E-books

I just came across this: "E-books attract young writers." I'm glad to see this trend beginning to get some of the press it disserves. This competition, in which unpublished writers submit works in hopes of being published online by Oxfordbookstore.com, will hopefully generate some good publicity for both individual authors and the fiction in an electronic medium.

I'm a big proponent of electronic books, and have been since I first found Project Gutenberg; indeed, there have been a number of e-books which I've read in electronic format and enjoyed very much:

• Down and out in the magic kingdom / Cory Doctorow
• Someone comes to town, someone leaves town / Cory Doctorow
• Blind Shrike / Richard Kadrey
• The Secret Agent / Joseph Conrad
• Kim / Rudyard Kipling
  

There's also some great sites with short fiction:

• The infinite Matrix
• SciFiction

It seems to me that the time of the e-book is here. I know publishers made a doomed effort to roll out the e-book a few years ago, but kids today have their thumbs firmly affixed to their cell phones in an ongoing SMS orgy, and they are not attached to the print paradigm like those of us with more than two decade under our belts. It's obvious that it's easy to access mind boggling amounts of content for free, and the necessary hardware is increasingly available also: to move, store and read electronic text, all you need is a PC/Mac, laptop, palmtop, PDA, PSP, iPod or cell phone.

I shudder to think how far behind the leading edge most libraries are. My library system doesn't even have a Wi-Fi network, which is an error of significant magnitude. It's true that the bulk of our users (and many of our employees) have little of no idea what Wi-Fi is, and no idea about significant Web 2.0 developments like RSS, but the further we fall behind the leading edge the more difficult it will be to maintain our relevancy, and in my mind relevancy is directly connected to continued funding. We need to anticipate our users' demands so they come to us; if we wait until they ask for things like Wi-Fi and RSS feeds, and then say "no, we don't have that yet," we've already shown that we're not relevant, that they should go elsewhere to fulfill their information need. It's our job to facilitate access to information--to fulfill information needs--and if we're not doing this, we're not doing our jobs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a book hater: books are valuable and useful resources, and often objects of art in and of themselves, but just as the manuscript was not made extinct by the printing press, the book won't be made extinct by the computer. Different media are better for different things. In my work bag I carry hand written notes (manuscripts), books (printed text) and a USB flash-drive (electronic text). Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses, and they all work together.

But my point is this: increased access to information is the primary characteristic of this Late Modern age, and if we as librarians want to maintain our place as purveyors of information, we must not only change with the times, but we must be catalysts for change itself.

The Copyfight in Libraryland

There's an interesting debate going on right now in my library. One of the publishers that we buy directly from has made the decision not to sell books with CD-ROMs in them to libraries, so we're not going to get them. My instant reaction was, "screw this, lets just go get the same titles through another vendor or at a bookstore." On the other hand, another one of my colleagues (one with more pull than I) feels that to go elsewhere we would subvert the intent of the publisher's policy, and that it's essentially the publisher's call. A third colleague (who I have merely temporarily taken over this particular collection responsibility from) feels that we should try to acquire the books without the CD-ROM.

What to do. What to do.

The copyfighter in me instantly wants to just go and get the materials from a bookstore. I mean, we pay for the information and our patrons, I feel, deserve it. I get very nervous when publishers start denying libraries access to their materials, and I suspect, given the current move towards DRM and hyper-restrictive copyright laws, that this is only the beginning. Call me paranoid, but with the AL's actions to block the Homeland Security law in the US, there's got to be a certain right-wing element that is not going to be sympathetic to ye olde library.

In any case, I don't want to antagonize anyone or any publisher needlessly, but I also believe that insofar as we have a legal right to collect material, we should if it fill an information need for our patrons. The kicker is that I believe that it's in the best interest of this publisher to allow us to purchase and use their materials. Not only are they getting sales out of it directly, but also it's free advertising, and a public service that costs them nothing. Indeed, if people find something useful at the library--something that for them is a worthwhile reference--they will often buy it. Sure some people will photocopy or burn, but they're generally not the ones who were going to buy it in the first place.

The truth is that the "try before you buy" approach works. I have purchased copies of Cory Doctorow's and Charles Stross' books for the library as a direct result of their making works freely available online. (You should check out Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Accelerando.)

So do I want to subvert the intent of this publisher's intent, you bet. But what I really want to do is tell them that their fear isn't necessary, and that by placing such restrictions on their product, they are doing themselves and others a disservice. I hope you agree.

