Censored Genius

Pinterest: the anti-Facebook

2012-03-10T10:22:00.004-08:00

If Facebook is Who We Are, then Pinterest is Who We Wish to Be.

If Facebook is the photo of you vomiting at Flannigan's-O'houlihan's Pub last St. Pat's, then Pinterest is the fresh white linen napkin you didn't wipe your chin with.

But, Wait, you say. Facebook can be a fresh white linen napkin, too.

If Facebook is the fresh linen napkin, then it's a fresh linen napkin artfully folded to represent your genitalia. Like Pornogami (yes, that's a real thing).

But what everyone says about Pinterest is that it's how we would like to view our lives. It's photos of all the beautiful things we want, or would want if only we weren't the idiots we seem to be on Facebook.

It used to be that the virtual world was the place where we pretended to be someone else. Remember that "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog"? Well, then came social media and Facebook, and we just stopped pretending to be something else and just showed the world who we truly are. And it was embarrassing. But now Pinterest is here to put everything back in perfect order and beauty.

So when you're looking to impress someone, show them your Pinterest boards filled with diamond brooches and solid oak étagères and lace duvet covers and gold Jaeger-LeCoultre timepieces. And make damn sure they don't find your Facebook.

ebooks as a commodity. yes, like pork bellies.

2012-03-08T10:52:00.002-08:00

For those of you who walk everywhere and get their nutrition from sunlight and are naked, you may not be aware of what Commodities are and how they affect EVERY FUCKING INFINITESIMAL ASPECT OF YOUR LIVES, here is a brief explanation: Rich People Suck.

If you're unfamiliar with the Commodities market, it covers all the items one needs to live. What occurs in the market is that if you want to live a long, healthy, productive life, then prices for these commodities will go up. If you want to suffer and die in pain and horror, then prices also go up.

Commodities cover your basic resources such as iron ore, crude oil, coal, salt, sugar, coffee beans, soybeans, aluminum, copper, rice, wheat, gold, silver, palladium, platinum, cotton, orange juice, cocoa, sugar, wheat, corn, barley, pork bellies, milk, feedstuffs, fruits, vegetables, other grains, other beans, hay, other livestock, meats, poultry, and eggs.

Commodities are basically a way for the rich to profit from consumer demand. Unlike getting a Nickelback tee-shirt on clearance because nobody wanted to buy it at regular price, the price of cotton goes up simply because the shirt was produced. Damn you, Nickelback! (I don't know anything about Nickelback; I've just heard that you, the internet, don't like them. -- Okay, I just did a search and I have heard of them.. I've heard the song Never Again.)

So long as the population on the planet grows, demand will increase, and prices will rise. You don't really need to understand more than that.

So is it any surprise that Random House is attempting to also make ebooks into a commodity?

Read this:
"We believe that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value... Therefore, Random House believes it has greater value, and should be priced accordingly."

And this, "We are requesting data that libraries can share about their patrons’ borrowing patterns that over time will better enable us to establish mutually workable pricing levels that will best serve the overall e-book ecosystem.”
(click for source)

That sounds to me like Random House wants to price ebooks according to demand and not based on the average price of an ebook or what it costs to produce it. In fact, in every other instance of retail sales, increased demand sparks greater discounts. The latest bestsellers get up to 40% off, DVDs are on sale the week they come out, etc.

Ebooks are not Gold, but Random House seems to think they should be.

And they expect libraries to tell them which books we want them to charge us the most for... They're pretty much saying that they know that $100 for an ebook is too much, and they want libraries to turn over all the lending data so they can reduce the price to $79.99. And thus, make libraries a partner in our anal savaging when we should just tell them to go fuck themselves with their own unabridged dictionary. Sideways.

You can argue about library relevance and how ebooks are the New Messiah, and how we'll all be saved if we just accept ebooks into our hearts, but you're a crazy person, anyway, and nobody likes you. We still live in a world where most of the people are illiterate, or functionally literate. And if you thought about it for more than five seconds, you'd understand what the real purpose of the library should be. And it ain't about getting a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey for those thirty horny women who just asked for it because think they might like some S&M, but would scream out loud if you were making out and accidentally leaned on their hair.

Oh, God, have you read any of this book? Fifty Shades of Grey? Read this and tell me it wasn't written by a sixteen-year-old girl:

“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?”
“No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard."

Well, duh. Does anyone fuck soft? We all fuck hard. But seriously, even librarians fuck hard. Just look on the internets for fuck videos. Everyone is banging away like they're trying to frighten the dog. If I were Anastasia, I wouldn't be so impressed by how hard Christian fucks, but for how long. "Anastasia, I fuck hard... for eight seconds. Then I grunt, fart and fall asleep."

Shit. Where was I? Oh, right. Fuck you, Random House.

The Dark Side of Pinterest.

2012-03-06T09:56:00.005-08:00

I'm one of those people who always asks, What's in it for THEM? whenever a new, "free" online service becomes hot.

We all know What's in it for Google when we search. THEM build databases from our searches and then sell ads based on the popularity and value of keywords and search results. And if we use Gmail, then Google sends us ads based on the keywords used in our emails. Which is why I've curbed my use of the word, dildo.

We know What's in it for Facebook. THEM give you a place to hang out while you're supposed to be looking for a job.

And in exchange for wasting all your free time there, THEM get to see who and what and why you exist. THEM get all your personal data, your online life and sell it to everyone. THEM get your soul.

Now some people, assholes we call them, say that you are just trading this information for being able to use these free services. But this is the part that makes them assholes; if the services were free, then I shouldn't need to give anyone anything. Asshole.

So these free services are not free and since we never know just what they are taking from us in exchange for our using them, we can never truly understand just how much we have given away. What is your personal information worth? Is it worth five hours growing fake crops? Is it worth looking at a dozen photos of your junior high best friend's new baby?

And so when Pinterest came along, I also asked, What's in it for THEM? when I upload and pin photos of items of things I want or like or might buy?

My first thought, which was completely wrong, was that companies wouldn't want all of us pinning the photos of their products to some other website when they really want us to visit their website to view those products. And now I know that's not even a little bit right. Like if I saw some lingerie at Anthropolgie that I liked, which I often do, and I pinned it on a Pinterest board, wouldn't Anthropologie get mad? The answer is No. (Whoops, but it looks like some people don't appreciate having their content pinned.)

When you create a board on Pinterest and pin items to it, those links actually benefit the companies where you pin. Think of it this way: if you're Store X and have some products on your website, the only way to for anyone to see them is to visit your online store. Or if you're lucky, have your product appear in a Google or Yahoo shopping or NexTag or PriceGrabber or whatever search. But what if you had your own tiny little army of soldiers who would make tiny little stores on Pinterest where all your coolest stuff were on display? Wouldn't that be awesome?

So if I'm Store X and my buyers fill my store with stuff, I need to advertise it if I want it sold. And advertising isn't cheap. If my Pinterest Army made boards and pinned only my best stuff, then I would have another outlet for my products. It's like, maybe an Elle or Vogue magazine page where they group all the white dresses and white accessories together or all the hats. But this is a live page with links to actual items you can buy and not some sheet of paper that just says, Jimmy Choo sandals, $450. I can click on the image and buy it now!

Let's say you want to find that black and white stripe sailor bikini you just saw Taylor Swift wearing in that photo the other day and you find a Hurley or Juicy Couture style that looks just like it? If you Pin It and describe it as the Taylor Swift bikini, you're probably going to get hundreds if not thousands of "likes" or "repins" for it and more than a few sales. And I'm betting that Juicy can't legally call their bikini, the Taylor Swift, without suffering some legal bungholery. But you can pin it and name it and it's all legal. Even if you're a Juicy employee or work for the store that sells it.

In fact, Pinterest has a whole section devoted to shopping for Gifts. Who'da thunk?

So if you are Store X, how do you reward your Pinterest Army? Do you reward just one person, the General? Or do you not reward all the soldiers? And if you're a soldier, what do you get out of all the time you spend pinning?

I never think my time is worth nothing. Because I went to college. Three times.

So now when I see items on Pinterest, I think, What motivates that person to pin? Is this someone working for Store X or promoting their friend's stuff on Etsy? Is this their job? Am I being manipulated?

But I'm guessing some of you don't care. Because those earrings are gorgeous.

FREEDOM shouldn't be a CRIME.

2012-03-04T13:43:00.008-08:00

FILE STRIPPING is not PORN.

But DRM STRIPPING is going to become the biggest thing on the internet. Not as big as porn, but still. BIG. Why is it BIG? Because file stripping equals freedom. The freedom to lend an ebook to your friend.

This is because as the growth in ebook demand continues to increase, access to legitimately free ebooks is decreasing. The reason is that the Big Six publishers are fucking stupid. If you want to borrow an ebook from one of the Big Six, your ability to get it from the library is down to almost zero.

Of the B6:

Random House reportedly just raised their ebook prices to libraries by a million per cent. Or it might as well be, since we ain't gonna fucking pay it.
Penguin cut sales to libraries altogether.
HarperCollins limits how many times an ebook can circulate before the library needs to buy another copy, so we don't shop there, either.
Macmillan doesn't sell to libraries.
Simon & Schuster doesn't.
Hachette don't neither.

If you don't know what means, the current NYT bestseller for fiction is Private Games by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan which is published by Hachette. So libraries won't get it. Kill Shot by Vince Flynn from Simon & Schuster is #2. And The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice is from Random House. Do I need to go on? We won't be getting any of these books for our patrons to borrow to for their ereaders or mobile devices.

Now, what happens when you take all the ereader and tablet and laptop users who have been behaving like good citizens by borrowing their ebooks from the library and you cut off their legal supply? They're going to get their fixes from the Dark Side of the internet. Or from each other.

Hey, Marge, Carol says, I just got Blah, blah blah, on my reader, do you want a copy?

Oh, I get my books from the library, Carol replies.

Not any more, Marge declares. The library can't buy any new books. The only way you're getting a copy is to buy one. Or not buy one.

Fuckity fuck! Carol curses because she's a regular library user. And then she says with a wink, Can I not buy one from you?

Ebook lending between individuals is going to explode when the legitimate supply dries up. When publishers remove the library from the supply channel, this flow of goods will just find a new route. And it ain't gonna mean more money for publishers.

Yes, I know all these people are going to steal the books, anyway. Libraries can't possibly satisfy the reading wants for 25 million people even when we are able to buy all the ebooks we want.

So why don't the B6 publishers care? Dunno.

Maybe they have a backup plan. Maybe they plan to sue Carol and Marge for $500,000 for each ebook they lend to each other. But how would they know?

Maybe the ereader knows? I mean, can an ereader tell which book you're reading by comparing the screen displays from a legal copy of a book and an illegal, stripped one? Even if you removed all the identifying markers from an ebook, the text is still the same; page 20 is page 20. Can an ereader detect which pixel configuration belongs to each book just by scanning the layout of page 20? And then determining that your copy was stolen? Again, dunno.

But what are library users to do when publishers make them criminals by removing this important legal access channel? Vive la libération!

and yes, I understand you can lend some ebooks to your friends, within limits, which can change, without notice... and if you've used it, how does Booklending work? it just uses the Amazon rules to allow you to lend a book to a stranger?

How can YOU use Pinterest?

2012-03-02T07:06:00.006-08:00

I've seen a lot of articles on how I can use Pinterest in my library. Or in my life.

Here are some awesome ideas for using Pinterest in your library:

1. Create a boards for new books that your library has received within the past few weeks or months.
2. Create boards to promote activities or programs with links to learn more and pictures of the activity or program.
3. Create boards for each one of your major collections and share the most popular items as pins.
4. Create boards with pins for your library displays or rare collections.
5. Create boards with pins to promote your movies and other media.
6. Share your boards on your library facebook and twitter.

Okay, I could say, but I've already done all that on our website. And on our Facebook page. And our Flickr page. But now you want me to do it again with a new social networking site? I've already done all this work at least twice. And now I need to do it again? Because this is the new 'big thing'? Says who?

Or I could say that I don't do any of that. And I don't need to do that.

I don't have a bulletin board in my office or in my house. I don't have a photo album. I don't scrapbook. I have one photograph on my refrigerator and it's of my dog. Her name is Pete.

I haven't remodeled my kitchen since it was modeled when the house was built. The walls are lemon yellow. I don't dream of my dream house and scan the world for pictures of what it will be.

I have two pairs of shoes, one black, one brown. All my socks are white athletic tube socks and I have one pair of black socks for when I'll get married or when I'm buried. I don't need to collect images of clothes to share with others.

So, do you need Pinterest? Or is this another example of a Thneed?

You NEED Pinterest.  YOU should FIND A WAY TO USE IT. NOW.

It's like when all these people come into our computer classes and ask what computer or tablet or ereader to buy to buy. The first thing I ask is What do you want to do with it? Oh, I need a computer, the people often say.

Why? What do you want to do that you need that thing? Oh, you'll find a need for it after you buy it? Since when? Tell that to the food processor I bought that made one meal. Or the digital camera that sits in the underwear drawer. Or the bicycle collecting cobwebs in the garage. Or the books left unopened on table. You can't buy something because you think that buying it will encourage you to use it. If you run around your neighborhood and think that biking would be better, then get a bike. But if you buy a bike only to find out that all the dogs on the block chase you when you ride, then you didn't do your homework.

We always find new ways to manufacture new needs for new stuff.

I'm not arguing against the uses of Pinterest for people who like to share stuff and have everyone comment on the importance of that stuff. But in the past, I've just saved all the images of this stuff on my computer in folders that only I see. I didn't need the world's approval.

So if you see a need for using Pinterest, then create some boards. I did. But I got bored immediately. Because it's not for me. Although now I feel like I have a desire to organize images of scabs and I might make a board for it. Or maybe separate boards for scabs on knees and scabs on elbows. And one for people blowing their noses. Oh, God, I really need Pinterest.

The Slit Heard Round the World

2012-02-28T01:31:00.002-08:00

Internet, you're an asshole.

I can't believe that you think that Angelina Jolie didn't get the joke of her leg. Really? Did you see her? She actually thrusts it out in an obvious display and you don't realize that she is aware of the humor?

If Will Farrell did it, you'd laugh your ass off because he's hilarious and no one would mock him for thinking he was behaving stupidly. Because it was a joke.

But yet, you can't see the joke when Angelina does it?

You can't see it? No, you didn't see it. Look, again. Come, on. You know that when she saw that dress and that slit she said, "This slit demands that I show my leg. So I'm going to show my leg. I must bow to the will of the dress."

I didn't think you needed this lesson. But clearly, you didn't get it. It was bad enough when that bald asshole made fun of her when he was on stage for his award, but when you, the internet, spent the entire next day oblivious to it and Photoshopping the leg into fucking everything. It just proved that you did not get it.

You didn't give her credit for being able to pull off that gag. You let Sasha Baron Cohen do it. He could do spill dead dictator on Ryan Seacrest and you'd laugh till you peed.

I know for a fact that someone is going to put that same dress in a movie and use that same gag and say, "I must bow to the will of the dress" and you're going to shit yourself. Let's see when they do it in Bridesmaids 2.

So fuck you, internet because you wouldn't know a joke when it's protruding from a Versace gown and staring you right in the face.

And why am I so upset? Because I tell jokes all the time that you never get.

Each and every ebook costs $99.

2012-02-23T03:45:00.000-08:00

I hadn't read the recent Cracked article on ebooks, but I just did and now I understand that every ebook you buy costs you $99. Or $79. Or whatever it was you paid for your ereader.

And this is what told me: #7. You Need Physical Books for Physical Tasks

One of the reasons they say that physical books are better than ebooks is for when you need a physical object. And this is the key. A book is a physical object. And an ereader is a physical object. It doesn't matter that it holds 3,000 ebooks; it's still one object.

If you have a portable ereader or an iPad or a smart phone or even a laptop, then each and every ebook you put on that device costs as much as the device.

There is no way to average out the cost of all your books when you drop your reader in the toilet. You don't pay 3 cents to Amazon or Barnes & Noble each time you open a book. You pay $79 or $99 or $199 up front and it's up to you to find the most cost-effective way to use the thing.

You can get print books and each one of those costs exactly what you pay for it, ten cents or two-hundred dollars. And you make decisions on how and where and to whom to lend or when to read those books. And each individual physical book has its own worth.

But if you get mad and throw your ebook at someone: $99.
If you use your ebook to shelter your new haircut from the rain: $99.
If you use your ebook to keep the table from wobbling: $99.
If you repurpose your ebook as a Christmas tree ornament: $99.
If you hollow out your ebook to use as a bong: $99.
If Neil Gaiman scribbles his autograph across your ebook screen in Sharpie: $99.
If you write your phone number on the corner of your ebook and tear it off: $99.

Because you still have to replace the device no matter how many books it held.

So don't try to trick yourself into thinking that the device gets cheaper with each book you load on it. It doesn't. You're just bad at math.

... and other BAD IDEAS libraries have had

2012-02-20T18:01:00.005-08:00

These are some BAD IDEAS that librarians have had. And I'll start with ebooks. Because I know you love them.

Fact: ebooks are a bad idea. For everyone.

ebooks are bad because of our 21st Century sense of entitlement. The internet has changed how we feel about everything. Meaning that we've become thieves and any legitimate deal that doesn't support our criminal nature is a bad one. Have you ever downloaded a song that you should have paid for? Ripped a CD? DVD? Stripped DRM? Then I'm speaking to you, hoodlum.

We, meaning you, are a generation who feels that if we can do something, we should do it. And computers make much of this really easy. It used to be that only the rich had the power to exploit the labors of others, but thanks to the internet, we can all do it.

But we don't have that control with ebooks.

So let's compare an ebook to a (printed/paper) pbook:

ebooks

leased, never owned
some publishers won't sell to libraries
online storage and access is expensive
must lease new copy when the original reaches its lending limit
patrons can’t donate used copies to library
can’t trade or sell excess copies
no free prepubs
seemingly no staff time required for reshelving, repairing, labeling
lots of staff time spent on instruction
no Dewey
no need to dispose of anything since you don't own anything to begin with
TSA will stop you and check your ereader to make sure it's not a bomb

pbooks

purchased outright, but often leased
we buy what we want
brick and mortar storage and access is expensive
must purchase new copy when the original reaches its maximum damage limit
can accept some donations for collection and most donations for “book sale” shelf
can do whatever the hell we want with excess copies
boxes of prepubs no one will ever read
lots of staff time for shelving
all reading levels are welcome
some Dewey required
endless used book sales
a hollowed-out dictionary is a great place to hide a gun

Hmm. There's no clear winner, there, is there? Not a winner based on this simple comparison, but probably a winner if you gave each answer a point value. And that's the key; librarians give 1,000 points to Ownership and Control and then give maybe 5 points to Ability to sell unneeded copies.

We want electronic books to behave exactly like print books. We want the control we have over print, but without all the hassle of print. So ebooks are bad for librarians because we really don't know how to make them work for us in the library. Even though there are many other things we pay for but down own. Here other things we lease that most librarians don’t think of as bad ideas: buildings. online resources. computer hardware. software licenses. copiers. internet access.

So it really just comes down to convenience. ebooks are a convenient format for some people, but a pretty big pain in the ass for libraries to manage. Yet you love them. You must be a cat person.

And now here is a mix of BAD and GOOD ideas about ebooks:

How eBooks can help or hurt libraries.
I don't know which, yet, because I don't think anyone is doing this stuff.

What ebooks can do for libraries is solve demand problems. What we need is to negotiate short-term, high-use contracts. We need 200 copies of each bestseller for 5 weeks. But I don't know any way to figure out what would be a fair cost for this.

