Bedtime Stories

Sleepless is a collaborative project between London's Great Eastern Hotel and the students from the Royal College of Art's Design Product department. The goal of the project is to enrich the experience of the hotel's guests and make their stay more than just a place to spend the night.

Tiago da Fonseca's contribution is a multi-layered experience titled Bedtime Stories.

"Once upon a time there was a blanket. This blanket had several sheets containing a traditional bedtime story. Each "page" adds a layer of linen making you warmer (or cooler) and comfier hopefully guiding you and your partner into a pleasant night's sleep" is how she sums it up.

Brilliant. Maybe one day you will be able to request the bedtime story that adorns your room and who knows maybe a whole new industry of print on demand for linens is just around the corner.

Thanks to bookblog for the lead

Craig Does Like Newspapers. A Brief Chat with the Founder of Craigslist

Newmark started Craigslist 12 years ago in his San Francisco apartment where he created an online platform for his friends to basically help each other out. Now there are people helping each other out in 450 cities in 50 countries claiming over 7 billion hits a month.

In a previous post I responded to a few comments made by Newmark at the recent Newspaper Association of America annual convention in New York. One of the comments was that he has a ""great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed." Based on the current state of things for newspapers, after all this was right in the midst of the save the book review mania, I saw this as another canary in the coal mine for our beloved newspapers.

In a recent post on his blog he said this:

"a few reports took my statement that 'people running press are screwed' in some figurative way, not straight, and I don't get that"

This week I had a chance to talk to Craig in a little more depth on this issue.

Newmark has admitted that Craigslist "does drain some revenue from some papers that rely on ads" but he does not believe it has much more than a "minor effect."

So what about the relationship between craigslist and the current newspaper woes?

"There is no correlation" between Craigslist and the struggling newspapers Newmark told me and his hope is that newspapers improve not disappear. He would like them to invest more in their investigative reporting and to "speak truth to power" more.
They also have to make the necessary adjustments to deal with the shift in the delivery of information that is underway and improve their online presence.

Use less paper and provide stronger original content.

Can't argue with that.



Here is a good Q&A with Craig at I Want Media

The Gotham Incident

I can't wait to get the whole story on this one. It already sounds like one of the worst bookstore endings on record.

Here are the gorey details of the court-ordered Gotham Book Mart auction:

-It cost $1000 just for the right to attend
-The auction started an hour late
-There was no catalog of the items
-There were no lot numbers
-Prospective buyers had less than an hour to look through a bookstore that has been around since 1920!“You buy them blind,” is how one of auctioneer employees put it
-Right before the auction began most of the prime material was pulled from the sale
-Finally, the landlord of the building, the man who is owed all the money that began this mess was the highest bidder.

This sounds like an absolute horror show. Book Noir. I wouldn't be surprised if the attendees file a class action lawsuit citing biblio-abuse against the auctioneer and the city.

It is hard to believe it came to this. The real tragedy here is that the ending might become as legendary as the beginning for this literary landmark.

In many respects the Gotham Book Mart was our version of the legendary Shakespeare & Company of Paris, a hub and a safety net for the greatest writers of the day. A place were the banned literature was allowed to live and prosper. Ideas could roam free.

What do we take away from this maddening event?

How can we protect these literary establishments?

How about when a legendary bookshop changes hands and keeps the same name, whether it is purchased by a family member or not, it is in the sale agreement that there is a review every 5 years to see if it has kept up. Have the review board be made up of the customers, employees, fellow booksellers, and writers who are intimately familiar with the store. If they don't make the cut they have to change the name of the shop. Of course once anything changes hands it is altered but a determination of whether the spirit of the shop remains can still be made.

How often to we have to see these bookshops that were once so vibrant and so crucial to the communities they serve change hands and simply survive off their legend. In the end it is an injustice to the proprietors who gave their all to make these places happen and when it was time for them to move on it is hard to imagine that they simply took the money and ran with no regard for what they left behind.


Links
Scott Brown at the Fine Books blog has in-depth coverage
New York Times piece on the auction Wall-to-Wall Books and All of Them for the Landlord
The New York Post take Shelf-Destruct

Reader in the Tub

You hear it all the time from us traditional book defenders and many times it is the first arrow we throw. Margret Atwood threw it at the recent London Book Fair.

- You can't read an e-book in the bathtub!

Well maybe you can.

Chris Steib has recently undertaken "the Ultimate eBook Experiment"

His contestants:

A paperback copy of Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 and A Sony Reader.

Steib puts each through a rigorous 6 step program that runs from "functionality" testing to submersion in water dressed in GLAD Cling wrap.


The clear winner:

The Sony Reader. The Reader would have swept the competition if it wasn't so expensive.

Just wait, in a few years they will give you the reader for free if you commit to buying a certain amount of e-books a month.