Amazon Shorts, etc.

I just found out about the coolest thing today: Amazon Shorts. It's kinda like iTunes, but cheaper, and without all the lame DRM. You can download short works, fiction and non-fiction, from well-known and not so well-known authors. It's cheep too, a mere 50 cents.

Of course, I have already succumbed to the usual librarian pitfall, and have about five books in the que waiting to be read, starting with the very latest Robert Jordan. Very geeky of me, I know, but Sci-Fi / Fantasy purchasing is one of my responsibilities at the moment, so really being a Sci-Fi / Fantasy nerd is necessary.

That reminds me, check what Ernest Cline had to say about other nerd necessities:

I want porno movies that are made with guys like me in mind:
Guys who know that the sexiest thing in the world
is a woman who is smarter than you are.

You can have the whole cheerleading squad,
I want the girl in the tweed skirt and the horn-rimmed glasses:
Betty Finnebowski, the valedictorian.
Oh yes.
First I want to copy her Trig homework,
and then I want to make mad, passionate love to her
for hours and hours
until she reluctantly asks if we can stop
because she doesn't want to miss Battlestar Galactica.
Suma cum laude, baby!
That is what I call erotic...

In my kind of porno movies the girls wouldn't even have to get naked.
They'd just take the guys down to the rec room and
beat them repeatedly at chess
and then talk to them for hours about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
or the underlying social metaphors in the Aliens movies.

Once again, it's funny because it's true.

Vonnegut

I came across an article yesterday on Kurt Vonnegut called "Vonnegut, on politics, presidents and librarians." Vonnegut makes several good points about things like oil, Gorge W. Bush and Librarians. I like this bit:

Music (especially the blues) cheers him, as do people who behave decently. Librarians, too -- "not famous for their physical strength" -- who resist having books removed from shelves and refuse to give names of people who have checked out certain books in the era of the Patriot Act.

"The America I loved," he writes, "still exists in the front desks of public libraries."

Although I might have once respected US of A, I never loved America, unless you count the bit north of the 49th parallel. These days, the ubiquitous hypocrisy and double-think that comes from that quarter makes me feel emotions that verge on the opposite of love. But I know what Vonnegut means: central to the library philosophy are the notions of respect, democracy and empowerment.

Vonnegut was off on one thing though: I don't know how he figures we're "not famous for [our] physical strength." I know more than one 6+ foot librarian who hits the gym, do-jo or do-jang on a regular basis. You try swinging 'round a katana, staff or stick for an hour or two, and you'll see what I mean.

Conspiracy theory meets katana

Lately, the conspiracy theorists have been coming out of the woodwork. I love the earnest way some of these people pursue their pet theory. My most recent conspiracy theorist was researching Charlemagne. Although this gentleman took great pains to explain his theory to me, I'm afraid I wasn't quite equal to the task. In any case, the theory goes something like this: Charlemagne brought Christianity to the Saxons--sword in one hand, bible in the other--but what he brought was in fact some kind of false Christianity. In reality, he was setting himself up as a Christ figure or perhaps totally manufacturing the religion of Christianity (never mind that this was the 8th century AD). I should note that somehow the fact that he was tall is important to this, but I'm a little foggy on the "why" of it. In any case, the Saxons were really some lost tribe of Israel (there was some convoluted semi-etymological tangent here) so all of us of Saxon or Anglo-Saxon descent are actually Jewish and were tricked by Charlemagne into worshiping him, er Christ, er whatever. Did I mention that the world is going to end in a few years because of this? It has something to do with good old Charlemagne and the Feast of the Tabernacle, but I'm not sure what, although the issue is confused somewhat by the problem of leap years, I'm told.

I know what you're thinking: "This is totally plausible," and "OMFG the world is ending. Head for the hills! Head for the hills!" Seriously though, the thing I love about this all is that you can go to your library, hunt for the information your looking for and put it together in the way you want. It's free, and fun, and even in the wackiest theory or idea there can be a kernel of real insight. After all, I too believe that members of certain religions have been grossly, if willingly, mislead, and even if Mr. Conspiracy's way of coming to this insight has been a tad unconventional, in my opinion it's a valid insight. In any case, in Library Land the Ivory Tower, George Bush and common sense need not interfere, for I, your friendly Samurai Librarian, is there to help you find the facts you're looking for--Katana in one hand Britannica in the other.