Beware of Science Fiction

Way of Life Literature has posted an article warning Fundamentalists against science fiction. Not only does the article point out agnostic and atheist authors, it even mentions that Arthur C. Clarke was 'probably a homosexual'. Okay.

Bibliotheek Haarlem Tagging

Harlem Oost, a branch library in the Netherlands, set up a program that would allow library patrons to 'tag' their books. Like the labels on this blog, only more as descriptors like 'good family reading' and 'funny'. Certainly an intriguing idea, but apparently it didn't work.

While I think it's admirable, I'm not very surprised it didn't work. I kind of wish it did, but I also think physically organizing books by tags isn't such a hot idea. It works well online in blogs, but not so much in real life, which has to contend with shelf space and accessibility.

The reason there are library classification systems like Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal is so people can find books. This seems like a basic concept. By grouping them by subject, it makes it easier for people to find what they need and browse subjects that interest them.

This library project is proposing a new classification system that changes. While books can still be grouped according to previous classification systems within the new system, the major groups - 'funny', 'family reading' - change the very basic locations of the books.

The benefit of having a classification system like Dewey Decimal Classification or Library of Congress is that the categories are mostly static. While the debate as to which subcategory a work falls under remains, it is at least decided upon, noted, and then kept, thus narrowing the physical placement of the book.

The use of RFIDs makes the tagging process easier. It's certainly helpful information about a community's interests and needs, yes. While tags showing up in online catalogs makes sense, changing the physical shelving does not.

A comment from Jack Kirby on the second article linked sums up my misgivings about the project:

As somebody who recently had to search through a whole host of 'special choice' displays to find the book I needed to read for my book group (the staff knew it was in there, just not where), I can attest that there is a downside to departing from normal library behaviour!

Great idea, it just doesn't work so well in a physical world.

Top Ten Pirated Books in 2009

From TeleRead, The Ten Most Pirated Books of 2009.

1. Kamasutra
2. Adobe Photoshop Secrets
3. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex
4. The Lost Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
5. Solar House – A Guide for the Solar Designer
6. Before Pornography – Erotic Writing In Early Modern England
7. Twilight – Complete Series
8. How To Get Anyone To Say YES – The Science Of Influence
9. Nude Photography – The Art And The Craft
10. Fix It – How To Do All Those Little Repair Jobs Around The Home

Ebooks are like a brown paper bag! Please note almost half the books seem to be/are about sex. Two are do-it-yourself books, which makes sense ("I'm not going to buy this book if I can just do it myself with a download!") and then there's Twilight, a series of guilty pleasure for more grown-ups than I want to think about.

Library Fine Alternatives Continue

It seems libraries are still having amnesty periods for fines in the hopes of bringing patrons (and books) back. I'm glad this sort of thing is still going on; I think libraries have realized that they can get their books back, but probably not their money and their books. And it helps the community to hold these cans for fines programs.

How to Destroy the Book by Cory Doctorow

I've Cory Doctorow's How to Destroy the Book pop up in a number of places now and I keep meaning to read it.

The part I find of particular interest is called 'The People of the Book'.

We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.

Copyright recognizes this. It says that when you buy a book, you own the book. It’s yours to give away, yours to keep, yours to license or to borrow, to inherit or to be included in your safe for your children. For centuries, copyright has acknowledged that sacred connection between readers and their books. We think of copyright as something that regulates things within a bunch of buckets—DVDs, video games, records—but books are more than all of these things. Books are older than copyright. Books are older than publishing. Books are older than printing!

The anti-copyright activists have no respect for our copyright and our books. They say that when you buy an ebook or an audiobook that’s delivered digitally, you are demoted from an owner to a licensor. From a reader to a mere user. These thieves deliver our digital books and our audiobooks wrapped in license agreements and technologies that might as well be designed to destroy the emotional connection that readers have with their books.

Copyright has become complicated. Where are the lines between owning a book and renting it in print or digital format? Is 'copyright' the enemy here, or is 'Digital Rights Management'? Isn't copyright supposed to protect people? At what point does it stop protecting creators and limiting audiences?

Save the Queen's English!

Wired has posted an article about Lake Superior State University's 2010 Banished Words List, which can be found here.

The big offenders: tweet, sexting, chillaxin', app, and friend as a verb.

I have to say I'm kind of a fan of non-words. It's slang, and people fifty years from now will look upon it as quaint, I think. In the meantime, if someone knows the word 'app' is short for 'application', I'd rather use 'app'. And if I'm explaining something to, say, my mother, I will tell her 'app' is short for 'application, which is a program'. Not to mention 'app' has been used as a word long before Apple made iPhones by computer geek types; it's shorter than saying 'application'. That's what words do: they name something, a thing or concept or idea, and they are recognizable. In the case of slang like 'chillaxin'', I'd think the meaning of the word could be readily deduced. Made-up words have little place in academic papers and the like, but the rest of the time language may as well be fun. There's no need to be formal all the time.

National Geographic

Get 120 Years of National Geographic On Your Own External Hard Drive.

First: YAY!
Second: Is this thing searchable?
Third: YAY!

I'm tempted to get this, though $200 USD is kind of steep. On the other hand, every issue of National Geographic since 1888, people. I get geek shivers just thinking about it.