Then what?



Steib's also has a quality review of the Sony Reader titled Tech Review: the Sony eBook Reader

He is also editor in chief of the very intriguing Void Magazine "a free web-based publication devoted to serving the needs of today's ever-evolving literary community by facilitating an ongoing literary conversation."

Biblio-Ceramics: The Work of Steven M. Allen

Allen's medium of choice is recycled newspapers and magazines that are mixed with a slurry of reclaimed clay.

He then turns these newly formed newspaper pages into pages of books, globes, mechanical components and human figures. From these four recurring elements his work is born and Allen's exploration of the "impact of information, technology, knowledge and globalization on both individual and universal levels" begins. His goal is to "recontextualize contemporary issues inspired by articles in the same recycled newspapers and magazines."

In his work one can see how books form the foundation of Allen's attempt to make sense of the world.

New World
Fruits of Labor


Agents of Change

one also gets a sense of the tremendous weight of knowledge and the struggle to create something positive from its pursuit.

Another theme Allen works with is the global ramifications of a knowledge based society.

In Allen's recent piece Allowances and Tolerances he takes a "common term used in machining to define the permissible limit of variation and brings it into a social context. The text is taken from the Machinist’s Handbook and combined with text from Will Durant’s The History of Civilization. It is brought together in one book to make a comment on the global need for societal and cross-cultural tolerance."

I asked Allen about this combining of history of technology to illuminate the need for global tolerance and he offered this "Allowances and Tolerances is the first of what might be a series of pieces that take terminology from technology handbooks and bring them into a social context. I was a machinist for many years and was struck by machining terms that have a different social meaning when taken out of context. I am all for more tolerance in the world."





And then there is Grandpa which is a distinct departure from his other work. Here the book is alone and not entwined with other symbolism. It is more of a book art piece. The dominate image being a tractor and a number of pages suspended in the air. It lacks the struggle inherent in his other pieces this sort of idyllic agrarian imagery, with the wavy pages (amber waves of grain) and the tractor imagery seems out of place. Allen says of this piece "Grandpa is a piece of my own history. When I think of my grandpa, I think of the Ford tractor he used to ride around on...The book started from a photograph I took of his tractor, then I added some images and text I found online to supplement it. I considered sculpting a tractor to move through the pages the way the globe does in other pieces , but ultimatelty wanted the images on the pages to be unobstructed."


Steven M. Allen's website
Clay's Flickr page

The Military Side of Barnes & Noble

This is the headline from the company's press release:

Barnes & Noble Donates Books, Toys And Games Valued At $3.4 Million, To Military Charities
Bookstore Joins America Supports You Team at Andrews AFB Joint Service Open House
Y3K Grafix and Penske Logistics Truck Goods Across the Country.

and from CEO Marie Toulantis:

“On behalf of all the booksellers at Barnes & Noble, we thank America Supports You for this opportunity to express our support to our fellow Americans,”

It sounds like as grand a patriotic gesture as one could hope for from a corporation.

But could it be so noble?

This is the how we got there:

Barnes & Noble decides to close their 38,000 square foot Memphis warehouse as part of a consolidation effort. 200 employees lose their jobs.

Typically, instead of incurring the expense of redistributing the merchandise to other Barnes & Noble locations they donate the books, toys and games to a local charity and take the write-off.

Luckily, one of those getting laid off was a former Marine and knew about the Department of Defense program America Supports You which connects "citizens and corporations with military personnel and their families serving at home and abroad."

The inventory was given to them and then 2 transportation companies take it all over the country.

The headline could of read:

Barnes & Noble closes Memphis warehouse
Barnes & Noble writes off $3.4 Million of inventory
Barnes & Noble joins America Supports You, a Department of Defense program
Someone else comes and does all the work

Then their first act as an "official America Supports You corporate supporter" is to set the military up as an affiliate, build them a "special website" www.BN.com/asy and give them 5% of every sale.

Only in today's America could putting two hundred people out of work be twisted into a patriotic gesture.

"Bookselling giant Barnes and Noble opened a new chapter in its history today by announcing a donation of 300,000 items to America Supports You" was the lead sentence of the American Forces Press Service press release.

I am not sure if this is a chapter I would want to open. Forget what's going on in the bookselling world, with all that is going on with the current administration and the war in Iraq this might not be the best time to align yourself with the Department of Defense.

What's Your Candidate Reading?

In a recent post I mentioned that I thought it would be a good idea for the Presidential candidates to create a page on one of the book focused social network sites like Shelfari or Librarything.

Having a look at what books are in their library would definitely help me decide who to vote for.

Well we are getting closer. The AP just asked all the candidates this question:

What is the last work of fiction you've read?

Here is what they said. Expectedly, "several named nonfiction books instead...And a few couldn't resist taking political shots with the question."