And we should also find a way to negotiate directly with publishers so we can have more control of our ebooks. What if we told a publisher, "We'll give you access to our circulation statistics so you can figure out what to charge for your back catalog. Why? you ask. Did you know that Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage circulated 12x more than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? Libraries have that information; you don't. If you try to price everything the same, it's not going to move nearly as well as if you price it according to demand. But with this data, you can price according to demand." Is this a GOOD or BAD idea? I have no idea.

We'll let you put ads in our ebooks. In the past, you've put ads in our print books. We, we didn't let you do it, but we didn't complain.

And to keep my promise, here are some other really BAD IDEAS that librarians have:

Hiring someone who's still in library school for a position that doesn't require a degree. Because you know that person isn't going to stay in that position for long and you're just going to have to hire and train a whole new person. I hate being put in a position where the most qualified person for the job is currently in school so she can get a better job 5-6 months down the road. Frankly, I don't want to hire her because I know I'm going to need to fill her spot so soon.

I always think it's a BAD idea to sell your the naming of your library to some rich person. Unless, as I've said before, you get $50 million for the privilege. But anything less and you're ripping off your taxpayers. Basically, you've sold out everyone in your community who pays to support the library. They're now supporting some rich dude's legacy.

And then how can you reward your local hero? You can save 100 children from a burning building and you won't get your name on that library. You could single-handledly stop an alien invasion, and no library. You could kick Donald Trump in the balls and still, no library. Although I think you might be able to negotiate a Turnpike service plaza: "Hey, ma, the Kicked Donald Trump in the Balls service plaza is coming up; can we stop and get some chicken?" (but for legal reasons, please don't kick Donald Trump in the balls.)

Boobs for Books.

2012-02-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

Have you heard? April 12 is the first Boobs for Books event.

What? What’s Boobs for Books?
It’s a fundraising event in support of Books for Teens which focuses on raising money to get books into the hands of needy young adults. Or boobs into the hands of nerdy young adults. Whatever.

How do you get involved?
The idea is that people around the country, and maybe around the world, will sponsor a Boobs for Books fundraising event on April 12. Do you have boobs? Do you know someone with boobs? Then you can help!

Boobs come in all shapes and sizes. You might have a boob discussion group that night and ask those who attend to donate an amount of their choice to Books for Teens. Who doesn't want to talk about boobs? Celebrity boobs, whether someone has real or fake boobs, the discussion is endless. Or, you might have a happy hour at your home and raffle off a prize to attendees who flash a little skin. You could host something at a local bar or restaurant and raise funds via an uncover charge. Or, you could have a progressive party and at each participating location have a boob auction. The more boobs, the more books. We don't care how your boobs get books, but boobs have a way of making some people give up their hard-earned money and we want to take that money to buy books.

And speaking of Boobs for Books cocktails, and not Cocks for Books which is our May 9 event, why not create boob themed cocktails for your Boobs for Books event? For example, a Slippery Nipple is 1/2 oz Irish cream, 1/2 oz butterscotch schnapps.

We've got a Pinterest Board ready for your photos and recipes. Snap a picture of your specially created cocktail near your boobs and post it on the Board. Or, grab an image of the uncovered boob that inspired your recipe and post that along with the recipe. Maybe your boob-themed cocktail will be tested and tasted by those in another part of the country. Boob-tasting is one of the quickest ways to raise money for books.

Over the next several weeks you’ll hear more about Boobs for Books here on the blog, on the Books for Teens Faceboob, um, Facebook page, and on other social media outlets. Talk with your friends and colleagues about the event and get started planning what you are going to do. You don’t want to miss the first, and last, ever Boobs for Books. Because we know someone's going to jail for this.

this is fake page, but almost all of it was stolen, word for word, but with many added letter 'B's from the real page which is here, http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2012/02/09/booze-for-books-dont-miss-it/

Acquire. Distribute. Archive. Repeat.

2012-01-30T08:42:00.000-08:00

This is the role of the library as I see it.

Acquire.

We acquire materials. We acquire experts. We acquire technology.

Distribute.

We lend materials. We make experts available as full and part-time paid employees, contracted performers and presenters, volunteers, and other paid and unpaid services that connect library customers to experts in real time or as recorded media. We reserve time for users to have access to technology, tools, objects, digital files, physical space, virtual space, etc.

Archive.

We buy or lease materials for long-term use. We store what we can. We record events through various media, as images, video, audio, text, and original objects. We preserve for future users.

Repeat.

And we do this again, and again, and again.

Pretty simple. Anything I missed?

Amazon *

2012-01-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

So. I've had this thought for a long time, but I don't think anyone can answer the question:

How much influence do book sales on Amazon.com have on (the) The New York Times Best Seller list?

Is there a list of titles whose majority sales were from Amazon that made the NYT list (based on those sales)?

Librarians already know about the influence of Amazon because we deal with library patrons daily who want us to buy some book they saw on Amazon that had "really excellent reviews" from some unknown friends of the author. There has been lots of crap that got bumped on Amazon that made it onto our library shelves. Much of complete and total shit.

So now that Amazon will have its own publishing house (and for tax purposes, will have its offices only in "the cloud," or Belize), to what degree should we ignore sales from those Amazon authors? For example, Penny Marshall is reportedly writing a book for Amazon, and on any other day since 1993, not one person would care. But give Amazon's muscle in the retail world, Penny will sell tons of copies of her milk-and-Pepsi tell-all.

Should publishers be allowed to decide which books become bestsellers? Hell Yes, you might say if you ran Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, and Macmillan.

But they don't. They promote the books all they can, but they don't own the book stores. Not until now.

If Amazon is both the publisher and the seller, then what happens when they promote a book? It sells. Because everyone who visits Amazon is going to see that book on the front page, and in the sidebars and in the pop-ups. And they will buy.

So now Amazon publishes the book that becomes the bestseller that makes the Times list that influences what libraries buy. And what every other book retailer in the world sells. Can you say, MONOPOLY?

The first title that Amazon publishes that becomes a Times bestseller should bring a wave of lawsuits. Or at the very least, should require an asterisk next to each title that makes the list, meaning, yes, this book sold well, but not in a way that's ethical.

At some point, will the list become Amazon's Best Seller List at The New York Times? If the Times could be so lucky.

[source for Penny Marshall info, Amazon's Hit Man]

The Six Dollar an Hour Man.

2012-01-26T14:12:00.000-08:00

There will definitely be a day when Americans can no longer afford the products we outsourced to China.

Remember, we went to China to make products at lower costs. We sent them our plastic sandals and t-shirts. But now they have our computers and televisions. And one day, the American worker won't make enough money to buy that computer.

When corporations look at the Chinese factory model with envy, you know the goal is to turn Americans into slaves. Cheap Chinese labor is driving down the value of the global workforce to near zero. "We've found someone who will work cheaper than you. Goodbye."

But, yes, to say the goal is SLAVERY is to oversimplify. The goal is to keep China happy.

I've heard stories about what it takes to do business in China. One story says that a company needs to turn over all the schematics and manufacturing plans to China to have them approved. And then China keeps them. But I don't know if this true. Because if true, it would mean that any American that outsources to China is staying in China. Because if they leave, China will simply build the products anyway. And sell them and put the American companies out of business.

Listen to this story where the corporate executive is giddy, absolutely giddy with the notion of a workforce that produces 24 hours a day:

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

source, NYT,"How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work."

Look at what is expected from workers. That is an inhumane work environment. That factory could not legally exist in the United States. But that's what corporations want: no labor regulations, no rules at all.

And who the hell brewed those 8,000 cups of tea?

I think the next step is to treat laborers as a commodity, trading at a fluctuating rate on world markets. Today, you make $10 an hour, but tomorrow we pay $9.27. The result might not be slavery because there is some income, but it will be slavery because there will be no place else to go.

When there is nothing left to digitize.

2012-01-25T08:09:00.000-08:00

I remember when we used to lease our home telephone. It was on the wall in the kitchen.

SPOILER ALERT.
SIT DOWN.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH.
THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS.
THE NEXT LINE OF COMMUNICATION MIGHT ALARM YOU.

It was our only phone.

Way back in the dark ages of communications history, you didn't own your own telephone, BellSouth or one of the other companies leased it to you for a couple of bucks a month. That's why everyone remembers having an olive green or lemon yellow or fire orange wall phone or pink "princess" phone or black or clay desk phone because everyone got one of six phone colors. So over time, you ended up paying about $600 for that 5-pound hunk of metal and plastic. And if you ever moved and forgot to return it to the phone company, they would hunt you down and take your first-born son. If you don't follow the rules, someone comes to take it away.

But that was my first experience with owning something without owning it. We'd never "rented to own" our furniture or TV. Our piece of shit car was ours for the $50 my dad paid for it.

But now that I'm out in the business world, I see so much more that our business owns but doesn't own. We lease everything.

So why do I feel a sudden outrage over our leasing of ebooks that I don't feel over, say, some Dun & Bradstreet business directory that we've leased for years? Why do I suddenly feel like I need to have total ownership of that copy of Franzen's Freedom that I don't feel when I box up the D&B and send it back to the publisher?

And what about electronic journals? Why didn't I get upset when the New York Times pulled some of its content from one of our subscriptions? Or why don't I post petitions online to complain when other magazines and econtent become licensed to a single distributor and we get locked out unless we want to break existing contracts, or simply pay more for something we used to offer under the old contracts? As a librarian, it would seem that I should be more upset by all the restrictions and terms of service I need to agree to follow than I am now. How pissed off are you?

The answer is simple: It's because we lend books. Libraries should always have the freedom to lend materials to anyone. I was going to say 'without restrictions,' but that would be stupid: libraries make plenty of rules about lending that we expect our borrowers to follow.

But we lend. And we don't want to be told how to do it.

We can also see the daily use of ebooks and the impact not having a proper supply means to the borrowers. When something is popular, we miss it when it's gone. We also look for ways to exploit the supply: we might shorten the lending period for popular materials. But the decision is ours. We don't being locked into someone else's restrictions.

So that's the real problem with ebooks. Because we lend them like printed books, we feel we should retain that same freedom to which we've grown accustomed.

But as you can see, the problems with leases have been around for many years. Libraries simply don't own all the materials we pay to use. We can't afford to own it all. So we lease. But it's with ebooks that many librarians have suddenly become aware of the problems associated with leasing. And they don't like them.

So. What to do?

Some people are saying to own them, anyway. To claim that each ebook is a purchase and to apply Fair Use to them and lend them with the same freedoms we expect from printed works. But that seems like a lot of work. You'd need to host your titles, break DRM, set up a secure distribution channel, avoid copyright violations, manage lending periods and dodge the cops.

Which is all good if we can prove ownership. But if we don't own it to start, then where can Fair Use help? Simple: If you own it, digitize it. If you don't own it, don't.

Some librarians say to digitize what we can and distribute what we can. These are the things we're not good at since we've been relying on other parties for these services for so long, the digitizing and hosting and distributing. So, we'll see what happens next. Although there's a slim chance there won't be anything left to digitize if we wait too long.

The What Ifs? are these: what if publishers continue to move all content to digital? And what if we, in order to save space, discard all of our print? And what if we just lease and no longer own any of the resources we have in our libraries? And what if some corporation digitizes everything first? And what if Copyright extends to grant greater protections to orphaned works so that no one could be sure what was in the public domain and what wasn't? What if there was nothing left that we could digitize, legally?

Libraries could make other arrangements. There are thousands, tens of thousands, of people who would gladly make their works available to libraries freely if they had some assurances that they would retain their copyrights and that they could retain some control over their works in the rare case that something they created became valuable. Hell, I would let libraries distribute my books so long as they didn't print out pages just to wipe their patrons' asses with them. So yes, there are real digital issues worth fighting for right now.

But as far as what we should do with ebooks now? I'd like to see a total boycott. Now that publishers can see how much $$$ we have to spend, we should boycott all ebooks. Stop all orders until we get terms we want.

Yeah, I know you won't do that. Because you're afraid. Or maybe you're a pussy. Or because it's unrealistic for me to try to simplify the issues of fair use and ownership down to a Yes / No decision.

But this is the truth: we need to stop "buying" ebooks right now. And we need to use that money to attract agreements that are compatible with our print lending policies.

We need ebook leasing, but in a way that benefits us: we need to be able to pay a fee for unlimited lending for ebooks for a fixed period.

We also need ebook ownership for the copies we purchase.

But we're not going to get it.

I don't have any manifesto for this. Except for you to spend your money wisely: Don't get ripped off.

The Flavor of our Books.

2012-01-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Publishers and authors know that romance novels and ice cream go together. They know that Shakespeare goes better with Camembert and Faulkner is smoother with rye whiskey. Mike Mignola's Hellboy comes alive with a Baby Ruth, and Mickey Spillane and Anne Rice beg for the taste of fresh blood in your mouth.

I asked recently on Twitter about things that became more valuable when licked, and now I can say that books can be added to that very short list as several new authors have published books where the ink and paper has flavor.

Jolene Campbell's Beaver on Mars uses this new technology to add apples, pine, chalk and other flavors to her novel. "Nothing else conveys the mood like taste," she says, licking the page of a frantic chase scene that fills her taste buds with cinnamon.

James Frey's new book, A Million Plus One tastes like shit, actual human feces. When asked which technology he used to get the paper to taste that way, he replied, "I didn't do anything special. My books just taste like shit naturally."

Many publishers are adding this technology to their recent releases, but trends suggest that readers are looking for even more direct ways to incorporate more sensory participation into the reading experience.

One major publisher is said to be working on a device that will, at a predetermined point in the story, either terrifying or suspenseful, will actually slam shut on the reader's tit.

"But we're still in the testing phase," the unnamed source stated.

-- idea stolen from "The Soundtrack of Our Books."

If SOPA were applied to the real world...

2012-01-18T16:47:00.000-08:00

luckily, SOPA has failed. because I never had time to make a post on what would happen if we applied the same law that would destroy links to potentially criminal sites to solving the same problems in the real world:

yes, that is the government solving the problem of a guy selling bootleg copies of Tintin in the back of his record store with its usual finesse. see if any customers can get to his store any time soon.

Amoeba. A-you-ba. A-we-ba.

2012-01-13T17:03:00.000-08:00

We are single-celled organisms in the internet's complex ocean of life. I guess. I haven't really thought about it much, but it seems accurate. But what I have thought about is this:

True story. I had an email from a library patron that say this, verbatim:
"Please give me step by step instructions for downloading ebooks, but keep it simple."

So when I read it, I punched myself in the face. And then I read it again. Because I don't understand any way to give step by step instructions for downloading ebooks, YET still keep it simple.

There are about anywhere between 9 and 62 individual steps for downloading an ebook and the 9-step instructions are only for people who already understand concepts such as "download" and "ebook." So for someone who demands step-by-step instructions, we're looking as something closer to 30 steps, which forfeit any relationship to the word "simple."

We're human beings. We're supposed to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder. We've left this planet and landed on a completely different astral body. And came back. We're supposed to have amazing brains to do this stuff, but still, we're alarmingly primitive.

We may be able to grasp complex ideas, but a survey of the internet can't prove that. We group together because we like the same song or television show or ice cream flavor. Personally, I follow people on twitter who use the hashtag, #banana.

We praise memes. The simpler, the better. Honey Badger, what? I was in Target and saw a Honey Badger t-shirt. So I had to track down the origin of that meme. And it was stupid. Most memes are stupid. Insert an image of a naked French guy into any photo or maybe Paula Deen or a furry animal and the stampede begins. Suddenly everyone has to do it. Why? I guess some memes are funny, although I don't get the joke. I don't understand any of the Ryan Gossling mass-awareness. I know why the cake is a lie, but I don't care. And don't try to explain why that cat can has cheezburger.

So what does the internet say about us when we flock to these posts and repeat and repurpose these ideas over and over into the millions?

This all didn't bother me until Lana Del Rey got a modelling gig. If you don't know, Lana Del Ray has a couple of songs, maybe three, but only one is worth listening to. Video Games. It's a cute song about a girl who pretties herself up only to have some dude completely ignore her while he plays games. Or that's what I hear when I listen to it.

I think it's because I got the feeling that she had been reduced to a meme. That someone, and I don't know who, it could be the woman herself, had made the conscious decision to parcel out bits of image to see who would find some attraction with what part. And then when that part became the focus, then we would be sold that product.

If so, this isn't new. Did you ever see the movie The Idolmaker? It's the same thing. It's probably on YouTube. It's also like old 1970's TV catchphrases like DY-NO-MITE. Or Aaay. But that was the seventies when we were all high all the time. So it just makes me depressed that we are supposedly so enlightened by all this information; yet, we continue to seek out simple messages.

Maybe it's because the more complex the world becomes, the more we want things to be uncomplicated. Kiss my grits.

The Internet is not a right.

2012-01-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

Don't be stupid enough to say that the internet is a human right. Sure, the internet allows us access to information we could never reach before, but it's not a human right to have access to ALL or even ANY of that information.

How would you even define the internet if you wanted to refer to it as mainly the information carried and not the hardware and software necessary to transfer it?

The internet changes from moment to moment. How can you expect to have a right to something that's here one minute and gone the next? The internet evolves and flows continually, daily. It's like saying you have a right to the oceans. You might have some rights in the oceans, but only the rights that your boat offers. And only the rights that territories grant. And only the rights that you can defend. Because you're out in the ocean. With sharks.

You also can't dump toxic waste in the oceans. And you can't remove all the food from the oceans. And you can't remove all the water from the oceans.

Well, you can. But you shouldn't.

If you shield any part of your Facebook profile from strangers then you agree. If the internet were a right, than Facebook would be a right, and access to every user on Facebook would be a right. But the right to access Facebook accounts is not a right because Facebook is just another service accessible through the internet.

Many resources that can be found on the internet are not free. But if the internet is a basic human right, then these resources must be free. What about access to monitor nuclear power stations? Or water treatment facilities? Oh, wait, you say you don't mean that everything *on* the internet is a right? Then what the hell do you mean? You mean access to the internet? Again, the whole internet, or just the good parts? What if you can only access a State-sponsored internet? Would that be okay? And if not, why not? Since no one person has access to every part of the internet, then it can't possibly be a right.

Basic human rights should never infringe on the rights of others. A basic human right to the internet would force us all to be equals on the internet. But we're not equals. Some of us are creators and some are consumers; some are providers and some are participants. You have as much right to play World of Warcraft as you have to walk uninvited through the front door of my home and eat dinner at my table, which is no right at all.

The internet is just technology. When you compare the technology of the internet to things such as the printing press, you reveal to the world that you don't know what the internet is. The thinker of that piece of wisdom says "The invention of the printing press revealed new rights, new concerns nobody cared about until the printing press appeared. It's difficult trying to list these new rights without reference to the technology that enabled them."

And what are these new rights the internet creates? The right have my avatar fuck your avatar? The internet is the medium and we are the message. Whatever rights we have in the place where our feet touch the soil are the only rights we should expect online. Demanding a right to something that requires the functions of artificial satellites in orbit around our planet is simply arrogant.

One would think that it's more important to say that freedom from hunger is a human right. But we all know that isn't true. Because food isn't free.

The internet allows us to gather and use information more quickly. And we know that information is power. And since when is power a basic human right?

You have no basic human right to any of the things you find on the internet. Except maybe a right to assemble peaceably. Your rights to free speech are strictly moderated at most places on the internet. Your freedom from violence and abuse is constantly under attack.

