gando. Gando Village, in Burkina Faso is the home of architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, who now practices in Berlin. Local labor, local materials, and community assistance make for a library that will serve the village needs, provide a way to improve lives and will be maintainable due to the skills the villagers learned building their own library.

What can you do with a clay pot?

iPads for Preschoolers
What can a 2-year-old learn with an iPad? How to draw, colors, alphabet... you name it. In Houston, Texas that's just what they're doing letting toddlers fool with iPads.

Sandy Farmer, the youth services manager at the Houston Public Library, says this: "An iPad is interactive. You touch it, you turn it and it does things. Kids understand this very well. There are tons of apps out there for young children — alphabet, colors, maps... It's an opportunity for kids to sit down and learn in a unique way."

What's Next?

As I said in an earlier post, public libraries are ours. And what they will become is up to us. As library patrons, as librarians, and even for folks like me, who in our other lives, actually design public library buildings.

What else can we do? Good question. And there are lots of smart folks working on that. The Pew Research Center, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, started a 3 year, $1.4 million research project at the end of last year, as part of Pew's Internet & American Life Project.

Jill Nishi, deputy director of U.S. Libraries and Special Initiatives, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says, “As technologies advance, people in our communities increasingly rely on digital information to find opportunities to improve their lives. We must make sure public libraries, which are critical community technology hubs, keep pace with that change and give patrons access to the resources they need.” And I'm right there with you.

In the meantime what can we do in our own libraries? Today. Right now.

What new ideas are coming to fruition at your library? What dreams do you have for what is possible at the library?

Please post your ideas below.

* These are the people that are standing up in town meetings all across America, and voting against libraries, and library funding! These folks obviously don't understand that you can't learn everything there is to know with a Google search and a couple of clicks through Wikipedia!

library material

Its not yours... its ours.

Soon, the question may not be so much about how we catalog, access, store and generally treat library materials, the question may be a much simpler one: what library materials?

It is true that information that was once contained only in books is becoming more and more digitized, resulting in the very material-ness of information slowing fading into the past. But the time when all of the physical items that we store in, and lend out of our libraries, evaporates into memory, is not here yet.

In the meantime, we have library materials. Analog, baby. But its not just books anymore, and I'm sure we all know that, but what seems to have escaped us as a public-library-using society, is that even though the materials have changed, the way we use them has not.

But it should.

Books, frankly, can take a beating. On the surface, books seem pretty delicate. They're made of paper (generally) and other natural materials, easily ripped, folded, or marked up. They are susceptible to broken bindings, lost pages, water damage, rot, and even flames. But walk into your local library and you'll easily find volumes that are 30, 50, even 100 years old. Standing in stodgy defiance of our notions of their delicacy, they are still readable, and as fully functional as the day they were added to the collection. What differs today, is the more modern technologies used to deliver library content. These newer materials are certainly new-fangled and very techie, but seldom are they as durable as a 50-year-old book.

Books are easy: You can drop a book on the coffee table, throw it in your bag, read it at the beach, even set it on the sand. Try that with a DVD. Or a Kindle. Good luck! I'm not complaining about these new technologies, I love them! actually, I don't love ereaders. * I just wish they worked when I take them home from my library. But they don't work, because they've been damaged by careless handling.

Did you get a little of that popcorn grease on the book you took out of the library? Or did you drop it on the floor in the dark, and then kick it? While this may be a problem if everyone does it to library books, the truth is, if it does happen now and again, we can still all read and enjoy that book. Not so with a DVD, CD and maybe even an eReader. You need to be MORE careful with these materials, because unlike our old (old!) friend, the book, info-tech delivery systems are typically delicate.

You like to eat a bag of Cheetos, or a bucket of KFC while watching a movie? Have at it. But wash your hands before smearing up the DVD. Grease will wash off, but it also attracts dust and dirt, which can scratch, and scratches don't wash off. And that's bad.

you may be confusing DVDs with hockey pucks.
hint: hockey pucks are black.

And don't think you can just set a disk down, just for a second, on your coffee table, which is really, really clean! Because it isn't, and you won't, and it it will get ruined, and you know it will. Can't find the box it came in? Put it back in your player, put down your Funyuns and find it. This level of responsibility is what you agreed to when you borrowed this material from the library. Its an implied contract that you've made with the library and all of its users (us!) So do your job.

Here's some advice from the Kindle Fire User's Manual:

"...glass could break if the device is dropped or receives a substantial impact. If the glass breaks, chips, or cracks, stop using your Kindle Fire and do not touch or attempt to remove the damaged glass."

Ooooo... yeah, you're done. Oh, and don't leave it where it could get hot or cold, like in your car. Because its not a book, and when you do, you could ruin it.

And its not yours... its ours.

* I might love eReaders; I don't know, I've never used one.

bookmark this

This one is a hoot!

This bookmark is from Highsmith, copyright 1992. So, in computer years, those beige bombers are from like... 228 years ago! If you'll step into the WABAC Machine Sherman, we'll just zip back to 1992 and see what was happening in Computerland in 1992.

According to Computer Hope, a bunch of crap happened that was cool and zippy, and then encoded in meaningless acronyms so you or I will never understand it. Some of things I could understand included: Microsoft introduced Windows 3.1, and it sold more than 1 million copies within the first two months of its release, and IBM introduced the ThinkPad with a 25 MHz 486 processor and a 120 MB hard drive! Yeah, I can feel the power.