DEMOCRATS

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: "Runaway Jury" by John Grisham.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd: "The Broker" by John Grisham.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: "Exile" by Richard North Patterson.

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich: "Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: "The administration's energy plan."

REPUBLICANS

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback: "The Dream Giver" by Bruce Wilkinson with David and Heather Kopp.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: "The Beach House" by James Patterson and Peter De Jonge.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: "My oldest son's screenplay."

California Rep. Duncan Hunter: "The Democrats' proposal to balance the budget."

Arizona Sen. John McCain: "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: "Term Limits" by Vince Flynn.

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo: "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore.

Former senator Mike Gravel (D-AK), former governor Tommy Thompson (R-WI), former governor Jim Gilmore (R-VA), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) did not answer.


Thanks to PhiloBiblos for the AP lead

Simon & Schuster on a Slippery Slope with New Long Tail Approach

In a move that will surely rattle the already shaky publishing world Simon & Schuster has added a bit of text to their standard author contract that will "allow Simon & Schuster to consider a book in print, and under its exclusive control, so long as it's available in any form, including through its own in-house database -- even if no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores."

A much longer author noose is the last thing the industry needs.

With the advent and broader acceptance of print on demand technology S&S would like to retain their authors rights forever. I suspect most of the other major publisher's are waiting to follow suit. Keep in mind both Random House and HarperCollins have announced major digital initiatives in the last few months.

The irony here is that with the growth of p.o.d. there is actually less need for the existing publishing cartel. This just might turnout to be the straw that breaks the back of the traditional publishing model.

With all these changes we also need to come with some new terminology. Out of Print (OP) simply doesn't work in this context.

What we are talking about here are books that are still living in the publishers database and not available in print form. They are - Alive but Out of Print - (ABOP)

The Author's Guild has responded by issuing an alert to their members and telling them to steer clear of S&S.

The take from the blogosphere:

Booksquare - Simon & Schuster Change the Rules: Goodbye Reversion of Rights!
GalleyCat - Controversy Over Changes to S&S's Boilerplate
PersonaNonData - New Rules on Out of Print

Book Prayer

Worshipers at Jimbocho, Tokyo's book district, home to over 100 bookshops.


Image 1 courtesy perke
Image 2 courtesy aptronym

Shelfitis: A Strain of Bibliomania

David McKie's piece in the Guardian today "My obsession with spines" deals with a strain of bibliomania that affects many of us book types. The need to know what is on the shelf behind that person in the picture. He talks about recent images in the Guardian and his desire to identify all the titles lurking on the shelves in the background.

He calls it a "form of voyeurism, a lust to discover guilty secrets."

Like McKie whenever I visit someone's home it is the books on the shelf that grab my attention not the furniture, not the kitchen appliances but the books.

It is also very distracting to watch television interviews with books as a backdrop. My attention is alway divided between listening and scanning the shelves. I am hoping that when television gets a bit more interactive my curiosity will be quelled by a simple click.

Shelfari should offer this option for its users:
Instead of only seeing all the titles from your library face out why not an option of a spine shot of the collection for us incurables?


Image of inside of Ophelias Books in Seattle taken by brewbooks

Voters Reject Levy to Fund Jackson County Libraries. The Dark Ages Remain

The voters of Jackson County have overwhelmingly defeated the levy that would have reopened their public libraries.

By a large margin the citizens of Jackson county refused to raise their property taxes to ensure the functioning of a public library system.

From the Save Our Libraries website:

A Dark Day...

Thank you to all who voted to support Jackson County Libraries. The failure of ballot measure 15-75 marks a dark day in the history of our county. Nevertheless, our citizens and library supporters can be proud of a campaign filled with honesty, passion, and courage; a campaign that told the truth on behalf of thousands of children, seniors, and all those who treasure the democracy that provides access to information for all.

We have troubled days ahead. Nevertheless, we urge you to hold fast to the reasons we struggled to re-open our libraries. Those reasons remain essential to restore a community of hope, a community of justice, a community of literacy. Now, more than ever, we need the courage and strength you demonstrated so generously as we campaigned together for an institution that lies at the very foundation of democracy.

The libraries have been closed now for 40 days.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this madness "It is always a tough proposition, no matter what the issue, to ask people who don't have enough money to begin with to raise their own taxes."

I encourage you to read my last post on the issue to get a better sense at how this came to be in the first place and that the ultimately responsibility for this tragedy rests in Washington, D. C. and not in Jackson County, Oregon.

If you are a friend, supporter or employee of any library in this country it is time to contact your politicians and let them know that what is going on in this Southern Oregon county is unacceptable and reflects poorly on our nation as a whole.