What are basic human rights? I have the right to participate in government. But no one would every argue that I should have access to serve in every political office in the country without restrictions. I have the right to live in the country of my choice. Unless I don't follow the rules and piss off the country of my choice, then I don't. I have the right to live free from violence. And we all laugh at that.

And despite what you may think, there is no basic human right to be educated; that's actually a responsibility that most of us neglect.

The internet is like the real world in that you can have all the rights you can afford to pay for with money or with violence.

Or, ... you know what? I changed my mind. Make it a right. Everyone can have all the internet they can fill their bellies with, and all the internet that fills their lungs, and all the internet that provides warmth and shelter and love and freedom. Yes, and all the porn your hungry eyes can swallow. Because clearly, you have your priorities in order.

This Shit Used to be True.

2011-12-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

I want to talk about Awful Library Books. Not so much the web site because I don't really know what they do there, but I want to call out all the librarians who feel superior for identifying some pathetic old outdated book and marching it out for its public shame.

And this is the entry that sparked my ire:

Let’s Be Indians
Parish 1962

This book is still in reasonable shape given its age, although it probably hasn't been touched since I snagged it for this website. Maybe it slipped through the cracks on weeding since the call number on the spine was wrong. (Weak excuse, but I will put it out there as a possibility.) Yes, I did find it in an active public library youth collection. World Cat shows an embarrassingly large group of public libraries and school libraries holding this title. This book is so light on concrete information, they don’t even list distinctions among the native people. They are all just Indians. Time to retire this title, and for the love of God, how about some updated materials on native cultures rather than a marginal craft book?

Hey, this was us. I bet that before this book, most kids didn't want to be the Indian. Back in the 1950's, the weakest kid that no one liked had to be the Indian whenever you played Cowboys and Indians. The Indian was reviled as a sneaky thief and murderer who came in the night and captured our women. So I'm betting that in 1962, this was considered a progressive view of Indians as creative and brave and worthy of being the lead choice in a young boy's or girl's role playing.

We can all laugh and say, "Oh, I would never have bought that for my library." And I would jump into my time machine to locate which books are "awful" fifty years from now and come back and say, "Yes, you would. Here are the ones you're buying now that EVERYONE in the future is laughing at."

Ok, you're right, I'm kidding. I wouldn't do that because there are no libraries fifty years from now. That's just silly. Also, I only use my time machine to:

a. Kill Hitler over and over.
b. invest in something that I can sell for much more money now.
c. fuck hot cave chicks in One Million B. C.

Oh, yeah, we're offended now by the ignorance expressed between those sad covers of all those old books, but we used to believe what is in these books that we now toss out from our libraries.

Suddenly, we're all so enlightened. But the point is that we bought that book because it represented ideas that our society valued, ONCE UPON A TIME. At some point in our past, some person took the time to write a book that made its way to a publisher who thought it might sell a few copies so it was printed and put out for sale and listed in some catalog or even given a favorable review in a professional library publication and some librarian read about it and ordered it and catalogued it and put it on the shelf for all of us to read and take home. And we read it and agreed with it BECAUSE IT WAS THE TRUTH.

Maybe it was some long ago librarian who bought that book that seems so wrong now. Or maybe it was you. If it was you, are you admitting now that you bought a shitty book? No. At the time, it was probably a good idea to get it. It filled a need.

Or did you succumb to peer pressure when you made that decision to add that book to the collection? If so, you suck. Suck. Suck. Suck. You sucky librarian. Or maybe your boss made you do it.

Or maybe your patrons requested it. They don't really know any better; they only do what TV and now the Internet tells them to do. "Buy this money, health, relationship book and all your problems will go away." And because they're too cheap to buy it for themselves, they get the librarian to buy it. Even though you knew it was a shitty book, you bought it anyway. Because these idiots pay your salary.

But that's the problem with serving the public: they are stupid. If enough people ask for something that might present extremely dangerous health advice or risky investments or even idiotic ideals, books that are a complete waste of paper, you'd probably have to buy it. Because it's what your patrons want. And even though the book is wrong, that doesn't make it any less TRUE. It's true that your patrons were gullible enough to force you to waste tax money on shit. I bet I could publish Barefoot and Pregnant: why women should quit the workforce in these troubled times and give the jobs back to MEN right now and promote it on TV and the radio and the Internet and make it so popular that your library would buy it.

And it would circulate 500 times.

Does that make it a good book? Apparently, by library circulation standards, since we really only care about what gets checked out. But it's a shitty book that no one should be reading, but yet everyone did.

But how much crap are you collecting now that will embarrass or enrage future generations? What if some future water shortage has us drinking our urine? And all those books on mixing frozen daiquiris or swimming pool maintenance or lawn care are viewed with the same derision we now foist upon our own obsolete cultural and ecological views.

The point is, we can't know about all the stuff that we think is awesome now that might get shoved back in our faces later.

So my point is, we shouldn't weed these books.

I think librarians should keep these books and place them in a display called, Past Facts, or Local Time Machine, or Mirror Mirrors. There should be a whole Dewey number to represent these awful books.

No one says we need to be proud of them. But I think it's helpful for society to look back at where we've been and decide whether we're making progress.

But to answer your thought balloon: YES. Weed old medical books. There's no reason to kill people just so we can collectively mock useless therapies. It would be funny to do it, but still wrong.

If I were a poor, out-of-work librarian

2011-12-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

Holy Crap. Some guy at Forbes wrote an article called, "If I Were A Poor Black Kid." Why a poor, black kid? Why didn't he just say, "If I were a kid"? If you remove "poor black" from his essay, it still makes grammatical sense AND it doesn't sound like some WHITE guy just got total amnesia about our history. So if you read the article, just try to ignore that it's completely misplaced advice, but try to focus on the details. Otherwise, damn, he sounds stupid.

With that in mind, I'm going to attempt to solve all the problems of the out-of-work librarian. And it will probably sound just as stupid.

IF I WERE A POOR OUT-OF-WORK LIBRARIAN.

If you're a librarian and unemployed, I don't need to tell you that there are lots of other librarians out there looking for a job.

If I were a poor, out-of-work librarian, I would read "If I Were A Poor Black Kid." And I would do what the author says to do about "getting technical." Most of this stuff can be learned through your local library. I hope you knew that.

If possible, I would learn another language. As much as I could. I would give up my free time and devote every second to making myself the most attractive candidate for the job. But for now, I'll assume you've made it past the application stage and have been called for an interview.

If I were a poor, out-of-work librarian, I would visit my target library and use all the databases and I would remember to mention them during the interview. I would browse the collection and check the place out. If possible, I'd wear casual clothes (so as not to stand out as an applicant) and visit the library early enough that I could change into my best clothes later. I wouldn't show up five minutes before my appointment looking like I just showed up five minutes before my appointment.

I would buy one good suit and have it tailored to fit like a good suit should. And if I'm a dude, two nice dress shirts and two nice ties. And one good pair of shoes that stay in the box and don't come out until interview day. If I were a poor out-of-work librarian, I'm not going to dress like one for my interview unless I want to remain a poor out-of-work librarian.

I'd think about getting a cheap wifi tablet, not so much to look cool, but to learn about how they work in order to show others, my future library customers. The good news is that many librarians in a position to hire you don't know crap about technology. They might have a smart phone, but they don't know much about it. I don't think one librarian around here understands the word "root" as related to computers. I bet saying, "I rooted my Nook" at your next interview gets you confused looks at most libraries; whereas I would ask, "What were the advantages or disadvantages in doing that?" And you'd best have an answer.

I would ask my employed librarian friends for help. Whatever they think would be useful. And based on their advice, I'd have some presentation ready, my storytime or some quick instruction on using something on the computer like email, attaching a document, anything I feel confident explaining clearly.

Keep anecdotes in mind. You will be asked about events where you needed to make decisions: don't worry if you have no library experience, at this point anything is useful. So long as it's recent and displays your professionalism. You will be asked about situations involving a conflict: the key is that there was some attempt at a resolution that didn't involve gunfire. Again, have a story in mind. If you're stuck, ask your librarian friend for help. And if you don't have an employed librarian friend, find one.

The bad news is that if you don't have a job, then library school ain't over. You need to keep learning. Why? Because you don't have a job.

And here is the worst part: look for work where the work is, even if it's 1,000 miles away. I would give up any idea of my dream job and just get hired. But I don't know if I could work for $25,000. In North Dakota.

Given my experience, I'd recommend creating some tutorials for computer instruction. Because that's what I need when I'm hiring. It shouldn't take more than a couple of days to come up with basic classes on how to teach the public a few internety things like:

Finding Friends on Facebook
Getting to Know Google+
Using OpenOffice: Calc, Writer, Impress
Tweeting like a Pro
Working in the Cloud
Portable Apps in your Pocket

If I were a poor, out-of-work librarian, I'd want to appear Intelligent, Reliable, Obedient. And definitely not an asshole. If you're not sure if you're asshole, take a look at your friends and your friends' friends. Any of them assholes? At least one of them should be, otherwise, it just might be you. Every group of friends includes an asshole; make sure it's somebody else.

I'd demonstrate a broad knowledge of the skills I learned in library school, but I'd focus on some specialized area of expertise when given the opportunity to speak during the interview. Maybe it's social networking, or gaming, or web design or children's programs, or whatever, but don't let that aspect overwhelm the interview. Start with the broad stuff, but work in the details when the conversation allows for it.

If I were a poor, out-of-work librarian, I wouldn't remain one for long.

You have wasted your life.

2011-12-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

Humans define our attempt at civilization by our shared beliefs, our shared experiences. We bond over our memories. Dogs sniff each other's asses, but humans want to know how much you loved last week's episode of Once Upon a Time.

So I wonder how the future will view us, with our shared experiences as compared to others. For example:

Where were you on December 7, 1941?
I was telling my ma that I was going to enlist. She cried. My pa even cried.

Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?
I spent the day with friends, telling them how beautiful they are. And getting high.

Where were you when we landed on the moon?
I was in front of the television. The whole world was in front of the television.

Where were you when on 9/11?
I went out and bought a gun.

Where were you when the first iPhone was released?
I was waiting in line!

I think we'll all remember where we were on June 29, 2007 for the rest of our lives. In 2017, the news media will look back on the 10-year anniversary of the first iPhone and on the lives of those it changed. What? You don't remember where you were on that day? Are you fucking kidding me?

We don't know who the first person was to buy an iPhone that day, but you can bet he was probably a fat, bald white guy in a Weezer tee-shirt. Or an Asian guy in a baseball cap. Or skinny white dude with an Alice Cooper haircut. Or it could have been a woman. There were a lot of women waiting in line to buy the first iPhone. And that's sad because then that makes the whole waiting in line for a hunk of plastic that no one uses anymore seem almost normal. (Does anyone still use the first gen iPhone?)

But, whoever that person is, fifty years from now, when he or she passes away, a country will mourn. And a new generation will ask, Where where you when the first person to buy an iPhone died? And the answer should be, if future human beings still have any standards, Who the fuck cares?

What I Wish I'd Learned in Library School.

2011-12-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

What is a library?

This might seem obvious, but it's not. You also might think that it's something one might want to already know before applying to library school, but again, not obvious. It's like thinking you know what a business is before you enter Business school. There are probably ten thousand different kinds of businesses and ten thousand different ways to manage them. The same with libraries.

Libraries are essentially businesses. They are also government. They are public or private, funded by grants, foundations, donations, millage taxes, sales taxes and fees. I still don't have a fucking clue of all the ways that libraries can be funded.

They buy books or lease them. They process in-house or contract it out, or both. They own the land where the buildings reside or they lease or there could be some long-term donation involved. Again, many combinations.

They hire full-time and part-time people and ask the community for volunteers, promote from within or hire from outside, provide formal classes and on-the-job training.

Even after all these years of being a librarian, I still only have a tiny narrow idea of how a library functions. You might think I'm being flippant, but I'm not. There are so many aspects to the job that you can't possibly know what you'll need to know until you need to know it.

You can't prepare for every library job. Sure, you think you want to know about graphic design now, but in your next job it might not matter. Or maybe you think you should have learned more about computers. And then take a workshop and you realize you already know enough to do your job now.

The point is that all this woulda, coulda, shoulda, thinking is fine for commenting on your blog. But don't dwell on it. What happened in library school stays in library school. You're a librarian now, why the fuck are you still bitching about school?

What did I learn in library school? Whatever fit into my schedule that got me the credits to get my degree. I have no complaints.

I don't understand these people who look back at library school as if it failed them somehow. You learn as much as you can, as quickly as you can, so you don't waste too much money as costs increase over the years. And then you get that degree and look for work. Or if you're lucky, get the degree while you're already working.

You use the degree to get hired. Then you observe what's going on and how your new position relates to those around you. You apply new knowledge to old. You fuck up. But not enough to get fired. And you learn. And you succeed. And you backstab and kiss ass to get promoted. There's no fucking mystery to it.

WE HAVE A WINNA!

2011-12-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

So the solution for saving libraries is obvious: open internet cafes.

Sure, your library offers free internet, but do you also offer PAID internet?

Here is the difference between the boring free library and the cool internet sweepstakes cafe:

A typical scenario is for a business to advertise itself as essentially a sweepstakes parlor. Customers buy phone cards and get with each purchase a separate, magnetic card with credit for a chance for every minute of phone time purchased.

Players sit at a terminal in the cafe and log onto a sweepstakes account created for them that keeps track of their winnings. Some parlors have 50 or more terminals.

"'You can play all day long for 40 bucks.'"

$40. A day. Every day. Times 50 terminals... that's... something. Oh, I just found my calculator; that's $2,000. Oh, I could have done that in my head. Minus holidays, that's $700,000 a year. Per location. And there are over 1,000 of these sites in Florida alone. And they seem to be perfectly legal.

So why are librarians promoting coffee shops in their libraries just to make a few extra bucks? Or holding gaming nights, minus the cash prizes?

Libraries already hold prime locations. We're in the suburbs, downtown, near shops, on college campuses: libraries are everywhere.

So why can't libraries provide these harmless games to desperate poor and elderly people? Ask this man, who tells us how we would get to keep a whopping 10% of all the money we'd make and let him keep 90%, I guess, for making his informative video.

Remember, this is perfectly legal. At least, for now.

How To Start An Internet Sweepstakes Cafe. Now for Libraries!

The Library as Disney World

2011-11-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

A recent survey suggests that most Americans don't use their public libraries very much, about once a year. So if you pay $100 in taxes to support your local library and only visit once a year, to me, that sounds like Disney World. It's $90 a day to enjoy the Magic Kingdom.

But Disney World has Space Mountain, you say. Big deal. A 45-minute wait for a 2-minute ride, in the dark. Not nearly as terrifying as a 2-minute walk to your car through the library parking lot at closing time with half our lights burnt out.

Disney World has The Country Bear Jamboree with those wacky backwoods bears. The library has five guys sitting by the newspapers who smell like bears, and might not be wearing pants.

Disney World has The Haunted Mansion filled with spooky creatures who occupy a cemetery. Ditto what I said about the guys sitting over by the newspapers.

Disney World has a parade. But have you been in the library when the doors open in the morning to see fifty people make that "I'm almost running, but still walking" beeline for the Internet computers? It's just like a parade, in fast forward. We're considering asking them to carry a banner.

Disney has Fast Pass and we have self check-out. And we both have long waits for anything new.

It costs $14 to park your car at Disney World. The library has free parking. If you still count having your hubcaps stolen, free.

So visit your local library once a year. We can't legally call it the happiest place on earth, but we do have a mouse for a mascot. Several, actually, and they just ran over into the Children's section to play with your kids.

ALA Criticizes "gay" Penguin.

2011-11-27T04:06:00.000-08:00

According to a report that I totally made up and not in Publishers Weekly, "'If gay Penguin [publisher] has an issue with gay Amazon [online retailer], we ask that they deal with gay Amazon directly and not hold libraries hostage to a gay conflict of gay business models,' read a statement from ALA."
real report here.

Okay, that whole thing was made up. Nobody said "gay" anything. But from what I heard, the American Library Association has a whole box full of unused "gay"s laying around awaiting some future defense of gay-themed children's books that never were published.

Both Bi-curious George and The Very Horny Caterpillar were postponed by their publishers indefinitely, but the ALA was fully-prepared to defend them with 8 "gay"s each, although neither book was explicitly gay-themed. Hell, George is a monkey and would probably hump anything in real life, so I'm sure even that yellow hat needs to be taken out and burned. And that horny caterpillar was only trying to get down with anything that wasn't moving including boy and girl caterpillars and even a snoozing dachshund.

But the ALA had so many extra "gay"s from the previous attacks on homosexual flightless aquatic bird picture books written for children that they felt compelled to use a few, even if unnecessarily. In fact, had this report been true, this would have been the first time the ALA openly condemned a gay penguin.

Also, since this is 2011, we don't use the term "gay" to describe something negatively. But, oh, gosh, back in 1991, this would have been hilarious.

"Why don't you get an iPad?" Zombies.

2011-11-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Zombies is the answer to everything. When you think of ebooks and social networks and your digital self, you should put it all within the context of zombies.

I don't literally mean zombies. But I mean that in any zombie-themed fiction, shit happens, society collapses, and survival gets back to basics. Shelter is a physical structure. Food is food.

There is no virtual world. Microblogging gets cut to four letters: Help. Or three, Run. Friending someone means you get to sleep for a few hours while she keeps watch. The only flash mob is the one that wants to eat your brain.

Anyone showing off his cool new Kindle Fire doesn't get it. He won't last 24 hours around zombies. But the guy with the tool box under his desk knows what matters. Hammer beats tablet. So think zombies.

Zombies says to build more libraries.
Zombies says to plan for failure and have an exit.
Zombies says your most important customer is right in front of you.
Zombies says don't over extend your supply chain.
Zombies says not to waste resources.
Zombies says to train your staff.

We take so much for granted: we assume that the wifi will be up and we expect to have a place to plug in. But this won't last forever. Zombies says so.

Buy books.

"Don't Read Shakespeare on the Shitter."

2011-11-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

Don't ask why, but I found a bunch of stories on how unsanitary it is to read while you're on the toilet. In fact, an image search for "reading on the toilet" can fill your morning with delightful visions of women and men and animals all enjoying a little light reading while voiding their bodies of waste matter. Dee-light-ful.

The good news is, reading a printed paperback or hardback book while you pinch a loaf isn't going to kill anyone and could possibly make you a better person. A disgusting, filthy, better person.

According to the Guardian, contemplating the Meaning of Life while dropping a deuce is an enviable position in which to find oneself and that others should aspire towards, noting that, "the toilet of the middle ages, high up in a castle turret, offered the perfect solitude for "uninterrupted reading"; Lord Chesterfield too saluted the benefits, recounting the tale of a man who used his time wisely in the "necessary house" to work his way through Horace."

And we know how sanitary the Middle Ages were. But I think those old dudes were simply masturbating. They'd take a book to pretend they were reading, but they were really just diddling themselves. "How was your Horace? Wink, wink."

The danger, they add, is, "your poo can get on your hands, [and] be transferred to your reading material." Ah, public libraries: Aiding poo migration since 1600.

"Microbes don't fare too well on absorbent surfaces, and might survive only minutes on newspaper. But plastic book covers and those shiny, smooth surfaces of Kindles, iPhones and iPads are more accommodating, and it's likely bugs can live on those for hours. A recent study by Curtis suggests that in Britain one in six mobile phones is contaminated with faecal matter, largely because people fail to wash their hands after going to the toilet."

So the conclusion, the disgusting conclusion, is that reading while on the toilet is a widespread practice, which is mostly harmless so long as you view spreading feces on the objects you touch as mostly harmless.