Does ANYONE have a computer like this sitting around anymore? With a fat 386 processor, and a black and white CRT? Awesome.

Libraries Compute, indeed.

guerilla library

Today's Boston Globe includes an article on the library that's been set up in the Occupy Boston camp at Dewey Square. Sorry about the link, but The Globe no longer supports the poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. You have to pay.

Its called the Audre Lorde to Howard Zinn Library, or the A-Z Library, for short. The Occupy Boston Wiki has a page for this, their tent city library, which has some helpful info, like what to do if there is no librarian on duty, where else you can find information, and how to ask a question.

According to the Globe article (print version) there was a library in New York's Occupy Wall Street encampment, which was discarded when the protestors were evicted by the city. The ALA apparently didn't like what they called the "dissolution of a library", and came out in a statement against the police action, calling it "unacceptable".

The A-Z Library at Occupy Boston is housed in an 11-foot-square military surplus tent, strung with a few reading lamps and a twinkling of Christmas lights. There are over 1000 volumes available to read and borrow, and help is available from volunteer librarians and library science students; folks like Radical Reference and the Simmons Progressive Librarians Guild.

According to the Globe, most Occupy movements have a library (there are some 900 ongoing or intermittent protests worldwide) and they start up organically. yeah! get some! The A-Z Library in Boston was started by John Ford, who owns an alternative bookstore called The Metacomet (pronounced metə 'kämit *) in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He brought the military tent, some old shelving and a few hundred volumes. The rest of the books come from donations.

Clearly, people have a visceral and unquenchable need for a library. The Audre Lorde to Howard Zinn Library is providing what the people need; not just books, but a place to go, to talk, to learn, to escape, to play. In their statement against the destruction of the Peoples Library at Occupy Wall Street library, the ALA stated that "Libraries serves as the cornerstone of our democracy and must be safeguarded."

The library is idea-cum-reality. People living in tent cities, trying to make the world a better place, create these places from the ether and raw will, because they need to.

That's guerrilla library.

* The Metacomet is named after a the war chief, or sachem of the Wampanoag. Metacomet was also known as Metacom or King Philip. He was the second son of Massasoit. After some manhandling by the Plymouth Colony folks, war broke out: King Philip's War.

lizard of oz

Here is a story by a local author, written in 1974. I remember reading this book not long after it came out, after being turned on to it by my older sister. She had read it based, I think, on the recommendations of her friends. She had borrowed it from the library, and when she returned it, I went to the library and searched for it. Years later I still remembered the characters, and even some of the illustrations. I wanted to read it again, but couldn't remember the title. When I asked my sister, she didn't recall what the book was. The fragments I remembered, with the help of the internets, finally gave me what I was looking for.

The Lizard of Oz, by Richard Seltzer you should click here and see what Seltzer is up to is a modern day fairytale (or was in 1974). Seltzer tells in the afterword how he started the book in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, and finished it over the next few years, finally hiring a recent UMass graduate, Christin Couture, to illustrate the story. The illustrations are what I remembered most about the story.

The story itself is a morality tale; a collection of re-tellings of other myths and fables--laced together with puns and Couture's illustrations--in that outlandish genre popular in the early 70s that gave us Yellow Submarine, Charlie & Chocolate Factory, and its movie adaptation, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and the animated version of The Hobbit. You know what I'm talking about: that late, hippiesque, psychedelic, zany genre that was pretty popular with the toke and giggle crowd.

Seltzer has a serious message hidden in the story about making sure we don't lose our grip on what it means to live an 'enchanted' life, and he illustrates it by recalling to mind all of those other myths and fables we all know, and reminding us, that these stories are all telling us the same thing, regardless of their individual morals. The quest, taken up by a small elementary school class from Winthrop, along with their teachers, a green Volkswagen Beatle, and their talking fish, is to rediscover the magic that's ebbing away from our modern lives, and bring it back to us, before its too late.

And talking bacon. Angry, talking bacon... who also happens to be the public librarian.

accessibility article

I wrote an article for Library Journal's Library By Design supplement: its packaged with the magazine 4 times a year, so this was the fall issue.

The process was fun: I sent in an article about providing access for all, in the public library, and how complicated it can be to that do in an historic library. I worked with an editor who asked me to do a re-write to include an example of one of our building projects, so I chose the Haston Free Public Library in North Brookfield, MA.

I won't get into the nitty-gritty here, go read the article, yo!

geek

I am a geek. I'm not ashamed. I geek out about a lot of things: technology, science, etymology, philately, bookmarks, books, and libraries, to name a few.

But I'm not alone, especially in this last one. Now there is geekthelibrary.org. From their web site:

Geek\Verb. 1: To love, to enjoy, to celebrate, to have an intense passion for. 2: To express interest in. 3: To possess a large amount of knowledge in. 4: To promote.

‘Geek the Library’ is a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries in today’s challenging environment and raise awareness about the critical funding issues public libraries face.

What's not to love about that. The campaign has a bunch of materials you can purchase, or download to get your library involved. And you can even input what you geek on their site, like I did (that's the image right there, man! woo hoo, I'm somebody now!)

Backers of this thing are OCLC, funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

What do you geek?