Article in the Mail Tribune on the vote

Independents and Community. It's More than Economic Impact

A couple of weeks ago the San Francisco Retail Diversity Study was released. The goal was "to provide consumers and policy makers with an understanding of the economic benefits of redirecting spending from chains to independents."

The study, sponsored in part by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), concluded that " independent retailers as a whole -- bring far more economic value to their communities than do chain stores."
This is far from rocket science. Owners of independent businesses tend to live in or around the communities in which their business operates while the corporate chain store tends to feed the minimum wage to the locals who work there while siphoning off the real money for their shareholders who don't give a damn where a store is located as long at it makes money. Then you throw in the online e-tailers who gobble up the dollars from the community and replace it with cardboard boxes and shipping airbags.

Here is what the study found spending 10% more at the local independent will do:

It "would result in an increased economic input of approximately $3.8 million, 25 additional jobs, $1.3 million in new income for workers, and almost $325,000 in additional retail activity.

Only a subtle shift would make a difference.

Also, what the study does not include is the economic impact of local independent used bookshops.

What about when some of those new books flooding the community from the chains and online e-tailers are sold to the local independent used bookshops?

Well, it puts money in the pockets of the people who sell the book and when the book is sold it puts money in the state's pocket through sales tax (selling your books to Half-Price Books doesn't count because they are a chain based in Texas and the money they offer for your books borders on criminal).

The other measurement needing some exploration is the social and creative costs of the disappearing independent bookstore.

Jed Birmingham's recent piece "Burroughs and Bookstores" over at RealityStudio, the all things William Burroughs website, illuminates the role of many independent bookshops. Feeding off of Bill Reed's memoir Early Plastic Birmingham says "independent bookstores are key locales in a creative community."

"Part employment office, soup kitchen, flophouse, café, and publishing house, the bookstore functions as a communal center like the American Express office in Paris, the barber shop in Harlem, or the general store on Main Street. The role of the bookstore in literary history remains to be explored in full...to my mind, the independent bookstore is an essential institution, one needed for a healthy and happy existence."

RealityStudio also features an expanded version of the chapter in Reed's book Early Plaster that deals with the legendery Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village. A bookstore that was home to the counterculture of the 1960's and 70's. It was fertile ground for the early Beats and is also where the influential Corinth/Totem Press originated.

Reed says:

"Staggering through the aisles of today’s giant bookstores, it’s hard not to imagine that most of the merchandise won’t eventually find its way to the nearest Jersey landfill rather than a reader’s night table."

"Bookstores used to just sell books. And just as importantly, they offered useful information, something nearly impossible to glean from today’s post-literate, cradle-to-grave-minimum-wage chain store clerk."

They were "social and cultural gathering-places where literature took precedence over lattes."

Amen.

Photo by Robert Otter

Bill & Craig's E-Textual Adventure

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Craig Newmark, founder of the seminal classified website Craigslist, weighed in this week with their thoughts on the future of reading and newspapers. These enemies of hard copy were clearly in their print is dead mode.

This years annual convention of The Newspaper Association of America featured Newmark being interviewed by Charlie Rose. A controversial choice to say the least since Newmark's brainchild Craiglist has single-handedly destroyed the classified advertising revenue stream that has fed newspapers for decades.

He spoke of the need for newspapers to use their high profit margins to pay more attention to investigative journalism and reiterated his belief that Craigslist has nothing to do with the death of newspapers mantra that is being sung across the country.

But then he says that he has a "great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed"
"It's not that journalism is becoming obsolete; rather the delivery methods are changing."

So basically newspapers are dead.

While over at the umpteenth Microsoft Strategic Account Summit in Seattle Bill Gates proclaimed that "reading is going completely online." Regarding the printed page vs. the screen battle Gates believes that as soon as the reading machine is perfected the reading of newspapers and magazines will go completely online. Gates sees that happening in the next five years.
And why is reading online better? Because "it's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links."
In other words it becomes more like a BLOG!

Luckily for us book types these proclamations are focused on magazines and newspapers. I trust Bill knows that the book isn't going anywhere.


Editor & Publisher story on Newmark.

Todd Bishop's coverage of Gates at the Summit on his Microsoft blog at the Seattle PI . Don't miss the comments to the post, they are worth every minute.

A Full Service Bookshop

While the traditional bookstore model continues its death spiral I trust there is a core group of booksellers out there who are actively searching for the right combination to ensure both the survival and the success of "the bookshop."

Simply trying to maintain the status quo is a failing proposition (feel free to substitute newspaper book review sections for traditional book store model, they are interchangeable).

The independent bookstore has put up one of the better fights to date of any independent business in our corporate culture but it cannot ultimately win the battle without significant revision. We might have lost half the bookstores in the last 10 years but that is a lot less then our fellow travelers who owned hardware or drugstores. How many of them are left? I have addressed this challenge previously and continue to ponder the possibilities since I for one can't imagine living in a society void of independent businesses.