Personally, I don't read "whilst" (the King's English) upon the "crapper" (the Earl's English). I don't tweet or play Angry Birds or do anything else with my hands. Except floss. And knit. And write checks. And compose commercial jingles on my Casio keyboard. And blog. Because I'm on the toilet now.

And The Mouthy Housewives, when asked by a mom if her son's new toilet reading habit is gross, reply, "WHO THE HELL CARES WHERE YOUR SON READS AS LONG AS HE’S READING!?!?"

Point taken. Reading trumps poo hands.

But getting back to "those shiny, smooth surfaces of Kindles, iPhones and iPads" where germs can live "for hours"... [GAG!!!!!!!!]

Someone has got to start a campaign against the reading of Kindles and iPads while on the toilet. This is fucking gross. It's like when I hear a cell phone conversation coming from the stall in a public restroom and all I can think is that the is no level of cleanliness that exists in that tiny space that allows for zero transfer of crap to every surface including the dude's face. Hand. Ass. Hand. Phone. Ear. Cheek. Mouth. I don't care if your shit came out in a neatly wrapped gift box with a bow: you're dipping you hand into the no-fly zone of the toilet. There's a perimeter level with the seat that should not be broken with the same hand you're using to hold your toothbrush.

So let's get this started now. Here is the "Don't READ" campaign. And yes, these are terrible slogans. You try coming up with authors whose names rhyme with "toilet" or "crapper" or "shit." How about, "Don't leave a turd, holding the written word"?

"Don't READ Shakespeare on the Shitter."
"Don't READ Tolstoy on the Toidy."
"Put Down That Gertrude Stein Before You Wipe Your Behind."
"Don't Wipe Your Ass While Reading 'Leaves of Grass.'"
"Don't READ Stephen King on The Throne."

You don't want to hear what I came up with for Honoré de Balzac.

Or maybe these should just be simple posters of celebrities sitting on the toilet under the banner, DON'T READ.

Or,
"The hand that swipes is not the hand that wipes."
"Leave your ebook in the hall, when you answer Nature's Call."

And the worst one of all,

"Hi, Siri. Do I look stupid to you?"

2011-10-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

I know you've seen the latest Apple iPhone commercial where everyone is an idiot. Yes, you've seen the little girl who wants to see a weasel. But did you realize that most people in that commercial are idiots?

I've seen this ad on TV about 15 times. And the first time I noticed that the woman who is rushing to the hospital is smiling. She says, "Tell me the quickest way to the hospital." And she's smiling. Is she rushing there because she's sick, or because someone in her family has been injured? Maybe a friend had a baby; that might have her smiling. But then, why is she rushing? The baby isn't going anywhere. Or is it? Her whole world seems alien to me. Stop smiling! Someone is selling a baby on the black market, you monster!

And the woman who gets locked out of her house? Why the hell is she telling her phone, for? Because if you watch, Siri doesn't unlock the door, but does a business search to locate nearby locksmiths. "No, Siri, unlock the fucking door!"

And the guy who tells Siri to move his appointment from 3 to 4, what does he expect? Because if Siri can't unlock a door or even call the locksmith automatically and get someone who *can* unlock a door, is she going to call everyone scheduled to attend the meeting to tell them about the change? What the fuck do you pay her for if she can't make a simple phone call WHEN SHE ALREADY LIVES INSIDE YOUR PHONE?

And the flat tire lady with a car full of child ballerinas? She tells Siri she has a flat tire. Will Siri inflate the flat? I don't understand. Will Siri call her husband? Or will we just repeat that same stupid response about locating 3 tow trucks in the area. That does not solve the fucking problem of being stranded with five children in the car. Siri should say, "I will entertain the children with videos while you curse yourself for not being a member of AAA. Asshole."

So if you haven't seen the video, here are the questions the idiots ask, followed by Siri's responses, assuming she's anything like me:

We have a flat tire. "I thought you wanted a flat tire so you didn't have to sit through that shitty ballet recital."

How do I tie a bow tie, again? "Again? Just buy a clip-on, asshole." (Since Siri is only about 2 weeks old, this guy has asked about this at least once, and forgotten what Siri showed him. Already.)

What's the fastest way to Hartford Hospital? "Step in front of a bus."

Do I need an umbrella in NY this weekend? "No, you don't need one. Unless you don't want to get wet."

Remind me to call Chris when I get home. [Siri deletes all the contacts from the phonebook.]

Move my meeting from 3 to 4. "Meeting moved to November 4th."

Remind me to get milk when I leave work. [Siri posts her work address to Facebook/ Foursquare/ Twitter, with the message, "Who wants milk?"]

Tell my wife I'm gonna make it. [Siri tells the wife, "Your husband is making it with his secretary."]

Wake me up at 6. "Do you think I'm getting up early just so you can hit 'snooze' 3 times?"

Play some Coltrane. "Playing some Coldplay."

I'm locked out. [Siri snaps your photo and posts it to your networks with your location, "Can someone break into my house for me?"]

What does a weasel look like?

Oh, sorry. Too soon?

Wanted: Librarian Censor

2011-10-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

Isn't it about time that censorship had some authority control? The thought of censoring a book or film may seem abhorrent to you, but what about haphazard censorship, without any standards or rules? People will censor. It's our nature to remove from view what we don't want to see. So shouldn't censorship have the same kinds of policies and ethics that guide the profession of librarianship?

We just celebrated Banned Books Week and I was appalled by the randomness of what is challenged in America's schools and libraries. One YA book is pulled for profanity, but some stay on the shelf. Sexual, homosexual, religious, violent or political content is alright in one book but not in another.

Don't people have any standards? Like, what if one day we censored all the gay penguins but not gay elephants? What if we hide the Koran in the basement but keep the Book of Mormon on the front shelves?

We have lists and lists of books that have been "censored" over the years, but those book challenges are so haphazard and random. I wonder if I need to start a site like Goodreads but called CensoredReads where people can tag everything that's offensive or possibly offensive in every published book. I think that would a useful selection, or deselection, tool.

"Find a reason to hate that book, at CensoredReads."

I'm tired of the morons who want to bowdlerize texts and replace words with friendlier terms. These are the same cowards who say N-word or F-word. We know what you're saying; you're not hiding anything. You say N-word so often that it's become the word it was meant to substitute. You say, "Oh, I would never say the N-word." Guess what? You just did.

But if we have to be cowards, at least let's gets our terms straight. We have a few resources to start. I know, based on a skit on Saturday Night Live, that dinosaurs can officially be changed into Jesus horses.

So that's one. But we need more.

That's why we need to begin teaching censorship in library school with classes on "How to Censor Responsibly," "Censorship Terms and Authority Control," and "Censor 2.0."

Here is your textbook, AACR: Anglo-American Censorship Rules.

I really want to hear a librarian who has graduated from the program say to someone who's complaining about a book, "I understand you find this book offensive, but you're hating it wrong."

The Working Dead.

2011-10-05T04:52:00.000-07:00

I guess you've heard about the Occupy Wall Street assholes, um, protestors. They're the group leveraging social media to protest the corporate screwing of America. No, wait. They're not using social media; they're actually marching on Wall Street. With picket signs. And getting busted for it.

They aren't just virtually there with a Google map representing the greed on "the street," or creating an augmented reality app with facial recognition cloud resources to identify the richest trader cocksuckers in the crowd, but are physically there in NYC. And not one protester has signed into Foursquare to claim the mayorship of the intersection at Wall and Broad streets.

Wikipedia tells me, "The participants of the event are mainly protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government,..."

Ah, a political manifesto. Why not just be about jobs?

Here is their dickhead philosophy, "The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

You know what? I don't care about the greed and corruption. I'm glad Wall Street is making money. What I care about is their refusal to share.

I would protest the seeming collusion by big business to create a two-tiered America where the few blessed earn $10 billion a year and the rest of us earn $10 an hour. I would protest the union busting. The professional downgrading. The extreme costs of education that leave us in debt just for the empty promise of a decent living wage. I've complained for the last three years that corporate America has some plan to turn us into the working dead with lower and lower paying jobs.

Where is my American Dream? That should be your fucking mantra. Don't criticize the greedy. Greed shows that there is money out there to be made. But find a way to make those greedy bastards play fair and create jobs, good jobs.

Nobody cares if Mr. Big has a billion dollars if we also have good jobs, health benefits, safe places to live and play.

All you idiots with any other political agenda need to shut the fuck up until we all have jobs with a good future, with benefits to keep us healthy and productive and with pensions for loyal hard work.

Create Good Jobs. Any other message and you're wasting your fucking time. And mine.

Librarians Need Pimps.

2011-10-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the movie Taken where Liam Neeson is asking the hooker about his daughter and the pimp comes up and takes Liam's money for wasting the hooker's time? Librarians need that.

How many times have you answered your patron's question only to get another question fired right back at you? And sometimes while you're still in the middle of the first question?

I mean, if you don't have your shit together enough to wait to get an answer for something before you want to know something else, you're either a mentally unstable adult, or a 4-year-old.

"Why is the sky blue?" "Why do I have a penis?" "Why can't dogs and cats have babies?" "Where do farts go?"

That was the adult.

But from what movies I've seen, a pimp can help a ho stick to business and not waste time with bullshit. Like eating. Or bathing. Or getting an education. Or anything else that doesn't bring in money. A pimp is like an extremely violent and unstable life coach.

Here comes the Pimp now. After the movie, Taxi Driver, we'll call him Sport. Here is a sampling of his guidance. Here's a thought, has anyone written a book like Tuesdays with Morrie, but with a dying pimp?

Sport (promoting his merchandise):
This librarian here, she's been on the job five years but you'll swear she's done it for twenty. She will blow your mind. With knowledge. She will fuck you up and down with information. You can ask her anything you want. And she will find it. But no rough stuff, no legal or medical advice, all right?

Sport: Are you bothering the librarian? Because I'll bother your ass with my foot.

Sport: Time is money. And your time is about to run out. Like your blood.

Sport: Asshole, the librarian has helped you. She found you a source in India for 12-foot long unfinished mahogany boards and she sent the contact information to your iPhone. And she found you a local periodontist who uses no anesthesia and let's you hold your dog during your gum scraping. And she gave you the phone number for Zooey Deschanel's agent. Now it's time for you to go. Do you really want this to go to the next level?

So, yeah, having a pimp sounds real cool. I'm just not sure how it works with the money thing, since I get a salary and don't get paid by the trick. I'm sure pimps have a sophisticated formula for figuring it out, like taking my whole paycheck. And then punching me in the mouth. Because I'm a librarian and don't make very much.

Public Libraries for Sale.

2011-09-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

So libraries now have ebooks for the Amazon Kindle. And so does Amazon have us.

We often talk about the value of libraries, about the library building, about the collection, but we don't often discuss the value of the concept of a library and what it means and what it's worth.

Right now we're all broke. Except for your rich bastards. But most of the rest of us are broke. Either because of our own greed or stupidity or because the The Man keeping us down. In my case, it's The Man.

But libraries have value that we can't perceive unaided. Our library gets many requests from the public for us to allow them to become associated with us. Some want us to link to their website or some want to discuss their businesses or books they've written with the public.

I don't know about you, but when we're considering a purchase for our library, we look to see how many other libraries have made a similar purchase. Because libraries are home to many professionals and bright people so we've determined that libraries make good recommendations. And I think others feel the same. That's why some many people and businesses want to work with us.

I was once told that Google even views libraries as better than most other sites. And if a library links to another site, that site in turn gets an upgrade in Google's algorithm. And how much is that worth to have your business easier to find on Google?

So what is it worth to have libraries send our patrons to Amazon to borrow ebooks? You might think, nothing, because these people are Amazon customers anyway, Kindle owners. But now the library is delivering our patrons to Amazon. And what will Amazon do with our library patrons? In order to make our Kindle users happy, we're also giving away a little of their privacy. Amazon now knows which library books they read. Again, not a big thing by itself. But these are library patrons. And in this business world, this can be an entire demographic. I don't know. I only know that we've given a huge global entity access to something that, as libraries, we've been trained to protect. And we did this because our patrons wanted it.

So I don't think anyone can truly calculate the value of a library. Actually, I think the private companies that contract to manage libraries can because they exploit the goodwill that libraries have earned over the last 100 years when they use volunteers to run their for-profit *public* library.

Companies spend millions to create the perception that they are good, whether they are, or not. And libraries have this already. A library doesn't need sponsorship or logos or mascots or jingles. Build a library any place in America, in the world, and the neighborhood becomes a better place to live.

So the battle (okay, it wasn't a battle, yet) with Amazon is lost and it's not our fault. Our patrons don't really understand the value of their privacy and how it relates to freedom. Although, I've been telling them for years.

As far as the brokeness issue, I don't have the answer. But for libraries looking for money through partnerships with private companies, please rethink your true value. It's not just how many people will see the ad in your library stacks, it's how much each of those sets of eyes, those minds, are worth. In my view, they're priceless. But I won't criticize you if you sell out for, maybe, $50 million.

Amazon's Big Ass Library

2011-09-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

News: Amazon copies the Public Library business model. And adds fees. The story is that Amazon is going to lend ebooks. And everyone says this is bad for libraries.

I don't know why Amazon didn't do this sooner. Here's what could have happened at any time: Let's say Amazon creates the Amazon Lending division and the Lending division buys ebooks from the Amazon Bookseller division. Amazon could lend those ebooks for $2 a week and make... $2 a week minus $10 cost per ebook, is $94 a year. Or given the short lifespan of a book, $47 for six months. So Amazon can make $47 dollars on each ebook it buys from itself.

And since Amazon the Bookseller creates the demand for the books in the first place by pushing them to the front page, it can target the most profitable books to purchase for its Lending division and not waste money on dogs. But given how the web page works, it can buy and rent pretty much anything at any time. "Buy Now for $9.99 or Rent Now for $2.00 a week." I don't think publishers would even be able to keep track of the bookkeeping.

Publishers could have complained. But since Amazon sells more of their books than any other outlet, they wouldn't complain for too long after Amazon gently, but purposefully, squeezed their balls.

What's funny is that libraries have been doing this for years. But without the $2 a week. The only thing Amazon adds to the Library plan is the rental fee. And Amazon's massive global presence. And the ball-squeezing thing.

Amazon's Subscription-based Lending Library vs. the Public Library.

Amazon: Thems that can join is thems that can pay.

Library: All are welcome. Even you.

Amazon: As quickly as possible, regardless of cost.

Library: As cheaply as possible, no matter the delay.

Amazon: We track every word you read. And we can tell which ones you don't understand. Don't you know what spurious means by now? God, my kid knows that.

Library: We couldn't give two fucks whether you borrow Catcher in the Rye. Or if you read, What's Up with Down There? (a guide to your lady parts) and it's companion, What's Wrong with my Dong? (a guide to dude stuff).

Well, actually that last two have wifi keyloggers that gather your Facebook profile if you keep the anywhere near a computer or smartphone. But that's just something I did. For research, not for spying. But I won't tell anyone that you checked them out. Except in my library school thesis. You know, for research.

Whenever our library would bring up charging for services in the past, the plan would always get shot down. The purpose of the library is to provide free services, was always the reason. It didn't matter that ALL real world examples had a cost. Book and movie rentals, computer use, instructional programs, research, all incur some cost in the real world.

So in the middle of a fucking recession, with this Amazon new, libraries are being told that people would rather pay than wait.

So watching TV, I see that most people still have $70/mo for a phone. And $8/mo for Netflix. And $6/mo. for Amazon Prime. But no one seems to have fucking dime for libraries.

Everyone says that libraries have become obsolete because people only want to pay for the things they want; there is no longer a common good. And I've also heard that people shouldn't be forced to pay for something that a private company could supply. Like private roads? Private armies? Because I'm sure you could find some company willing to keep the road in front of your house in good shape if you cough up $5 a day. And if you don't cough loud enough, I'm sure a good ball-squeeze is on the menu.

So you have librarians all shouting how library lending is dead because Amazon is willing to sell the same product that libraries could provide for free if only everyone would shut the fuck up and just pay their $8/mo. in library fees so that we can continue providing books to everyone. Oh, wait, and for that same $8 you get children's programs and online newspapers and computer classes and yoga and reading clubs and meeting space and internet access and music and SO MUCH OTHER SHIT it's not possible to calculate it all. If only you fuckers would just pay your fucking taxes.

But what these librarians are saying is that the book lending model for libraries is dead. Much like how the VHS and DVD lending model perished years ago when Blockbuster and then Netflix and then Redbox appeared. What? That part of library lending is stronger than ever? In fact, Redbox is only $1 and Blockbuster has repeatedly lowered prices AND Netflix users are quitting the service because prices increased?

So what is it about Amazon's model that will kill libraries? Is it the Kindle? So a business model that requires members to spend $114 upfront (for the cheapest Kindle) and then keep a valid credit card on record AND continue to pay $8 to $30 a month is going to beat out a FREE service?

What it will most likely do is allow libraries to get the same deal as Amazon and allow us to lease ebooks from publishers. So then the library will be able to lease 200 ebook copies of Stieg Larsson's ghost-written but based on his notes, second series of novels to fill demand. And then six months later, return them all and buy something else. And when libraries get the power to lease ebooks for one-fifth the cost of purchasing them, then we'll have the power to deliver content to our patrons and near-Kindle immediacy but without the added cost.

I'll say this again; if libraries could only manage to pool all the money, would could get publishers to give us what we want. Because this is tens of millions of dollars. Or even hundreds of millions. I don't have a calculator, but it's a lot. We could offer any book or movie or song to anyone at any time in any format.

Amazon isn't big because they're better. They're big because of that name: Amazon. It's a big damn river. It's the biggest river on Earth. So we'll need to come up with a bigger name for our combined national library. How about Library Planet? Or The Big Fucking Library? I'll leave the naming up to you.

But The Big Fucking Library would look great on borrower cards.

How Science Fucked Up Star Wars

2011-09-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

Fact: Star Wars is fucked up. But that's what's great about Star Wars. There are the movies and books and cartoons and toys and breakfast cereals and there are the stories surrounding each of those incarnations.

There's myth and legend. And it continues to grow. There's always some new guy with a story to tell about The Making of Star Wars. Here comes one anonymous fake source now:

When George came over to show me the script, it was just this handwritten copy. And just as he was handing it to me, he barfed all over it. He just blew chunks. He said it was something he ate. But just before that awful mess, I saw the title page and it said, Starlight Warrior. The original, original title of Star Wars was Starlight Warrior. But Georg had puked up on it and most of the letters were all wet and gross and all you could read was Star War. Which become Star Wars. True Story.

From what George had told me before he came over to show me that first draft of the script was that it was going to be a story of a small-town girl who leaves her farm to move to the big city to become a movie star. It was going to be a total glam-rock take on All About Eve with David Bowie as Margo.

But when George hurled on that script, he got depressed and so we hung out and got high. And I put on The Wizard of Oz. And the image of Dorothy evolved into Luke. Obi-Wan was born from the Wizard. And Han, Chewbacca and C-3PO were somewhat like the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man. And R2 was the Munchkins. Remember, we were pretty stoned. Later, The Emperor became the Wicked Witch.

And that's what great about Star Wars. It's mysterious. Luke Skywalker and Dorothy Gale, who knew?

So when some assholes came along and tried to apply Science to it, Star Wars got all fucked up. How do lightsabers work? How far is the Kessel Run?

What is The Force?

And that, for every single person who loves Star Wars is the biggest fuck-up. Have you read about midi-chlorians? What the fuck are those? Microscopic symbionts that detect the Force? Fuck you, George Lucas!

When I saw Star Wars, and more so, The Empire Strikes Back, I wanted to have access to the Force. And I sometimes convinced myself that it was out there for me to find, and control. To mow the lawn. If I could just get that mower to cut the grass by itself while being propelled by the Force, my life would be awesome, I dreamed.

But then everyone wanted Answers. Or maybe George Lucas felt he had to provide answers, but either way, all this cool shit that seemed like magic in the Star Wars universe got kicked in the ass by Science.

So now we know exactly how dense your cells need to be with midi-chlorians before you can even hope to get the lawn cut, let alone pull a Jedi mind trick and get someone to sleep with you. It's 16,000.

So all you writers and creators, try to remember that when you create a world and fill it with characters, leave a little magic behind for the rest of us, and let us wonder.

September is Library Card Sign-up Month.

2011-09-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

Get a library card. Use it.
You can borrow all kinds of stuff for free. Ask us what we have.
Return what you borrow in about the same condition as you got it before it's due back to the library.
And if you ask us, sometimes you can keep it longer.
So don't steal from the library.
What the fuck is wrong with you?

Welcome, library volunteers. Mr. LaFayette will be whipping you today.

2011-08-31T00:30:00.000-07:00

I think California is missing the point with their attempt to legislate how libraries are run. They want to add all these requirements about accounting transparency and being open for bids, but they still don't get it.

This should be about the role of volunteers in for-profit companies.

If you are a not-for-profit entity, you can use all the volunteers you want. But if you make money off the labor of unpaid employees, then you're either:

A) a pimp
B) a restaurant owner
C) a library management company
D) a time-traveling plantation slave master

Although I think waitresses make some sort of hourly salary, around $3-$5 on average. So if you chose A, C) or D), you are correct.

So when a library makes a contract with a company to maintain its collection and manage its daily operations, that company should not be allowed to run the library with unpaid employees, or, as they say in the library management biz, volunteers.

When you have 3 or 4 paid employees managing 100 unpaid workers, you have slavery. Or a Girl Scout troupe selling cookies. No, wait, slavery.

Maybe not Olde Southe Slaverye with the beating and the rape and the human trafficking, but slavery, still.

Reportedly, here is what goes on at one of these privately managed libraries:

08/23/2011
... there are less than four full-time employees of the Paso Robles Library. There are about 125 volunteers that do everything that full-time employees used to do.

Did you hear that? Beatings! No, that didn't say, "beatings." But I didn't hear anything about free coffee and donuts, neither.

Yes, you should argue that no one is forcing anyone to work in the library for free. But what other choice is there? Every day, our library is filled with folks in search of something to do. Playing FarmVille.

Walmart couldn't get away with paying Americans nothing to work. As much as you want to curse them for other abuses, this isn't one of them. Neither could Best Buy or McDonald's or any other company in America. But libraries are doing it right now. And if library management companies are allowed to get away with profiting from unpaid workers, and don't even get me started on how Facebook does this, how soon will other companies be allowed to follow?

So when your library is out of money and some bean counter suggests that a private management company can run the library more cheaply, ask how volunteers will fit into this plan. Because if this company is making a profit while using unpaid labor to perform most of the work, you'd best check your iPhone to make sure you didn't just download an app that you thought was going to make your photos look olde-timey, but actually made everything olde timey, like it's 1850. If so, head north.

No, your GPS won't work; it's 1850, idiot.

Learn to Fucking Search

2011-08-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

You digital natives with your iPads
are masters of Facebook, it's true.
Yet you cannot locate a decent article for class.
You really suck at searching, Fuck you.

You use the Google toolbar to find Mapquest
and you use Bing to locate Yahoo!
Your password's the same as your birthday.
Your net skillz suck, so Fuck you.

You have the best tablet or smartphone.
You're always on Foursquare, GetGlue.
You share intimate details with everyone.
We're robbing your house now, Fuck you.

Your research technique is to Google.
And Google is all you can do.
You got an F on your last paper.
You can't find shit, so Fuck you.

Google-y Google-y Google-y Goo.
Google-y Google-y Google-y Goo.
Google-y Google-y Google-y Goo.
Google-y Google-y Google. Fuck you.

Use databases for peer-reviewed journals.
But use Google to find a tattoo.
If you can't learn to tell the difference
You're totally screwed, so Fuck you.

Put phrases inside quotations;
Learn to use minus signs, too.
Learn to search the fucking Internet.
An old fart like me can, so Fuck you.

If you get lost, ask a librarian
because searching is what we can do.
But if you're too cool to ask for assistance
you deserve to fail, asshole. Fuck you.

:: idea stolen from Shelf Check, Emily Lloyd's awesome toonblog... which she stole from Go the Fuck to Sleep and I adapted it to include research from What Students Don't Know ... if I get the time, I'll use some cartoon site to illustate it with lions and shit...

ok, here's a picture... but I'm too lazy to do the whole thing... but it would look pretty cool if I did.

Image Copyright © 2007 Jeremiah Blatz

The Internet, explained in language you can understand

2011-08-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

Remember that PSA for HIV where they told you to wear a condom or make your partner wear a condom because when you sleep with someone, you are also sleeping with every other person he or she has ever slept with?

If you understand the necessity for wearing a rubber then you should be able to understand much of what I do at the library.

So let me apply your condom understanding to the Internet.

When you use the Internet, it's like you are sticking your penis into every orifice on the planet all at once. Or shoving every penis-shaped object in the world into every hole in your body. Whichever image best helps you to understand. So imagine that. Think of all the holes or pockets or indentations you can imagine: another person, a fish's mouth, a knot in an old tree, a rifle barrel, your car's tailpipe, whatever it is, you're jamming your prick into it. Of think of every monkey's paw or beer bottle or cucumber or every other object being crammed into you at once.

That is what happens to your computer when you look at stuff on the Internet. It is literally crawling over naked bodies in the most crowded, filthiest orgy in the world. And all the lights are out so you can't see a thing.

And this is by no means an exaggeration. This is the truth. This is really happening to your computer, but you can't see it.

"But my computer is not that kind of computer," you protest. No. Your computer is a whore. Just like every other computer. You might want to argue that your computer got raped when you went on the Internet, but you'd lose. The very nature of how your computer communicates with other computers means it was looking for it. A million dirty hands are all over it before your computer can even think to shout, Stop!

Now that you know what's going on, think about what you're really saying when you call me over in the library to tell me that your computer is "acting funny." Imagine what your doctor might say if you complained about your body feeling funny a few days after you rolled around naked with a few thousand of your friends of various species. "Yeah, it's possible my jaw hurts because I may have given a blowjob to a walrus," you'd have to admit just before your doctor sterilized the examination table with a whole lot of fire.

Sure, we have a firewall and antivirus software running to protect the computer, but doesn't mean you won't put your hand in something funky.

So when the computer starts doing something weird, don't expect me to know what it is. It's the Internet. Just be thankful you can't see everything that's going on out there in it. Did you ever see that movie, The Ring? Where there's a video that's so horrible that if you watch it, 7 days later you die? And did you ever see TRON? Where cyberspace is all neon lit cities and hot chicks in skin-tight body suits? Take a guess which movie is closest to what the Internet is like. Hint: it's not the one about computers.

So when I don't know what's wrong with your computer after I've just looked at it for all of 3 seconds, try to not be such an asshole about it. Think about all that stuff that just happened to your computer. All that terrifying and gross stuff. And try not to throw up on my shoes.

Libraries: making you feel like shit all over again

2011-08-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

It's pretty much ever other day since I became a librarian that I hear, "It's been so long since I've been to the library."

And since computers have existed since before I went to library school, it's been every other other day that I've heard, "I've never used a computer."

And by next year I'll need to find new days to squeeze in for all the times I'll hear, "This fucking iPad can suck my dick."

So it seems like forever that libraries have been making people feel stupid or guilty or unsuccessful or lazy. We're constantly changing to add new technologies to make our patrons feel like shit.

Remember that many of your patrons learned to use the library by borrowing printed books. And that technology didn't change very much from year to year. Except the collection changed. New books arrived and found homes on the shelves next to the older books. So there was an actual, tangible history on the shelves. One could hold an old book that was once enjoyed in childhood in one hand right along with the latest bestseller in the other. And it inspired reflection, reflection on the years that have passed, on life, marriage, children, work, health, death. And all that reflection sucks.

People don't want to remember their lives. Or rather, they want to remember but only when they are guaranteed to not remember the next morning. And that's why we drink. To remember how much our lives suck and how much promise was wasted but to be able to forget it all tomorrow.

That's why shopping is awesome. Everything is new. You don't have to compare your life to some old diet book you tried to apply to your live 15 years ago that didn't work. Or to remember how much you loved reading Dean Koontz and how you met someone else who loved Koontz but then that person turned out to be such an asshole. Everything is wonderful in the Macy's Juniors department.

But libraries always remind you that you don't know shit. If you read books and love them, the next the books will be stamped on gold foil that you read by rubbing them against your teeth. Or worse, the books will require some special hardware to read and some overly complicated process for getting them out of the sky and onto the device. A process that makes you lose control of your bowels, just a little.

So let me apologize to all the library users who just want things to be the way they were way back when they first visited the library. I'm sorry. From all the libraries everywhere, I'm deeply sorry.

Libraries keep changing. But yet we keep all the old stuff to keep you off balance and fuck up your day. Just when you got used to borrowing The Sound of Music on VHS, we dumped that copy and bought it on DVD. And now that you've learned to love your DVD player, we're switching to blu-ray. And next April we're going full streaming HD video. Won't that just make you lose your shit?

But it's not our fault.

Your one bit of satisfaction should come from knowing that all the smug assholes stroking and caressing their iPads now will be the old codgers later when the idea of manipulating a device with one's hands will seem prehistoric because all the world's data will just shoot out from our asses.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

2011-08-03T03:56:00.000-07:00

So fewer schools are teaching kids cursive writing. And many of you probably don't care. Click this link for what I said about this a couple of years ago.

But think about all the places where a kid needs to know cursive, like signing yearbooks. Oh, wait, I guess in the future, all school yearbooks will be a Facebook page and kids will pay $75 for the app to be able to view it and leave messages. Duh.

But, really? Didn't you love seeing everyone's handwriting? Didn't you compare the cute curves of most girls' notes to the awkward blocky text of the boys? Didn't that make you laugh? I always wondered how the girls learned to write so cute. Look at this example [reading from my 19** middle school yearbook] "U R the sweetest. Yum! I hope to C U this summer."

See? That's awesome. And that was written by, oh, um... Stephen. Yeah, I remember now. That was a good summer, our secret summer. What ever happened to Stephen?

And what about our serial killers? How will we be able to identify the tell-tale signs of their future horrors without being able to analyze their handwriting after they kill all those people? "Oh, look at this letter 'a,'" we'll say, "this was a clue that he was a ticking time bomb." Isn't it funny how we all do that? After some terrible action like a mass killing, we look back to see if we could have predicted it and stopped it before it happened. Like solving a maze from the end going backwards. Which is easy as hell. But try to solve the maze going in the right direction and you get blindsided by dead ends or traps. So now we'll without the "Monday morning quarterback" wisdom of the handwriting analysts.

And speaking of evil, how can you strike a deal with the Devil if you only know how to text? You can't sign your name to become a billionaire or a movie star! You can bet Tom Cruise is teaching his kids how to write in cursive. Maybe the Devil has a BlackBerry, I don't know. I just think he does business that way. Don't ask how I know. But when my birthday rolls around, I always know whose card is in the singed red envelope.

So some day when kids can't write in longhand and we've had a century of texting and interweb lingo and our civilization has fallen due to that meteor that the government keeps saying will totally miss us and we have to create a new government, I'm guessing that we won't have these words to help guide us:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But we'll have this because this is what our schools will be teaching in 5 years:

we hld thz trootz 2B slf-Fident, dat ll men r cr8d eql, dat thyre Ndowd by ther cre8r W certN Nalienabl ryts, dat mong deez r lyf, lberty n d prsuit of ^^.

But maybe cursive writing isn't such a big deal. I've never had a purchase rejected because my signature didn't match something that I don't know what it should match when I check out at Best Buy and pay by credit card. I move the pen in circular motions on the screen of the scanner and it makes some line on the cashier's screen and she presses a key and I get my receipt. It's an obsolete action that is probably just a carry-over from days of the Old West when the local feed store refused to take Discover.

So kids won't be able to compose beautiful notes to each other or write flower love poems with pretty penmanship. They'll have emoticons. And I think the right one for that feeling is <3. That's either a heart or a witch with big tits. But either way, Love.

What makes a hack.

2011-07-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

You are a hack author if any of your major characters is [a/an]:

vampire
werewolf
mermaid
snowman
astronaut
child
horse
unicorn
sea monster
hunter
detective
baroness
prince
duchess
dominatrix
goth
teen
king
queen
talking dog
regular dog
turtle
ghost
elemental
molecule
alien
holocaust survivor
omniscient voice
coconut macaroon
slacker
hacker
meat packer
homeless person
billionaire
boxer
porn star
politician
historical figure
dinosaur
otaku
mutant
nurse
general
spy
assassin
wizard
superhero
supervillain
terrorist
rock star
divorced
dead
terminally ill
disillusioned
delusional
geometric shape
rich
pun
part of speech
cartoon
unborn
reincarnated
plant
inanimate object
the color orange
soldier
chronic handwasher
drug addict
cutter
suicidal
fashion designer
florist
pool of water
chupacabra

So shame on you, shame on you all. You should be able to come up with something better that this.

Library Scabs

2011-07-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

If your local Friends group loves your library so much, then why are they getting your librarians fired? Or forcing them to work at much lower salaries.

Library volunteers are scabs, not because they break picket lines, but because they'll do a job for free that should be done by a paid employee.

Not all volunteers are bad. Look at Wikipedia. But then, if the Wikipedia volunteers don't show up on Tuesday, it's not like you can't find the entry for Lutynia. If the library volunteer doesn't show, that hilarious DVD of Failure to Launch doesn't make it back on the shelf.

Library jobs are some of the most vulnerable public sector jobs in the country. Why? Because it's considered normal that we allow volunteers to perform so many of the library jobs.

People come in right off the street and we let them into the staff areas and let them use library computers that can access user personal information, and all we ask is if they can come in on Saturdays.

We don't do background checks on volunteers, then we let them work around children, regardless of whether this kindly old grampa was known as The Playground Killer back in the 1950's.

Oh, we love our library volunteers, you say now. But wait until your library decides to turn its money over to a private company, then see how you feel when those same volunteers are doing your job and you're applying for a part-time position at Home Depot.

Think of any other job where they allow volunteers to do the work... is it skilled labor? Maybe volunteers built your 1977 Chrysler Cordoba, but hell, we didn't even wear seatbelts in the Seventies, and children could buy cigarettes, so clearly we didn't give a shit.

People volunteer at the hospital delivering flowers. My mom volunteers at the hospital. Which is run by a large corporation whose goal is to make a profit. And she provides free labor when some other person could perform that job for at least minimum wage.

One simple strategy with privatization is to cut library hours. Then wait for the outrage. And then ask for volunteers to work to keep the library open regular hours. Easy.

So you cut staff. You reduce full-time positions to part-time. You reduce salaries. And then exploit the good name of the public library to convince people to work for free.

Who the fuck do you think you are?

Yes, you can fool lots of old people into volunteering. They don't know any better. But let WalMart try that.

The library could do this themselves; they don't need a private company to pull this scam.

Look at this job ad: "Library Systems & Services, LLC (LSSI) has an opening for a Part-Time, 30 hrs/wk, Friends and Volunteer Services Coordinator located in the Santa Clarita..." Your volunteers are cutting off your tits! Your hours are cut so you can become a Lagerführer.

According to this NYT story, "the volunteers are still showing up — even if their assistance is now aiding a private company. ...Jim Ceragioli, a board member of the Friends of Shasta County Library,... says, 'We volunteer more than ever now.'"

HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU?

Would you volunteer to work for free at Target? You might, but AARP or some other senior protection group would sue and get you an hourly wage. But somehow this is okay at the RUN FOR PROFIT library. Yes, you volunteer when the library is a public entity because you feel like you're helping the community, but how the fuck can it be legal to solicit free labor when the company is private and for profit?

That same NYT article says, "Officials would not discuss the company’s profitability." HOW THE FUCK LEGAL IS THAT? We have to report every fucking dime we spend now. It's taxpayer money. It's called transparency. But suddenly, when you sign a contract with a private library management firm, the public no longer has a right to know where their money goes?

And this is not like some contract to purchase automobiles where I say we need transparency with the company selling the cars, this is because, like many local governments, ours collects library taxes as its own line on the tax bill. Just like for schools. Your tax bill says, Public Schools: $1000, Libraries: $50. So this money now goes directly into a private company that has no accountability back to the taxpayer.

But getting back to the volunteers. How the fuck can a company claim that using volunteers is part of it's business model? Does McDonalds go to your local city council and say, "We want to open 25 restaurants and provide no jobs, but use volunteers to manage them"? And your local council says, "Fuck, yeah! Volunteers pay the bills around here! No salaries, no taxes, no disposable income to spend on goods and services!!!"

The first thing these private companies ask is, "What can we get away with? Will people work for free?" Yes. If the choice is no library or work for free, many people will choose to work for free to keep the library running. But how fucking legal is that? And not even how legal, but how stupid!

Imagine any other company trying to get away with that. "It is the determination of an independent consultant that the position you currently hold will become an unpaid position starting tomorrow. You may continue in this position an an unpaid volunteer. And you will be beaten with sticks." How much shit do you think you'd be stealing when you opened that letter? How big of a fire would you start in your cubicle?

When the Parks department gets their budget cut, they don't run it on volunteers. Why not? Because some grandma would drive a lawn mower over a child. Or half the kids would drown in the pool because the volunteer had to be as her granddaughter's birthday party. So why not? Because some shit is too dangerous to rely on volunteers.

But also because these privatization pimps rely on the good name of the public library to get all this slave labor. The library has spent, in many cases, 20-50-100 years building these community relationships, and then some private company swoops in and takes all that goodwill shoves it right up the librarians collective ass by eliminating professional positions and using more paraprofessionals and volunteers to boost their profit.

But the saddest thing is that most people would never notice the loss of librarians. All they want is their new books or movies and they don't care who gets it for them. We could be grinding up baby seals in the back and using the blood to power the computers and they wouldn't make a peep. "Baby seals, you say? Whatever works. Is my copy of the new Danielle Steel in?"

I wish this was something we could complain to the Department of Labor about so they could document the amount of unpaid workers, elderly men and women, Hispanics, African-Americans, all bending and lifting for hours without compensation or benefits. Oh, wait, it is, and calling 1-866-487-9243 could help.

So the next time some smiling senior citizen comes into your library asking about volunteering to read to children, I expect you to scream right in her face, "You would steal food from the mouths of my children? Get the hell out, you fucking scab! Now, somebody grind up some more of those baby seals and get this line moving."

The Future for the Library is Fucked.

2011-07-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

We make many assumptions when it comes to civilization. At the top is the assumption that it's here to stay. But the truth is that civilization is fragile. One hiccup in our supply chain and we're all squatting in open air toilets. But at least we'll have iPads.

But one simple mention on LISNews tells me how fucked we are. Someone wrote that their library in New York has had to turn off the A/C on some summer days to avoid crashing the power grid and causing a brown-out in the city.

And therein lies our fuckededness.

We need electricity. We need wired and wireless networks. We need hardware. All these things erode the foundation of the future of libraries. But mostly, all these things need money.

Compare this to the guy who lends books from the back of a donkey to see why modern libraries are destined to fail.