This brings me to our friends at the Oxford Bookshop.

Since 1920 the Oxford Bookstore has played a major role in the intellectual life of Calcutta and all of Eastern India.

The store offers:

"6000 square feet of multilevel interactive space"
India's first Alternative Art Gallery
Cyber Surf- a internet component that allows customers to use the stores computers for their internet needs. If help is needed the Cyber Surf attendant is at your service
Cha Bar for your tea needs
The reading room "quasi-library like atmosphere" "for those who still cherish the make and feel of paper and bind."
Framing services
Event Space

and now for the icing:

Their website boasts these three sections:

1. Dharma Karma - which includes Soul Food-your guide to better living through the latest mantras. Karma Quirks- "sometimes we are spellbound in an odd way because of the strangeness of what happened to us" Spook Chat and Kama Sutra.

2. Kundali -which includes info on horoscopes, tarot, Feng Shui, and Vaastu

and my favorite

3. Agony Masi - an online therapist who through Agony Mail "will help to find the answers to all your problems" and with Straight Talk will "resolve all your problems on sex life, relationships, careers, family or any other difficulty you might be going through"

How could a bookshop with such robust offerings fail?


Another issue in Indian culture is piracy. The estimated loss to the book industry from Indian piracy last year $36.5 million. The Oxford Bookstore came up with this poster to raise awareness.
The tagline is "Every time you buy a pirated book you disrespect its author" and the image speaks for itself. I am not sure this will raise as much awareness as it will ire.



Thanks to booktwo.org for the piracy lead

Visuals. A Rockwell Kent Design and a Writer's Method

1933, Houghton Mifflin

Jarrett's first novel, a mystery. Follows a book of short stories she wrote under the pseudonym Faraday Keene.

Her book bio includes this :

"Unlike most writers, she thoroughly enjoys every minute she is at work. Her favorite method is to spread her papers over a grand piano and write standing up. This follows a long solitary walk during which she has organized her material"

More Book Review Fodder. Frank Wilson's Epiphany

Frank Wilson, the book review editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and one of the few truly wired book editors was driving home from a Elmore Leonard/ Chuck Palahniuk doubleheader at the library last night when he was struck by this musing on the Palahniuk reading:

"I kept thinking on the way home how newspapers are desperate to attract younger readers, but haven't a clue as to how popular this guy is with just the people they're looking for. Never have I had a greater sense of just how out of touch newspapers have become."

300 people showed up for Leonard and an estimated 900 packed the house for Palahniuk. That's 900 active readers, most under the age of 35. And not only did they show up but they cheered when Palahniuk read one of his stories . "The whole event was the literary equivalent of a rock concert" Wilson said.

In all the desperation surrounding the floundering book review sections there is no plan. The whole battle to save the book review sections is at its core a reactive, reflexive response. It seems like everyone is more interested in hanging on to what they have then evolving with the changing landscape. Of course the ad dollars are dwindling and readership is declining but fighting to to stay where you are is not a winning strategy.

As I mentioned in my post The Book Review Shuffle, if the book review sections are going to survive (and prosper) they need to take a more holistic approach to books and expand their coverage to incorporate the many different facets of the book. Reviews are just a part of book culture.

Frank's full post here

Counterpoint Comes Home

Publishers Weekly reports that the Counterpoint imprint has been purchased by a small group the includes its founder Jack Shoemaker. The imprint had been owned by Perseus who has been busy trying to incorporate their newest bankrupt prize Publishers Group West into their mix. It will now live with Winton, Shoemaker & Co. a newly formed group that includes two of Shoemaker's cornerstone authors Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry.

Originally called North Point Press then Counterpoint and finally Shoemaker and Hoard the press has always published with a social conscience and with integrity. Two attributes that tend to get compromised when publishing under a larger umbrella.
In addition to the high literary standards they are also known for (and should be commended for) their high production values. They make beautiful books.

The very nature of this publisher warrants a small independent team.

Before we get too excited about this enormously positive move remember the Perseus still holds a minority interest in the newly formed company and will be the distributor.

At least it's a move in the right direction.

Links:

Press release announcing the purchase

New York Magazine article on Frank Pearl, the man behind Perseus, which includes his courting of Shoemaker. Pearl's background: law and leveraged buyouts. You can get a sense from this article that this relationship wasn't going to last.

Ron Hogan's 5 Questions With..Shoemaker from 2004 when the Shomaker and Hoard imprint launced

Librarian Couture

Amsterdam's new Central Public Library is set to open in less than two months.