Our supply chain for moving information is weak. When it works, it's magically fast. But it's fragile as hell. I'm not talking books because books are stable. But the future isn't about books.

There are many who feel that libraries can't survive without ebooks and streaming media. Not only do I disagree with that thought, I feel it's the library's mission to survive without them. I'm not opposed to digital content, but I think my library shouldn't devote more than 12% of our energies to providing access to it.

We also have the closing of bookstores.
And Amazon's ability to avoid collecting sales tax.
And the privatization of public libraries.
And the closing of some libraries.
And the cyclical devaluation and revaluation of school librarians and media specialists.
And mobile communications patent disputes.
And streaming media.
And library futurists.

Add all these things and the future for all libraries looks pretty crappy.

But the real reason libraries are fucked is that I've discovered how to run any and all libraries for practically nothing. And if I've figured that out then it won't be long before someone with evil designs figures it out, too. I won't go into details, but the bottom line is that you seal up the bathrooms.

To run a proper library, you have to serve people with people. I don't know what the ratio should be, but one librarian for each 100 people who visit the library is probably okay. We usually have around 150 people sitting around here so we have 2 librarians. And I don't need to tell you that this other guy isn't really pulling his weight when he says that I have to handle the first 100 and he'll handle the rest.

But the library of the future is just going to be about delivering content, not about people. So when all the librarians are fired, except for that one guy who said he had your back but was secretly negotiating to keep his job, you'll look back on these days and think of how the fuck you didn't see it coming.

If I have a digital library, then why would I need a library building? And without a library building, why would I need staff to keep it running properly, to keep things in order and to keep it clean? I wouldn't.

All I would need is wireless internet located at inconvenient, dangerous-after-dark locations around the city. I could run my whole library system, from 2 to 50 branches, with a grand total of 2 or 3 librarians. My patrons would need some sort of portable wireless device and our app. And I would push content to them, as needed, whether it's prerecorded storytimes or ebooks or movies or live help or Q&A or whatever. And when their batteries ran down, they'd go home.

But, you might say, what about all the people who don't have these devices or don't know how to use the internet? Well, they'd better step up. Right now, your library is filled with books and there are people in your service area who don't know how to read them; what the fuck are you doing about that? So screw anyone who can't figure it out. Because the digital library, by definition, isn't about people.

And gadgets are getting cheaper. I can get a cheap tablet for $129 that will let me do almost anything that is worth doing. And haven't you been saying that If you're not on the internet, you might as well be a dog?

So in the digital future, I don't see that any librarian will have a job. Unless you are amazingly awesome or a brown-nosing motherfucker. And since I know my boss takes her coffee with two sugars, you can guess which side I fall on.

But I oppose all of this. I don't want to see my library become all digital all the time. Because then, why would you need us? The internet isn't successful because it has millions of people greasing gears and shoveling coal to keep it running. It's success exactly because it doesn't. So if the public library is meant for people, why would you do something that eliminates people from the service side of the people equation?

We know that some people don't really need other people. Facebook and Twitter and MMORPGs prove we don't really need to meet people to feel like we have friends. We only want a reasonable facsimile of a person and any reasonably competent AI program will satisfy most people's needs for human interaction. Or we could video conference. But we don't really need a physical person to make us feel human.

If left to their own choices, would any of these people choose to support the library? Probably not. So why give them that power? Why give them everything they could ever need through their computers and devices? Because these people don't need us.

Each choice leads us toward different paths. Yet some paths will make it impossible to go back to choose another. The path toward a 100% digital library is one that may not destroy libraries all together, but one that I think will destroy librarianship as a profession.

So check your corners. The role of the library building is much more important than you can imagine. Sure you can have a digital presence, but keep it small. Focus on your relationships with the people who visit the physical library because those people will scream and be heard when that library is threatened. By comparison, I don't think many people scream when our digital library is down for a day or two. They might tweet, but they don't scream.

I would rather die a noble death serving people than live a thousand lifetimes serving machines.

The Public Library Social Network

2011-07-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

Circles. Tribes. Groups. Clubs. I always hear about how libraries need to become more involved with social networks, but I never read about how libraries are already social networks.

Granted, my library doesn't pry into the lives of 500 million people or allow private companies to build databases from a billion photos that can be used to find images of each and every one of us and link them to our online profiles. To sell us crap.

Sure, our library utilizes facial recognition software, but it's extremely buggy and only runs properly when I'm at the desk with the other librarian who can spot every trouble making patron we have. "You see that guy?" he asks, "I saw him take all those magazines from the shelf and dump them on the floor. And then he walked away and left them there."

So the social network meta data or tagging for that patron might include: asshole, magazines, sloppy, disrespectful, problem, etc. Libraries could use the same tools as other social networks if we chose to.

But the difference between the major online social networks and the public library is that we keep your activities to ourselves. We don't go blabbing about every book we've seen you scan on the shelf. We don't talk about your behavior in the restrooms. We don't link your name to your car to your address to your property records to your court records to your online identity. We could do it easily, but we don't. Because we're professions who value your privacy. Besides, there's nothing in it for us. Maybe if TMZ wants to send me a couple hundred bucks, I might change my mind, but since we don't have any local celebrities using our library, that'll probably never happen.

On a normal day like yesterday, our library had over 500 visitors. It could have been more like 800, but some people were too hideous to count, so I ignored them.

So 500 beautiful, or moderately attractive, or tolerably ugly people visit our library daily. And on a hot day like yesterday, a few of the really awesome members of the human race wore almost nothing so that from my seat at the desk, I could see almost everything.

But no one took any pictures. And no one blogged it or tweeted it or liked it. Because the public library is the social network that keeps your secrets. Even when your thong is completely out there.

So if you want a real social network that includes other people like you who read the same books and watch the same movies, then support your local public library.

Or else I'm showing everyone the photo I found stuck inside the book you just returned. You're disgusting. Call me.

because it's funny.

2011-07-09T18:42:00.001-07:00

@sweet_steffy Lady Like

Boobs will NOT get you anything you want. I've been rubbing this crossword puzzle across my chest and still don't have the answers.

http://twitter.com/#!/sweet_steffy/status/89338100169453568

yeah, but somewhere Will Shortz is getting a chubby.

http://twitter.com/#!/effinglibrarian/status/89343510402174976

Libraries: Widening the Digital Divide.

2011-07-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if you've noticed, but there seems to be a digital divide. The reason why I ask is because I don't know what the digital divide is supposed to be. I thought the digital divide was about access to digital and electronic resources. But if that's the case, then why are libraries working to make access to information even more difficult for anyone without the technology to access it?

I don't understand how it happened, but libraries are actually, make that ACTUALLY, widening the digital divide.

First, a little simple understanding: I feel, and I feel this is a truth, that the more steps it takes to reach a goal, the farther that goal is from achieving.

So if information is shared from person to person, the steps are small. We should speak the same language and not be insane or not eating food or any other logical thing that normally happens when people communicate. Remove idiotic barriers and we communicate.

If we print out the information, similar rules apply. We don't print the information in the sand inches from the rising tide that begins to wash it away; we don't spell it out with breadcrumbs so that birds eat it; we don't brand symbols into another person's skin with hot iron, unless they've signed a release, and we don't intentionally scribble the text in characters that others can't understand.

So in this world, we print with inks onto sheets of paper and we share those ideas with others who understand the languages we use. And that, I think, is a very short path between having information and sharing it with others.

And this used to be the method that libraries preferred. For years. Libraries made all of these printed pages available to others by collecting, organizing and storing them.

And if there was a technological divide, it was only there because visiting the library might have required a long trip of some distance.

But then libraries began purchasing digitized online products and texts. Or leasing. And by giving money to these products, they encouraged publishers to digitize more products. And these products were only accessible through the use of a computer with online access.

Thus, the digital divide was born. Actually, it was born when the publishers decided to digitize the data, but if the data didn't have a buyer, then would it have been digitized in the first place. It's a chicken and egg thing. Did the product exist before the market demanded it, or vice versa?

And so now libraries continue their complicity in the perpetuation of the divide by supporting every step that separates the user from the information.

Books require few steps between the user and the information.

Online information adds more steps in technology and online connectivity.

Ebooks add another step based on the various file formats and another for registering for DRM and even more if the content requires a specific ereader device.

And now The Cloud adds another step as it requires the user to have ongoing wireless connectivity that could cost $$$ per month in bandwidth fees to access content that could just as easily be downloaded and accessed locally.

Digital content can also be limited to specific applications that only run on specific portable devices such as iPads or Android tablets with the latest OS. And since portable devices are not as easily upgraded as desktop PCs or laptops, whole groups of users can be shut out from accessing information unless they purchase newer and better hardware.

And libraries encourage this. Proudly. Robustly. As if the librarians have forgotten that information should be accessible to everyone. Which, if true, forces me to question why the hell I'm working to keep information free when clearly, these other librarians want there to be some cost.

If these librarians are attempting to bridge the digital divide, then they must be building one longer than the one at Jiaozhou Bay. And God help anyone who breaks down in the middle.

Public Libraries: unprofitable, yet undefeated.

2011-06-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

How does one measure success when discussing public libraries? Cardholders? Circulation? These measurements mean almost nothing in the business world.

Compare cardholders to cardholders and your library might feel like a business. Companies have credit card accounts that might mean something, unless the shoppers aren't buying, just as libraries have library card holders who may not be borrowing.

But item circulation? How does that compare to selling products? The only thing a library has for sale is... the professional librarian and library employees. The library doesn't sell paper towels and coffe; the library sells skillz.

You could say that the library sells FREE. That the books and computers and movies are free, and that's why people come. But if that were true, then how long could a library remain open after everyone looted the place? Librarians don't give away the things people want; we are caretakers for what people want. We are educated people who are motivated and committed to preserving this ongoing social experiment called the public library.

We are not Borders. We are not Kmart. We are not a company where shareholders need to be satisfied by some increase in their earnings or else they shut us down. For the most part, we are THE GUMMINT. We take your money and we do whatever the hell we want with it. And we went to school to know how.

Which brings me to Google Health and how it got the axe. Google shut down this very library-like service because "we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health."

Here is a service that could benefit its users greatly. But it didn't do what Google expected, whatever that was. One opinion was that Google Health apparently failed because people want "something fun and engaging."

So people want social networking and cool stuff. Predicable. It doesn't matter that their health records could someday save their lives.

So where Google Health failed is that they didn't make tracking illnesses a game. Like FarmVille. But with viruses and cancers and blood-borne pathogens and erectile dysfunction.

So Google, since you know better now, why not make a game? If someone has their avatar hop around the board sleeping with all the other avatars, you could calculate what the odds would be for them to get AIDS, chlamydia, genital warts, whatever. So the game is for them to "sleep around" until they get sick. You could send vaccines to friends. And maybe they could buy power-ups like condoms or nutritional supplements or prayer to keep from getting knocked up or getting someone knocked up.

Or maybe your avatar could pursue perfection by getting tons of cosmetic surgery until your avatar goes insane. Or obesity, you could never exercise and get diabetes. Or take all the vitamins in the world, become vegan, do yoga, and still get hit by a bus. That sounds like a great game. Call it BodyFarm. But I get 5% of all ad revenue.

And that's the difference between for-profit corporations and libraries; the librarian doesn't need for you to be entertaining. We help, regardless.

The librarian is already there, being paid to present programs, to purchase materials, to preserve, collect, organize, index, categorize and whatever else that needs to be done to keep the information flowing. Thank THE GUMMINT.

the Librarians who say MotherFacebook

2011-06-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

I heard a story that some large corporations have begun devoting all their time to their Facebook presence, to boost their Likes as if they have real value.

And then I heard a story about an author who had her manuscript turned down because she didn't have enough friends on Facebook. The publisher figured that the book would sell better if the author had more FB clout.

So, really, wft?

So I'm wondering if any libraries have moved their main online life to Facebook.

Yes, your library has a Facebook, but is that the page you update first? Is that the page that's on all your publicity? Is that where your patrons go to communicate with you?

I don't advocate using Facebook for anything. But I'm curious. I believe that libraries and social networks go together like oil and water.

I think that libraries should create or host limited social networks, but I don't think that the privacy and freedom that libraries have attempted to protect for the past 100 years mixes with today's openness, lack of privacy, disrespect, voyeurism, rudeness and bullying.

So, anyway, that's the question: are any libraries devoting all their resources to Facebook and/or to trying to generate more Likes?

and reply to my damn tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/effinglibrarian/status/83558904499412992

Change. For the fuck of it.

2011-06-13T13:07:00.000-07:00

I just read the latest post from the Annoyed Librarian and I am inspired.

She.... okay, we'll pretend we don't know she's a She, or He, says that bad managers pursue change. Continuously.

Change can't be quantified, so how can Change ever fail? Change is about Change and so long as Change Happens, then everything is a WIN. AL concludes that continual change is barely more than havoc wrought.

But libraries are about people. And people are havoc in a meat sack. People will find ways to circumvent any rule. No amount of Change can ever keep up. Even adopting a "we change for you" attitude can't make it happen fast enough. You're broke; we fund you. You're dirty; we clean you. You're hungry; we feed you. You're guilty; we absolve you. We're always a step behind.

Change is always about trying to catch up, but never making it. You act; we react. How can we ever win?

But I want Change. I want to become a Change Agent. Without actually doing anything. I'm just going to wait until the People do something and then I'll take credit for it.

When the People create their havoc, I will be there as the Agent for Change with my new Change slogan: "We're trying something new."

Your library sucks.
"We're trying something new."

Your carpet's on fire.
"We're trying something new."

Why is there baby shit on the self-checkout station?
"We're trying something new."

Someone just stole my iPad!
"We're trying something new."

I can feel it. This is it. Librarians will look back on this day and say, "The effing librarian is a fucking idiot."

That's not new.

The Light and Dark of Lit

2011-06-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was totally confused by the outrage I read expressed last week at the Wall Street Journal article on young adult literature. So much anger expressed toward the author. You would think these people were influenced by the all the darkness in teen fiction.

But this is what I took away from the article: "The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship."

I am not a parent. I was one, but I traded my children a long time ago to a witch who lived in the woods for the power to give David Caruso his comeback. I admit it was a stupid thing, but man, I really thought he deserved another chance. Ironically, I've never seen even one episode of CSI Miami. Is it any good?

I am not a parent. That's not my job. But the librarian's job, my job, is to support the freedom to read.

So my job is not to be a parent. My job is to buy quality books. And if not quality books, popular books that may or may not be of any great quality.

Librarians are continually stating that it's the parents' responsibility to monitor what their children read. But how can parents make these judgments if they get criticized for making these critical decisions? Even the recent NPR article criticizes parents who keep kids from reading what they want, "Banning is banning, not guidance, and if the suggestion is that that's the parenting role, it has to be done ... regretfully, I think. Even for parents acting with regard to their own kids, the act of one human being actually preventing another human being from reading a book is a grave decision." Even though the next sentence says, "Obviously, not everything is appropriate for every audience..."

So if something isn't appropriate, how is the parent supposed to direct the teen toward something else without seeming like a monster?

But this isn't my battle. I still feel that this is an area for parents only. I would never criticize a parent for judging a YA book as inappropriate for her child. It is only my job to find books which ARE appropriate for my patrons.

But for these parents who want to keep their kids from reading literature that's too dark, maybe they can find a way to do it while avoiding any of the intellectual freedom "black list" terms:
Don't say you won't let your teen read the book because it has too many vampires, zombies or werewolves; say it's not vegan friendly.

My job is to help people find something to read. And if your library has teen reading lists for "dark" books but can't offer a parent a similar list for books that don't dwell in the darkness, then I'd say you need to work on that part of your job because there's one patron your library isn't helping.

It's the location, not the converstation.

2011-06-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

Location.
Location.
Location.

Facilitating conversation is extremely time-consuming. I know I don't have the time to do it. I can't sustain communication through my blog or even on Twitter. I post something and then I'm off onto something else. Either I don't have the attention span to follow through, or frankly, I don't really give a fuck. I said my part as concisely or as cleverly as I could construct it. And unless some truly groundbreaking new information surfaces, I'm done with that topic. I can't sit around all day, congratulating myself if someone comments on what I said.

I'm not paid to guide online discussion. My bosses bosses bosses, that's from how high up the decision comes, don't want us wasting time assisting people who are not taxpayers. We've been told not spend time on questions that originate from outside of our area. And that's what the digital world is, outside my local area.

I get emailed questions all the time from people in other states or even other countries who want me to research some topic. But I can't do it. I don't say refuse outright, but I also don't spend more than 10 minutes thinking about the answer. You can argue that it's a gesture of goodwill to answer the question, and I would agree, but as a professional, I consider what that goodwill is worth compared to what it's worth to my local patrons who live and work right here in the city. I'm not going to spend all day researching the question for the distant user, when I have people right here who need my help.

A true digital citizen knows that conversation is global. Unfortunately, funding is local. Funding is the foundation of my library. Without money, I'm not a librarian. I'm not going to stand at the intersection with a cardboard sign that reads, "I'll look it up for spare change." And tell people to drive around the block and come back for the answer. Or give their phone number to the homeless librarian on the corner so I can text them.

But that being said, I'm not an idiot. I know that tools exist to automate some of this work. And then the job would be mostly hands-off. I could set up Twitter streams to filter content and direct it to our library site. I could try to direct conversations through Twitter #hashtags. This wouldn't take much time at all. The only problem is that there is a public perception that whatever appears on our library website is endorsed by the library, and the local government, so I'd need to post some long and complicated disclaimer that could cancel out the fun of participation. "No, the library is not selling llama Viagra. No, I don't know how to convince your male llama to mate. No, we don't have erotic llama DVDs."

Please don't make me Google "erotic llama DVD."

And since I work for government, I also have a whole slew of ethical rules I need follow if I don't want to end up in jail. So if I create a conversation and then ignore it as local businesses use it for their own benefit of if it's used to slander local elected officials, it's my ass. Most librarians won't tell you about their ass. But I'm always the first to point mine out. You'd know this if you ever met me: "Hi, I'm the effing librarian. Check out my ass!"

Everything about my job is local. For proof, you should read the transcripts from my chat reference sessions. Almost every question is about that person's local library or their local library account.

Also, I don't have the ego to think I can control the entire freaking Internet. There are other librarians out there who do and are trying to change the library world. I have enough trouble with this one crappy blog that nobody reads. Which is why I quit blogging. Yet I still have shit I need to get out of my system. So I post stuff like this.

Anyway, if you love cat-wrangling, I'm sure you'll figure this out. But my phone is ringing and there's a kid standing here who wants volume 27 of Yu-Gi-Oh!, so I gotta go.

Good luck with that Internet thing.

Congratulations, you're an idiot. Here's your diploma.

2011-05-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

I still haven't read anything that proves that the "Augmented Reality App for Shelf Reading" is worth considering for any library. If you haven't seen the video, the app runs on a tablet with a camera and as you point the camera at a shelf of books, the camera scans the 2D codes on the spines to tell if the books are in order.

Wait. 2D codes on the spines? Yes, you have to add another label to each book in your library. All, 200,000 of them. Or 10,000. Or 3 million. What does it matter, it's another label someone has to apply to the book spine. A label that probably won't work on a book that's thinner than .75 inches.

So you scan the shelf and the books are marked with green checks if in order or a red X if not. And then an arrow points in the direction where the out-of-place book needs to be moved.

And then you scan again until the shelf is in the correct order.

And this is faster than teaching the student how to read the call number. (???)

It also doesn't explain what to do if the book is completely in the wrong place and on the wrong shelf. Does the arrow point behind me or up the next floor?

So my guess is that the student pulls the books from the shelf that can't be fixed by the app and puts them on a cart for someone else to shelve: that one kid who actually knows the LC system. And then the first student closes the Shelf Reading app and starts playing Abduction!

So instead of learning the shelving system, the student learns... nothing. Remember, this is a Digital Native®. He can't be bothered to learn something that isn't intuitive (to him) or doesn't require casting spells or collecting gold or keys or the rote memorization of Xbox attack combos.

So now we have a potential library school student who won't know the call number classification system used in his library.

But let's see if that's a deterrent to getting a library job.

Here is what I imagine the job interview for a typical Digital Native® would be like:

Library HR: I'm sorry, you have a doctorate in library science?How did you get your MLS?

Digital Native®: I made a video that was viewed 3 million times. It was a parody of that song? I forget. But we danced around and it was awesome. Sorry, I mean, epic. Or sick. Oh, whatever the hell we kids are saying these days.

Library HR: And your doctoral research was in which subject?

Digital Native®: Viral Marketing. I wrote an app. It was downloaded 1.5 million times.

Library HR: What was the app?

Digital Native®: It was in protest of the HarperCollins ebook policy of only allowing 26 downloads for libraries. It was an image of the CEO of HarperCollins, Brian Murray And when you tap his face, he farts. It was downloaded 1.5, um, right now, 1.7 million times. It was featured on Jimmy Fallon.

Library HR: As much as it pains me to say this; congratulations, you're hired.

Now downloaded 1.8 million times!

things not taken for granted

2011-05-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

freedom
privacy
something to write on
something to write with
over the counter medications
ice
electricity
clean clothes
clean water
hot food
bathing
the sound of birds chirping, tweeting
Stephen Fry Tweeting
quiet
a place to keep your stuff
stuff
a safe place to sleep
a safe place to poop
music
hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, tasting
getting through the day without killing anyone
not dreading or fearing what might happen at night
not having to hide during the day

Quotes 50¢

2011-05-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

The digitized book or periodical is opening the door to all new potential revenue streams. Because digitization means info mining becomes easier; I can find any fact or word or phrase in any published work in only a few seconds.

Previously, a publisher or author could quote a source and give credit within the work to create payment: I cite you and give credit and you have no legal right to complain.

You published your book and maybe it made some money, but mostly, it didn't. And the source felt no bitterness at losing a piece of a pie that was never made.

But now, each and every word can be isolated and tracked and highlighted and aggregated and analyzed and valued. So then, if each and every word can have value, where does "fair use" end? The threat of an accusation of plagiarism is no longer enough. Is there now a point where compensation is required?

Let's say I quote you in my book. And you make the argument that there is a greater need for creators to know how much of their work is being shared or read or highlighted or critiqued than there is for the reader to retain her privacy, then a site like Amazon would be required to turn over statistics for which of your words are increasing in value.

I quote you. And my book becomes popular. And you find out that people are quoting you from the quote they found in my book. You could go back to my publisher and demand payment for what has now increased in value. Fair Use ends when it's no longer Fair. And you might take me to court to prove that it's no longer fair. And then others would let the courts decide where fairness ends and payment begins.

The point is, that when bits and pieces of longer works leave the pack to stand on their own, then there could be a reason to side with the creator and rule that money needs to change hands.

Can you imagine reading an ebook and suddenly finding that one of you favorite quotes has disappeared because the author didn't pay?

The Future of Librarians is the Future for Everyone

2011-05-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

To be honest, if I didn't work in a library, I wouldn't think much about them.

When I was in middle school, the library was a place to hide between the hallway beatings I got from bullies. When I got to high school, the library was a place to hide from school security while I skipped classes. But in college, that all changed and I learned to use the resources to find what I needed. Plus, they had back issues of Playboy.

I'm trying to imagine what the library would mean to me if I wasn't a librarian. And it's difficult, if not impossible. So I'll confess my bias and present my proposal.

I think libraries require a federal agency to combat online ignorance.

This is not a lie: a week before Tax Day, a guy came in to file. And so a peer gave him a slip of paper with IRS.GOV written on it. No mistake, it said, IRS.GOV.

After a while, the guy came up to the desk because he was having trouble printing and since he had closed out his windows, I asked him to get back to the site from where he wanted to print. And so he went back to IRSGOV.COM. Because that's where he went to file his taxes.

I think he got through the links to TaxAct and that's where he filed, but the point is that he was a fucking idiot. We didn't send him there. But we didn't type the address into the browser to get him there, either. So where should we draw the line at holding hands?

And that's where I think that there needs to be a federal agency established to keep stupid people from allowing the online digital world to fuck up their meat world lives.

We are actively discussing and planning for a Digital Public Library or a National Digital Library, or whatever it might be called, and if this happens, I think we also need National Digital Librarians. In fact, based on what I see in my library daily, we need them now.

We currently require Nutrition Labels to be printed on all food and supplement items, so why can't we begin to require Information Labels to accompany all Internet searches?

This new federal agency, possibly jointly formed by the FDA, CDC, NSF, NIH, FTC, could regulate Internet search results with this new label that would measure things like:
Reputation, Likes, Freshness, Backlinks, Ads, Cookies, Super Cookies and
Chances This Search Will Fuck Up Your Life Somehow.

I see a future where librarians are an essential component in the individual safety and education of each Internet user. And if we get close to creating this National Digital Library, librarians should make their voices heard and be part of it. And they need to remember to wash their hands.

Censored Genius = the.effing.librarian

2011-05-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

Just a clarification on why this blog has no "bells and whistles" for commenting or contacting me or buying tee-shirts: it's because I quit blogging last year, but I still had a few things I wanted to say and the usual outlets didn't seem to fit. So I made this.

Since I quit the blog I wrote called "the effing librarian," I've posted a few things at Closed Stacks and at LISNews. but there are also things that I write that I didn't want to burden others with, so I created this site.

I don't have time to devote to a blog, so that's why this is just a generic page with no extras. I also never expected anyone to visit and leave comments.

Anyway, I'm glad you found the place even though I didn't expect company so all I have is some white grape juice and hard boiled eggs in the fridge and a bottle of tequila in the freezer. Make yourself at home. No, I don't have cable. Or wifi.

If you're looking for "I'm the fucking librarian, motherfucker" shirts, you can get them through the following links, although they are not my shirts, someone else made them and they say that proceeds go to the American Library Association:

I'm the fucking librarian, motherfucker
and
I am not any corporation's bitch

I don't know if there's any copyright issue because these are based on what I wrote, but so long as I don't see the shirts for sale at Target, I won't get all lawyery.

You can also buy books from my previous blog at Amazon, including "an effing intimate, effing special, effing unique, effing personal and effing affordable collection" for $9.

And you can read other stuff at Scribd for free. Thanks for stopping by. If you use the toilet, put the seat back. You know how I hate having a wet ass.

The Fight Goes On.

2011-05-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I was torn between War, Battle and Fight, but I went with Fight because I'm being optimistic and hoping this isn't a war. Because this is about libraries and what the business world is doing to kill them, dead.

I suspect that everyone but librarians wants libraries to become tools of corporations, to be Kindle support centers, or wireless hubs for Netflix streams, or whatever else is out there. But they don't want us to be libraries. Because libraries are run by librarians.

And that's the problem: librarians.

A recent post by Seth Godin attempts to define a librarian as something limited by format: print books are bad, digital bits are good. So librarians should become digital wizards, or something. I think the current hip term is "data sherpa who directs and engages conversations," or some other bullshit. And a librarian is bad if she's not continuously evolving and growing toes.

But a good librarian would never exclude a data format from the search results. You ask me for information on turtles and you're getting everything I can find, and that includes printed books. But chances are, you're going to wave your Kindle in my face and say, "I want it here." And regardless of my reply, my eyes will tell you to go fuck yourself.

Sixty percent of the world's people would kill to have a library filled with books. Some countries won't even let you into a library without proper identification. But Americans, on our rapid decent from being a world power toward become the world's bag boy, have lost sight of what has lasting value and moved on to what has recurring monthly fees. In response to Seth's Blog, Bobbi Newman says, "One of the many roles of the public library is to ensure that all people have access to that information."

And that is the fundamental difference with every current view of the library and the real purpose of the library: Libraries are for everyone.

Read a dozen news stories from the past year and there has almost always been some derogatory comment about the homeless sleeping in the library, or people looking at porn or Facebookers, or DVD renters or old people doing the crossword puzzles in the paper or whatever. As if these people don't deserve access to what they want, even if what they want is crap. And that's my job to decide. Not Amazon's job or Netflix's or Godin's. I'm the fucking librarian, motherfucker. I am not any corporation's bitch. And if I want books in the library, we're having books. And DVDs. And econtent. And graphic novels. And pie.

I see the war on the horizon. I see the battle here at our door. And the fight has been going on for years, as this is now 14 AG (Anno Google), and librarians have had to convince others of our relevance since the birth.

I understand that Seth is a book writer, and that he needs to make his ideas sound important. But I don't want to work in his library filled with computer terminals. I see that world each and every day and I don't like the crowd it attracts.

So I won't say Seth is totally wrong, but I think he sees libraries as some untapped reservoir of consumer dollars and that libraries should direct that energy into buying or selling more products. At least that's what I think when I hear phrases like, "create value."

I don't need anyone telling me what kind of librarian I should be. I'm the kind I always was, the kind I was trained to be: you ask for crap and I help you to find or do it. And I don't see that description changing, ever.

The United States of America: Detroit of the World.

2011-04-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm actually worried about the state of this country. I'm worried that the people who spend the money, the legislators, have busted this country for the people who make the money, the corporations.

Don't confuse Corporations with the People Who Pay the Bills because that's the Middle Class. But corporations make the money and the USA hasn't been very good at allowing them to do that for the past few years. The fact that corporations aren't providing good jobs for Americans to earn the salaries to allow them to purchase the goods and services that the corporations produce doesn't seem to make any difference to the Corporations.

So in an every deteriorating spiral, Corporations don't pay the bills that fund America's infrastructure and they don't provide the salaries, yet they complain that America isn't doing enough to keep the corporations fat and wealthy. So they've been taking their business elsewhere.

We used to think that America ("The United States of America") and the Corporations were inseparable. But these past 2 years have taught me that they aren't. The Middle Class is disintegrating before our eyes. The Super Rich have gotten super richer and the poor keep finding ways to avoid success. If I had to do the math, I'm sure I could find an algorithm that explains the tipping point where someone decides they are better off not working for low pay than they are not working at all. My guess, with my poor math skills, is that if you are single and make less than $22,000 a year (about $12/hr.), it's probably not worth your time to have any regular job. You might as well let the government feed and house you. And from what I see happening in America, there must be an app for that calculation because so many people don't seem to want a job if it pays so little.

Don't think this is about the poor. It isn't. It's about why there are no good jobs in America any more.

Wall Street is richer than ever. But America is poor. We have no jobs and the good jobs that were left are being stripped away. Okay, I guess I should admit that there are some jobs: food service jobs are plentiful. Low-paying jobs with little room for advancement abound. But the abundance of moderately-high-paying jobs that seemed to come from education and work experience seem to have evaporated. Whatever promise the future made to our parents hasn't been shared with us.

Look how America treats Corporations: we have regulations. We tell Corporations how they can function, how they need to report earnings, how they need to keep products safe, how they should be greener, how they should treat workers fairly, how they should offer medical benefits, how they should provide fair pay, hours, benefits. We've banned smoking from the workplace, for chrissakes. And Corporations love to smoke!

The rest of the world doesn't care about this.

Corporations took too easily to doing business with China. Yes, I'm bashing China. Look at it! Do you even understand what's been happening there? Corporations went there for cheap labor and low or no regulations. Other than graft and political corruption. So Corporations opened up shop there and Chinese regulations require that the Corporations turn over manufacturing specifications and trade secrets before China will agree to let them stay. So China can now counterfeit all your goods if they want, but they promise not to if you stay and don't complain about their labor laws or how their government is run. And so the salaries for Chinese laborers went up, a little. And you can see how we've been rewarded for that, oil prices and food prices and the cost of most commodities have gone up. Because a few hundred million workers can now afford to buy cars and food. But as costs increased for the Corporations, what did they do? Many of them moved from the areas where labor was to cheap and quickly became more expensive to areas where labor was still cheap. The Corporations just moved from one part of China to another. Just like in America when they move from one expensive state to a cheaper one. The Corporations learned that providing jobs to workers, even low paying, unsafe, exploitative jobs is more important to keeping a government stable than providing well-paid jobs with good benefits. And so they have been applying that new philosophy here in America.

But I'm not blaming China. I'm blaming us. If I thought about it, I'd probably find blame with NAFTA because that's where I think Corporations got the idea that they didn't need to support the American workforce in the first place.

More proof. Corporations want to do business in Libya. True. Even a corrupt, evil dictatorship looks sexy to Corporations. Libya and other countries where life is hard and cheap because the government is cruel, are like whores who would let Corporations have their way with them. Not like America, where we complain all the time, but slutty, spread-open skanks who welcome manufacturing facilities with toxic chemical processes or obsolete unsafe production methods and don't have court systems that have ever heard the words "Class Action."

America is less attractive to Corporations than Libya. And Libya is the Libya of the World. We used to compare city to city in America, deciding where we would move to find a better job, but I don't think that's possible anymore. The Dollar is weak. And America has become expensive.

You can call me an alarmist if you want, but I'm not trying to alarm anyone. I don't have a solution. I'm just pointing out where we are as a country, and our place in the Global Village. America used to be the New York of the World. We used to be Hollywood. But not today. We are Detroit.

If you ever want to find work in the future (I'm guessing 15 years from now), you won't just pack up your stuff and move to California or Washington; you will have to go to a whole other country. And not Canada. For the next location the Corporations might find desirable, I'm thinking Ireland or Greece. So learn a new language or buy a warm coat. You still have time.

The Book vs. Us

2011-04-20T03:39:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, there is the book. And on the other, there is us. I might say it's a form of Nurture vs. Nature where Nurture is the unchangeable WORD, printed and bound and Nature is the EXPERIENCES we have, separate from the word but reliant on it for some meaning or understanding (but that would go against all previous definitions of nature-nurture).

We have this immovable thing, this book, with inked sheets of paper where letters are frozen in time and space, where ideas move in a line from beginning to end without any detours.

And then we have this other thing, this fluid, fluctuating thing that is dynamic and conscious and free.

We have language and art to express ourselves. We form thoughts and we attempt to convey those ideas to others.

There are always these opposing forces: we want to live, but we also want to record what was lived. We have life. But we also want to share life with others:
"Do that thing you did before."
"What thing? This?"
"No, it was different."

We are always attempting to recapture and relive special moments. We take photos. We blog; we tweet. We paint cave walls. We get tattooed. We need to express what life means to us, as humans.

Or so it seems. We could be like animals. Even though I don't know what it's like to be an animal, my guess is that birds don't ask other birds what they think of their nests or dogs don't compliment each other's coats.

But each wall or blog post or tweet is a reduction of that freedom. Each wav and avi posted is also only a tiny fraction of our Nature.

What we live; what we observe; what we remember; what we share, are all smaller and smaller subsets of the whole of our Nature.

We live. But when we need to express how we live, we create books, songs, art, games, video.

We live this duality, but often misunderstand it. These parts need each other. But each time we neglect the one side, the other side rebels. Reflect on your life too much and you may forget to live it. Live too much without any reflection and you may seem crazy.

But there's no point in trying to find a balance. Each side needs to be fulfilled. Live. Record. Live. Record. Time moves forward and we can't do both at the same time. You can pretend that you can observe your life as you live it, but you are inevitably Schrödinger's Cat: just the act of looking alters how you live. Unless you're a true narcissist, then looking is all that matters.

So Live. Then Look. Or Look, then Live; it's your choice.

And if what you see is worth mentioning, do your best to tell others. Or just make it up and dare someone to call you a liar.

"To create, you must destroy."

2011-04-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Library War. Is it me, or has the library war already started? Because I keep reading about how the old library is dead and the new library needs building. That print has been mortally wounded and now those inbred and bastard children fight to be the next ruler. We have our own Game of Thrones (this week on HBO) in the fantasy library world of Bibliotania (yeah, you come up with a better name):

We have Knowledge Facilitators, once loyal to the throne but now impatient for political change so long as the office remains in their control.

We have Transliterates, plotting with foreign armies or mercenaries, anyone who can bring swift wealth and power.

We have Digital Natives, spoiled, selfish, corrupt, unable to see beyond their immediate desires, but who command a great army.

But each for now, opposed to the rule of Paper. Paper Rule, Papal Rule: there could be some historic parallel in this tale. All these voices in Libraryland say that The Print is Dead. See? That sounds like "the Prince is dead." You could really run with this to write a terrible story if you wanted.

So they all shout. Somehow, I think, that whoever shouts about the death of print the loudest, that one will somehow gain the upper hand in the fight.

"Technology is the answer!" "Transliteracy!" "Knowledge Facilitation through communication with local communities is the solution! (That one's not so catchy.)

So, although the library is actually doing pretty well and not at all at death's door, these groups think it's wise to declare the death. Yes, print may not ever recover fully; the wound is too deep. But to attack now can only weaken the library more. Because the library and print are inseparable in the eyes of the people. So that's the war, as it is now. The library suffers. Print is dead. And at least three factions march upon the territory to claim victory.

But is this wise? There are external forces who wish to see the library dead. The whole ebook seller market and publishers of bestsellers would love to see the library disappear. Even though the library accounts for millions of dollars in sales, if the public had to buy individual copies for themselves, those sales would increase 2, 4, even 10 times.

You would think that the best position would be for these groups to run to the aid of the library and tell the public that Technology, Transliteracy, and Knowledge Facilitation have always been part of the library and that the library is strong and healthy. But they don't. So the war, it is here. At our door step. I think. Unless these groups can find a way toward common ground, I don't know what will happen.

Because the enemies of the library lie in wait, also, to attack. Elected assholes keep stripping the funding and telling the public that they are saving them money. But the library needs money to survive. And people need libraries. They really do. But the people become blinded and only see the few dollars these officials can actually save them, instead of recognizing that all their few dollars combined keep the libraries strong and give the people back untold riches in information access, entertainment and knowledge.

Okay, fine, I've gotten a little prosy with my writing. And since you all expect a little violence and sex with your stories these days, I'll tell you this: The war raged. Blood splattered on the fields of battle where limbs and split torsos lay. The young women bore their heaving breasts in passionate embrace with the victors. And all heard great sighs and moans of pleasure as each body arrived at the summit and all was released.

There, you feel better now? You pervert.

But we need to stop this war before it goes too far. The library is what matters. The library needs us all to survive. And even in the 21st Century, whether you believe the library is a place or whether you think the library is a service, the library is still a great idea. Let's stand together and fight for it.

Librarians as Nomads.

2011-04-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

America has finally realized the wealthy man's dream: the rich get richer while the rest of us fight over the table scraps. It seems that China is also learning this lesson. With more people than anyone could possibly afford to put to work, the world's rich have the luxury of being able to pick and choose where in China to build and manufacture goods. So when the wages in one part of China get too high to make manufacturing profitable, the rich just pack it all up and move it to a cheaper location.

And I see this as the future of librarianshit. Oops. Was that a typo? I guess we'll never know.

But the future of libraries will come from profitability. But since libraries run on public funds, that profitability is derived from cost savings. The future of libraries will be determined by huge decreases in funding.