The goal of the new Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam is to become a 21st century "island of knowledge"

They are guided by this beautiful principle:

"The right to information is enshrined in law and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is part of the library's purpose to make these rights a reality. By facilitating the free flow of information the library makes its contribution to a democratic and humane society."

and are well aware of how things work:

"In the 21st century information is synonymous with power. You will notice that if you lack it, -because it's the well informed who have all the advantages and wield the power. The library can provide you with both the source and the access."

They have also decided to have their librarians were uniforms.

Of course there is some resistance to the concept but we're not talking civil service, drive thru threads we're talking Aziz

Here is the 2 minute YouTube fashion show.



There must be some plus-size librarians in Amsterdam.

The library has also opened a new branch in Second Life where I don't think any plus-size avatars exist either.


Thanks to the Dutch libraries blog for the lead

The EPA Library Crisis Returns

On April 26th Congress sent a letter to the EPA to check in on them. They wanted to follow up and make sure that they are complying with their "commitment not to close any additional EPA libraries and not to dispose of any additional EPA materials"

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals and the premier watchdog group on this issue, issued a press release on May 2 titled "EPA Quietly Resumes Dismantling Library System,"
They cite an 'interim policies' document released by the EPA on April 10th which lays out procedures and processes for the continued dispersing of material.

The timing of this document is impeccable. The 90-day moratorium on library closures and material dispersal agreed to by the EPA ended on April 12th.

To be fair we should also mention that the document also warns librarians that “Although it may be tempting to dispose of library materials quickly, the loss of important and unique materials could have serious future consequences if the Agency cannot document scientific findings or enforcement actions.”

There are; however, still some major holes in the plan.

The most glaring being that once an item is digitized it is ok to be dispersed.

Knowing the digital track record of this administration (the electronic voting irregularities of the last couple of elections for one) I would think it unwise to get rid of the hard copy and rely exclusively on a digitized version.

As our Librarian of Congress James H. Billington testified "we will need to make sure digitization is stable and cannot be altered"

The Office of Enforcement and Compliance (OECA) of the EPA also has some issues with the way things are going. Their major concern being the effect these policies will have on prosecuting the major polluters of our world.

I would suggest that until further notice if the EPA libraries want to dispose of something they should contact me and I will arrange for somebody to come and pick it up.

Then when the smoke clears all will not be lost.

Past Book Patrol posts:
February 2007 Head of ALA Testifies Before Congress Regarding EPA Library Closures
December 2006 Save the Libraries-Save the Earth- NOW

Typography of the Flesh

According to a poll done in 2003 by Harris Interactive 16% of all adults have at least one tattoo.

The younger you are the greater the chance you will have one:
25 to 29 years - 36%
30 to 39 years -28%

If you live in the West you are 20% more likely to have tattoos and
and if you are gay there is a 31% chance you have one.

and for the politico's the breakdown is:
Democrats 18%
Republicans 14%
Independents 12%

You wonder if the tattooed independents will ever become a crucial swing vote?

I would also tend to believe that these numbers have risen in the last 4 years.

The point is there are a lot of people writing on their bodies and Ina Saltz's book Body Type: Intimate Messages Etched in Flesh is the first book "devoted entirely to typographic tattoos...from Shakespeare to Radiohead, from Dante to James Joyce, from celebrations of love to homage and memorial, the wide breadth of messages captured provides insight into the human condition."

The book is published by Abrams and includes over 200 photos. In addition to the commentary by Saltz, the people with the tattoos share their stories on the words they chose for their body.

On the image above:

“This was my first tattoo; it represents a personal commitment to evolve, and my general belief in the theory of evolution. The font represents the time we live in, the digital age. Also my belief that technology is evolving to integrate with humans…and vice versa.” Photo: Nicole Dallis

There is a nice website to accompany the book and a solid myspace presence (remember 36% of 25-29).

Saltz is already at work on Volume 2

A Little Light Shines On The Libraries of Jackson County

Now that The New York Times has picked up the story the odds have increased that this nightmare is closer to ending. The exposure can do nothing but help the cause.

William Yardley's piece Timber (and Its Revenues) Decline and Libraries Suffer addresses the ongoing tragedy in this Southern Oregon County which closed all 15 of its libraries due to lack of government funding back in early April.

On May 15th residents of the county head to the poles to raise their property taxes so they can reopen the libraries. A similar measure last November was rejected by the voters and "experts expect the vote to be close" this time around. It is always a tough proposition, no matter what the issue, to ask people who don't have enough money to begin with to raise their own taxes.

There is no reason it should have come to this.

Congress had approved monies in 2000 to cover all the losses the counties ensued due to the country waking up to the real timber crisis (that we are cutting it all down) and reducing the harvest levels.
The program expired under Republican watch last September and was not renewed.

There was also funding to keep things going in the Iraq war spending bill. Bush vetoed that.
The fact that the funding of libraries had anything to do with a war spending bill in the first place is indicative of how sick our political process has become.