For cost savings, the library of the future will be designed like an open air picnic pavilion with a concrete floor and a metal roof. Metal benches line the center in rows. These benches can be converted into vertical planes with the pull of a lever to keep people from sleeping on them at night. A central drain allows for easy cleaning by hosing the whole place down at closing time. There are no books, but there is wifi. Library patrons can speak or chat with a librarian through their portable device or laptop. There are no printers.

There are no magazines. There are no bathrooms. Unless you count the drain.

The Library (and bathroom) of the Future.

Other than the missing toilets, I don't think most people would know the difference between the new library and the old. They might miss being able to steal our stapler.

But librarians will take jobs as they come, as independent contractors. Some lucky ones will work from home, chatting with library users across the country and guiding them to the nearest Cracker Barrel or HoJo's.

But most of will travel around to areas that can afford to pay for our services. Budgets will be slashed to the bone, but some places will find a few bucks here or there. We'll present computer classes and read at storytime and generally raise the local average IQ about 25 points for those few months for some township that won a grant. People will say, "Oh, I'm supposed to cover my nose with that tissue when I blow my snot out" because of the librarian's cultural influence.

And like the storied hobo signs of the past, librarians will use "librarian signs" to tell others of their experiences in each location. Found in chalk at the town border, 641.5 means "good cooking." A 364.1 means "trouble." 346.73078 means "their checks bounce; get paid in cash."

The news is F'd-up.

2011-03-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading this article on prostitution, you know, since I have that app, the "prostitution news feed," that's from Time magazine. And it's about a small town in California where some local residents have joined together to discourage prostitutes from plying their trade around the residents' homes in the neighborhoods. At at the end of the first paragraph, I see this:

"Vallejo lately has become a magnet for the sex trade for one simple reason: the city is flat broke. If Vallejo is any indication, things could get pretty crazy in other cash-strapped cities across the country. (TIME's Twitter 140: See the world's most influential tweeters.)"

WTF? What does Twitter have to do with prostitution? Wait. Let me rephrase that. What does microblogging have to do with prostitution? Who decides which links are appropriate for embedding within a news story? I read a little further and see:

"'I leave my house at 7 in the morning and sometimes see girls working on the streets that early,' says Kathy Beistel, block captain of the Kentucky Street Watch Owls. 'There's no peak time — it's all peak time.' (See photos of the history of sex on TV.)"

And then there are two more links after paragraphs that are just as inappropriately tied to the story. Is this desperation? I can't imagine that the person who has this job at Time can't find articles that are more closely related to the subject of this prostitution story. Really? Sex on TV is just like real prostitution? With dirty hookers doing it in alleyways? And their disgusting Johns? So now I have to check to see if Time does this with everything, and yes, it does. An article about the movie Sucker Punch links to "photos of movies' best loved costumes" directly after" mentioning that one character wears a "Japanese schoolgirl outfit as retailored by Victoria's Secret." At least that's a close link. But what do people think when they see these vaguely similar or completely unrelated links? Do people click on these? I'm reading about prostitution in a small town, but half way through the article I suddenly lose focus and decide to read "if sex addiction is a real disease or just an excuse" (this is an actual link found in the prostitution article)? Does the typical Time reader have an attention span that short that the editors don't think someone can finish an entire article without wanting to click away to something else??? That would be like a TV show made of snippets of other TV shows as if to give the viewer the impression that he was changing channels, so as to trick him to keep tuned to this one show. Wow. Is that genius, or what? Maybe Time is on to something.

WTF is this?

2011-03-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

What would I think of a book when I grow up in a world where all reading is done on an electronic device? I'm trying to imagine how I might perceive the book if I've never experienced one, if every book I ever read was on a dedicated reader or a tablet or other device. I mean, I would be able to read. I'd know what words are, but I've just never seen a story printed on paper and bound into a book.

(I think it might go a little something like this...)

I tap the cover of The Grouchy Ladybug, but nothing happens. Tap. Tap. Tap. Poke. Poke. Poke Poke PokePokePokePokePoke. I pinch and spread, pinch and spread. The ladybug doesn't talk or move or offer me a discount coupon for Doritos or say my name. The colors are bright, but I like my screen brighter. But I don't see any settings to change to increase the brightness. The picture throws off some glare and isn't as easy to read as my reader with the latest electronic ink firmware.

The text on the back doesn't resize not matter what I try. I slide my finger across the front over and over and over, but the picture never advances to a new screen. This sucks.

I pull open the front board and tear the thin covering and it goes "Shhhrrrrtt" as it rips. The covering has the same picture on it as the hard board underneath. What the hell is that about?

I finally get the board up by lifting it. It's hinged and it swings open like door which is pretty simple.

Now the sliding works. I can slide across a picture to advance the screen. But there's no control and I seem to jump ahead too far. Did you ever play Poker? With real cards like in Las Vegas? That's what you have to do to get these things to move. Like fanning a deck of cards, you have to use your index finger and thumb to separate the sheets to move them one at a time.

Again, nothing works. No tapping, spreading, swiping.

And holy crap! What is this? There are sheets that aren't even the same size. The sheets get bigger and bigger in sequence and they have tiny analog clocks up on top like that retro clock app that everyone has. There is stuff on both sides of the sheets. Some full-colored artwork on one side and text on the other.

And as I advance the pages, the text is now getting really big. How the hell did that happen? There's a picture of an elephant and the text is really big, and then next to a picture of a whale, the text is really, really huge. Like the text adjusts itself to match the art. That seems really cool. I wonder how they did that.

Okay, I finally figured this out. Flip. Flip. Forward. Reverse. The pages change as fast as I can flip with no lag between images. I'm not sure what the processor is, but it's fast.

This thing's pretty interesting, but I don't see any way to turn it off. It will probably turn itself off when the battery gets low.

The Day Google Became Evil ... and saved America.

2011-03-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

The United States of America has a history of uniting its often uncooperative and sometimes antagonistic citizenry in profound and unthinkable ways when the country perceives an outside threat to its peace and safety.

For the most part, the recent history of this country has been one of success and prosperity, or at least one where the prosperous became more so, and because of that complacency spawned from prosperity, this country has never seen the need to create a National Digital Library. (Also, because Capitalism is good for America. I claim poetic license for hyperbole.)

[see: "Why We Can't Afford Not to Create a Well-Stocked National Digital Library System" or any of the other posts lamenting this American FAIL.]

But Google saw the need. Well, if not the need for the country, then the need for Google. As Google digitized books, it increased its digital domain and lay the groundwork for new continuous streams of ad revenue.

So Google did what the rest of the country could not and went ahead with the project. And the people cheered. Until some others pointed out what was really happening.

So now, in the most recent history, the hero of American and even worldwide book digitization, has been declared a villain as the Google Settlement was struck down in federal court.

So now that Google has been declared the enemy of copyright protections and fair trade, will this suddenly spur the people to act and create a true digital library? Not one of Google's making, but one of the people, for the people and by the people?

The people and the government of this country have often acted quickly when confronted by an outside threat: I wonder if this latest ruling will inspire similar action.

Google becoming evil could be the best thing to happen to free and open access to information.

The Evolution of the Digital Native

2011-03-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'll cut to the chase and tell you that there has been no evolving. The digital natives are just as stupid now as they were when some egg-head social thinker invented them.

And I say "invented" because that's what we did. We invented them. Because they don't exist. Or, more accurately, they existed, but they were the same as everyone else.

Just like the automobile, where we are all "automotive natives," I bet most of us don't know how a car works. We can probably repair something that doesn't require fluid drainage or correct torque specifications, like we could all change the oil or replace a bulb or change the air filter, but most of us couldn't run a diagnostics check or check to see how many amps are being pulled by the compressor, as if I would know what that means. I never go near electricity despite being an "electrical native."

But 10-15 years ago, we saw all these people with all this electronic stuff and we assumed that they knew what they were doing. But they didn't. They knew enough to use the technology, but ask any digital native how many old phones or game consoles or computers he has and you'll learn what poor planning and how little understanding of his own needs his has. These natives buy every new thing without learning how to be satisfied with tools that fill their needs. New tools are better tools, it seems.

But as we observed the digital generation, we assumed they knew something we didn't. As outsiders, we make the assumptions because we also assume we are missing something and give the group the benefit of the doubt. But anyone who observed the group would have discovered the level of immersion into the technology was the computer equivalent of giving the car an oil change. The group used the technology just as the previous group used their new technology. The tool has many uses, but we apply it to solve the problems that occur. Some people go on to become masters of tools, just as some people became mechanics to repair our cars. But many, many others are satisfied to just use the tools for simple tasks. It is uncommon for one to gain skills outside his immediate needs or wants. Only very few of us move from user to explorer to teacher.

So we invented the digital natives because we were from a different generation. But we didn't apply what we knew about ourselves to this new group. We didn't say, "Hey, we were all born with cars and electricity and planes, but we're not all mechanical and electrical geniuses. Hell, my clock on my VCR is still blinking 00:00." We didn't do that. We assumed that this group would be different. But they're not. And it took us years to understand that.

So the evolution of the digital native is not their evolution, but ours. I think it's been a lesson that we shouldn't assume that because someone is born into a culture that they are better able to control it, master it or exploit it. You can make whatever point you want about, let's say, texting, and ask how many texts I send a day. And the answer would be zero. But that doesn't win your argument because if you asked how many notes I passed to other kids in class when I was in 7th grade, I'd say about 30, per class. And at 7 classes a day, that's over 200 of the "automotive native's" equivalent to a text, pretty much what kids the same age do today.

So technology it simply the tool that kids today use to be social. In my time, it was paper. Does my use of paper qualify me to run a paper mill? No. Just as texting doesn't make someone a computer genius. It just means they're not paying attention in class.

So we should learn from our digital native mistake. And when the next generational leap happens, say the Biomechanical Natives, who have bionic limbs, we won't go so crazy and think they have superpowers. Although on the basketball court, I could be proven wrong. Because those kids can dunk.

Search Once and Dunce.

2011-03-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

My world has become smaller. It's the smallest it's ever been. It's smaller than me and so now it revolves around me.

I'm fascinated by the news media's new approach to journalism where they display tweets and Facebook posts as if they were newsworthy.

So now a paper like the New York Times tells me what's popular now based on the number of Likes for a particular story on Facebook. Or maybe they might attempt to pluck a gem from the murky twitterstream and raise it up for all of us to admire.

But this is not widening my view of the world. I don't care what people just like me like, as if people who have so much free time that they can share their favorite news stories on social networking sites have that much in common with me, who has, maybe 20 minutes a day to do this.

I guess this is the 21st century equivalent of the "man in the street" report. Although there is no man and there is no street.

I would rather have one genius tell me what to think than one million idiots. Do we have any geniuses left? Or has genius become crowdsourced and aggregated and averaged out?

This all appears under the supposed noble objective of getting us talking, conversing, hashing out our ideas. Like we all have useful thoughts to contribute and this benefits mankind or something. And believe me, that I've added myself to the list. But I suspect this is really another way to get us to view ads.

and a fine Fuck You, to you, too

2011-03-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

A recent comment on another blog said that libraries should eliminate charging fines. And there are a lot of librarians who agree that fines are wrong, for whatever stupid-ass reasons they have: the economy, they're pussies, whatever.

But fines are the only thing that any library user respects. Without fines, the library is just a place where they can steal all the shit they want, without any consequences.

What is the library, but free stuff that you can own for a short period of time. You get to borrow something that you wouldn't normally buy for yourself with your own money and keep it, in most cases, for about a month, without any penalties. You know up front, exactly how long you can keep it and exactly when it's due back so that someone else may borrow it. You get it in pretty good condition and the library expects it back in similar condition so that we can lend it to the next person.

It's a fucking utopia.

And to keep this running smoothly, all the library asks is that you return what you borrowed before the time you agreed to return it and also, that you don't fuck it up too much. This is a simple request, one that all people would make with each other when borrows an item from another.

Hey Joe, can I borrow your pen?

Sure, Pete. Here you go. But please don't stick it up your ass like last time, okay?

Oops, Joe. Too late.

When someone borrows a library item and returns it late, he's pretty much saying Fuck You to every person who might want to borrow that item next.

When he leaves it on a lawn chair in the rain:
Fuck You.

When he spills coffee on it:
Fuck You.

When he tears the pages:
Fuck You.

And so the library adds a fee to when you do these things because, frankly, you are an asshole.

If you borrow something from a friend and you agree to return it next Thursday, but find yourself unable to do so, you call your friend and say that you need it longer. Because you're friends, and that's what friends do.

So when your friend says she's sorry and you can't keep it longer because she really needs that thing back because her other friend is waiting for it, what do you say? Do you tell your friend to fuck herself and you'll keep that shit as long as you want? Probably not. But if you don't return the stuff on time, you'll know that the friendship has changed.

All a library is to everyone is a place that cares for everybody's stuff. Everyone who pays local taxes contributes toward buying this stuff, and the library makes it available for everyone to borrow. You don't own it. Your neighbor doesn't own it. But each of you own about 1/100000 of each item that's in the library. If you live in a small town, you own about 1/5000 of each item in the library. And even then, you wouldn't own that much because a lot of your money goes to pay for electricity to keep the place clean from all the garbage you leave in it each day.

So what you say to the library when you return something late or damaged is that you're not a friend. You're not even a frenemy, whatever the hell that is. You are a fucking asshole. And you need to be treated like one.

So the library charges you money because you are late. Because money seems to be the only thing that you respect. You don't respect the library materials. You don't respect each other. But money terrifies the shit out of you.

Money is the only thing you respect. You respect it because you don't have any of it. You respect it because you don't understand it. You respect it because without it, you don't get any respect for anyone else.

So that's why the library charges fines. Because it's the only way we can expect to get back everyone's shit. Our shit. Because we our the caretakers of all this shit.

We understand that there is a segment of the population who will just steal stuff from the library. We understand that. But those people are thieves. And when we catch them, we will have them arrested and put in jail.

And we know that there are people who would never return anything late. They clean their fingerprints from the DVDs. They don't bend the book pages. They don't throw the CDs on the floor of their cars. And mostly, they wouldn't dare take a book into the bathroom. But if they did, and if they read a book on the toilet, they don't wipe their asses with the same hand they use to turn the pages.

We love these people. These keeping-our-library-materials-away-from-their-asses people. We would lend these people anything.

And then there's you. You kinda, sorta care as long as it's convenient. You use the library because you believe it's free. Free, like taking 50 napkins or 20 ketchups at Burger King and throwing all the excess in the trash. Free, like you eat and drink all you want, but never offer to chip in to help clean up and never hold a party at your place. Free, like someone else will pick up the check. You have no respect for what you borrow, you have no respect for the hard work of others and your word means nothing. You barely respect yourself. You suck.

When the library adds that ten cent fine to your account, it's the only legal way we can remind you that you're acting like a little shit. Some people take that little sting of negative reinforcement and learn from it. They become better neighbors who return things on time. And others complain about the hardship because they are special.

Some people express disgust when they view someone smoking a cigarette. Or when they hear that you don't recycle.

But when I hear that you owe the library money, I think, what the fuck? And any hope for the future of our friendship just goes down the toilet.

The library is here for everyone, not just you.

Return your shit on time, or pay the fucking fine. I'm putting that on a tee-shirt.

What Makes a Professional.

2011-03-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

I just had an epiphany while resetting an old man's default browser to IE. He said the tech guy installed Google Earth for him but also installed Chrome and told it to be the default browser. The old guy was lost because Chrome didn't look the same and he couldn't find his favorites.

So I reset everything and explained that techies prefer Chrome. And then I had to explain what Chrome is. And then I explained again that techies hate Microsoft and prefer Google, but I didn't get into why because this old man seemed confused by the fact that there's more than one browser on his computer. And since old people get angry when they get confused, I left him to check his email and look at old lady porn.

But what I realized is that librarians are not professionals.

Librarians get along with everyone. We try to play nice. We make rules to accommodate everyone. We include everyone in the discussion. We call anyone who works in a library a librarian. We think all librarians are great and that they offer worthwhile contributions to the profession. We would never fill a sock with D batteries and beat a patron over the head for talking too loudly on his phone.

But real professionals argue with each other. When I watch those one-hour dramatic presentations on television, all the lawyers and doctors and computer guys and detectives all hate each other. The criticize other lawyers or doctors or computer guys or detectives and say how they suck at their jobs and how they're alcoholics or criminals or whores.

And that's what makes a profession. Infighting.

So long as librarians continue to play fair with each other, we will never be recognized as a profession. We need to argue. We need to prove that we have something in our profession that we will so strongly about that we could actually kill someone over it.

And if one of you assholes disagrees with me, we can take this outside. Right after I remove my sock and fill it with Rayovacs.

The ebook impasse?

2011-03-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

If you're a librarian, you don't need me to explain the current uproar within the library lending ebook community now that one publisher has drawn a line in the lending-model sand.

Some library folks have rightly declared shenanigans. And someone from the other side has responded. And the general view in libraryland toward this new pricing model is Fuck You. And the publishers seem to be saying, "Right back at 'cha."

And this is all our fault. We gave money for a shitty product. We always buy shitty products. As consumers, we don't have many choices. We often have to pick from elephant shit or cow shit or pig shit. And the conversations within the committess sound like this:

"This elephant shit is very dense which could make it more durable."
"But this pig shit is so spreadable."

But ultimately we're always left with shit.

Regarding ebooks, some say that accepting DRM limitations from the start was a bad move and that we should have demanded unlimited access and open formats.

And others refer back to even the dawn of ILS software, automation, cataloging, MARC records, etc., where libraries became dependent on outside vendors to provide content and services, pointing out that this dependence forced libraries into a weakened bargaining position and limited future choices.

And again, this is because librarians are weak negotiators. Many of us work for the public sector where salary negotions are often nonexistent. We take what we are offered.

But on the purchasing end, librarians sometimes manage huge piles of cash, the purse strings, major ducats. And if we suck at negotiations, we need to remember that money talks.

People are very good at spending other people's money. And so the question arises as to whether libraries even need to be spending it on ebooks. We buy them because our patrons want them. But other than that, what is the reason that we purchase shit that we don't own?

Our library leases a lot of material. We lease building space; we lease books. We lease financial products; we lease databases. And hopefully, someone with some expertise did the cost analysis to determine whether these leases are affordable. But I doubt it. Even with other products, I think we take what we can get without weilding any of the power one would think would come with all the money we spend.

So what should we do? Is ebook lending one-sided, benefiting the publisher much more than the customer? In some ways, yes. But when you look at the pricing for libraries compared to the basic consumer model, then no.

The basic consumer downloads an ebook for $10 and reads it and maybe gets to lend it to six more people. But libraries pay that same $10 and get to lend that ebook to 26 people. To a simple-minded person, that looks like a good deal.

And that's because the basic consumer created this situation. The individual consumer told publishers that this pricing is fair. So, should be pissed off at publishers who are just taking their cues from the idiot consumer? And then we invite those same consumers into our libraries so they can demand that we accept the same lousy purchasing agreements?

But libraries have historical been allowed to lend materials as often as we want, virtually without limits. Unless the borrower drops the book in the toilet and we have to get a new one. But tell me, should we required to accept what amounts to a digital toilet dunking with our ebooks?

Missing pages

2011-03-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

It's widely known that authors have their works edited prior to publication. But I was a little surprised to discover that this has even happened to authors of childrens books.

The Empty Pot by Demi is one such book. This is a charming story about a boy named Ping who discovers the power of honesty.

But in the published version of the book, the other children lie, but are never punished for their wrongs. That's because the page with that part of the story was deleted prior to publication.

But here now, for the first time, is that missing page, that I totally made up. And isn't real. And doesn't violate any copyrights because it is a parody.