"Some officials say the solution is to restore the timber industry." Dennis C. W. Smith, a county commissioner, says the library closings "is a case of the chickens coming home to roost" and blames the environmentalists or the "segment of absolutists that will not tolerate any use of federal lands for timber resources." Obviously Mr. Smith does not use the library.

There are so many astonishing ironies here:

Back in 2000 the residents of Jackson County approved a $35 million bond measure to build or renovate all 15 libraries. None of these monies can be used for operational expenses so while the libraries remain closed the construction and renovations continue.

The county is also home to the town of Ashland whose annual Shakespeare Festival is one of the better ones on the planet. The town has Shakespeare in its bones and consequently is a literate hi-spot of the region yet its library remains dark.

The ALA (American Library Association) has issued a statement regarding this fiasco. Unfortunately, it is addressed to the voters of Jefferson County urging them to vote yes in the upcoming election and not to the powers that be in Washington that got them into this mess in the first place.

All that wasted money in Iraq.

and we can't invest $8 million to keep the libraries functioning in one of our own communities? We have to make the residents of the county, many who are already struggling to make ends meet, choose to raise their property taxes to keep the public library open. Shame on us.

The NBCC petition to save the book review section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution just notch its 5000th supporter. The Save Our Library organization in Jackson County has a little over 800 supporters. We need to turn it up a notch. Surely we have an equal interest in keeping our libraries open as we do in saving our book review sections.

There are 9 days left before this election.

Links:
Save Our Library System website
Click here to add you name to the list of supporters

San Francisco Chronicle article from early March
Oregonian story on closing day

Previous Book Patrol Posts:
March 4. Southern Oregon County to Shut Down Entire Library System
April 8. The Dark Ages Officially Return to Jackson County

A Pre-Computer Guide to the News

Prentice-Hall, 1972. "News: A Consumer's Guide shows you how to cope with the confusion of reports you get each day from the media"

"Among the many features of this book":

-Show how how to tell when a report is biased
-Provide tips on spotting hoaxes and public relation ploys in the news
-Give standards to judge "expert" opinion and "reliable" sources
-List critics and other sources of help for the consumer
here would

Dust jacket artist unattributed. The problems remain.

Google the Bookseller

It was bound to happen.

Word from the London Book Fair is that Google is going into the book business. By year's end they will launch two book related initiatives that will further alter the book landscape.

What's in store:

A book rental program that will let you rent the content of a book on a weekly basis.

and

A book retail program that will allow users lifetime access to the texts they purchase.

They are not attaching the cursed e-book tag to either project.

Michael Cairnes, who was at the Google sessions at the London Book Fair, has the scoop in his blog post titled "Google Lending Books" which includes his follow up with Google on these initiatives.

This is the missing piece to the puzzle.

Their aggressive approach to libraries and their books begins to make sense. They are scanning books at warp speed, 30,000 a week just at the University of Michigan.

Google has become part of the DNA of information. It would seem a logical next step to corner the library market. They are homes to our written heritage, storehouses of knowledge and information. And Google needs information. The Google Monster is hungry.

Last month's article by Eric Morath at the Detroit News on Google's scanning of the University of Michigan's 7 million volume library touched on this.

"In Google's view, even the wide expanse of the Internet can't compare to the amount of knowledge stored in books. So searching and retrieving results from written works is a natural outgrowth of Google's root technology.

Forget all the fuss you hear like "Google's altruistic motive for the project is to make the books available to those who may not have easy access to them."

When you hear Allan Adler, the American Association of Publishers' (AAP) vice president for legal and government affairs say "There's no doubt whatsoever that it's to Google's financial benefit to do this" you can be sure that altruism as been thrown out the window. The AAP is the political action committee for the publishing world and mix that with Google's billions of dollars and you have poisonous potential.

"Google argues that the limited amount of information it displays ultimately benefits holders of the copyright because it encourages searchers to seek out the book." Those snippets and limited views that they throw at you now become teasers. You got to pay to play.
This is why I argue for public funds and not for profit companies to undertake the digitization of our cultural heritage. This is exactly why.

Has anyone heard the word author mentioned anywhere in all this? Copyright and publishers are everywhere.

In addition to adding another layer of complexity to the term bookseller, the meaning of out-of-print will soon change too. Out-of-print will no longer mean unavailable. It will mean unavailable in book form.

Until Google gets in the print on demand business.

Then what happens when they start buying the publishers?

This is serious stuff.

Links

Robert Townsend at the American Historical Association blog Google Books: What's Not to Like

Jill E. Grog and Beth Ashmore's article at Information Today Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies. Includes a list of what libraries are digitizing everything and which ones are only digitizing material in the public domain.

Past Book Patrol posts:
on the AAP and their "Caught Reading" campaign
The First Cracks in Google's Attempt to Digitize the World

Don't "Get Caught Reading"

Right on the heels of National Poetry Month which included National Library Week we welcome Get Caught Reading Month.

Since 1999 the beautiful month of May has been home to this literary concoction. The celebration was devised by former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder through the Association of American Publishers (AAP), where she is the President and CEO.
Its goal: "to spread the word about the joys of reading through an industry-supported literacy campaign."

I am not sure if this was created to give her a job after her political life but this is basically a political action committee for the publishers. This is the Hollywood and Capitol Hill version of a celebration of the book.

The names they throw around include First Lady Laura Bush, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dolly Parton and Drew Carey. The inanimate celebrities include Clifford the Big Red Dog, Spiderman and The Rugrats, all who have "been 'caught reading' their favorite books and magazines for print ads and posters." Over 40 posters of celebs caught reading are available to libraries and bookstores.

There is one; however, that is "temporarily out of stock" and that is the poster of Rosie O'Donnell reading Barbara Kingsolver's "The Bean Trees". All these A-list celebrities and athletes and Rosie's is the only one that is not in stock. Sold out? A printer's error? Politics? The speculation is killing me.

And don't miss the image gallery featuring members of Congress "caught reading." Every image I looked at the Congressperson was looking at the camera not the book! Ad placement Congressional style.
Here is Rep. Mark Foley reading a real page turner Fahrenheit 451.

Highlights of the month long celebration include:

A Capitol Hill Press Event with members of congress. Really.

Public Service Announcements. How about this one: This is your kid...This is your kid caught reading.

Celebrity Posters. Why not celebrity chapbooks? Little printed booklets of their own writing or their favorite quotes or celebrity artist books where then can design and produce the book of their choice. Auction them off and the proceeds go to literacy programs.

I know they are trying to reach out to the majority, the people "not typically associated with reading" (whatever that means), and I applaud them for the effort but something is not quite right here. It feels like it has much more to do with business and politics and ways to turn non-readers into readers into customers than it has to do with literacy. Under their "Literacy Program" header you'll find three links to literacy fact sheets.
I didn't see any mention of literacy programs they support or links to any other literacy promoting agencies.

Is this helping anybody?

The Space Cowboy Wants a Space Library

"Everywhere where humans are I think there should be a library," is what Charles Simonyi told a Moscow news agency before he became the world's fifth space tourist.

Simonyi, a billionaire who has already changed the world once by bringing Microsoft Word and Excel into our lives, packed two books to add to the Space Station Library.

The books:

Goethe's "Faust" which he declares "is a part of our literary heritage. It belongs to all of humanity and it deals with man's relationship with the universe and man's relationship to science"

and "the moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein that Simonyi says "describes a particular future where humanity gets outside the earth and it deals more with the politics of the situation than the particular (technology) involved"

When asked why he was bring hard copiers of the books "in a age when nearly all things are virtually and weightlessly available" Simonyi replied that it was much more practical especially since you need special permission to use the computers inside the International Space Station and "I'm exercising my freedom as a spaceflight participant where I can choose my payload."

Among his many philanthropic activities Simonyi is a strong supporter of the Seattle Public Library.


Blog entry from last October when the trip was announced on the space blog of the New Scientist: A little light(weight) reading
BBC article 'Nerd' outlines space ambitions
India Edition of ZEENews.com article: Next space tourist dreams of library

Getting to the End

This is how Heather McElhatton got to her debut novel Pretty Little Mistakes that hits stores today . You see it's a "Do-Over Novel" and she came up with 150 unique scenarios. Yep 150! "One Beginning 150 Endings: The Choice is Yours."

Of course I am exhausted just thinking about it but the originality alone merits a peek. If you are fresh out of high school and ready to hit the world then it is closer to a must read.

You just graduated from high school and you got a couple of choices. You either "go to college to get ahead or take some time off and go traveling." Pick one and your off.

Here is my trip so far- I wanted to travel, drive to California, then I choose to go to Berkeley instead of LA, friend gets me a job at the library at UCB (University of California Berkeley), now I am trying to figure out if I want to go out on a date with David or not, whose is not the guy I have been sleeping with in the utility room at the library every day...

Content aside you can see the reach of the concept:
The movie slant, basically the opposite of Groundhog Day
The social networking slant, a Myspace group popping up for each ending.
The teen lit, chick lit slant.

I am not sure I would market it as "an interactive" or "adventure-type" adult novel. The target audience is the young adult or the beginning adult. There is plenty of money to made in their world, there is no need to reach for any other type of adult audience.

Book Patrol puts it on the: Third Shelf

While we are on the topic of author's flow charts. Here is a shot of Will Self's wall.


There are 71 photo's of will's room here.


Thanks to kottke.org for the Will Self lead