And I would have to say that the indispensable Wood S Lot does a far better job of curating the internets than anyone one else I know of. Far better than moi! Media Dragon Bergin uses the opening pages of The Great Gatsby to illustrate another secret of a good presentation. 'Gatsby turned out all right in the end,' writes F. Scott Fitzgerald, answering the novel’s central question before we’ve even had a chance to ask it, and not diminishing our interest in the subject one jot. Bergin sometimes really hammers the point home. In his opening remarks, he’ll say: 'And if there’s one thing I want you to remember after you leave, it’s this ... ', a remark that other presenters usually leave to the end. In the May, 2007 Harper’s is an article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus entitled “A World in Three Aisles: Browsing the Post-Digital Library” on a couple of rogue librarians, Rick Prelinger and Megan Shaw Prelinger. They believe that “the conflict between a so-called digital culture and a so-called print culture is fake; they think we should stop celebrating or lamenting the discontinuous story of how the circuits will displace the shelves, and start telling a continuous story about how the two might fit together” (47).
I did like this part, too: There’s a tour of real librarians and one of them asks a dangerous question:
…Megan picked up a bound volume of Display World magazine and told the group … was a particular attraction for the artists and art classes who have come in search of visual materials. One librarian … didn’t quite get it. ‘Well, I can see how it would be interesting to artists,’ he asked, ‘but how do they find it?’”
Megan, whose overwhelming kindness occasionally reveals truculent edges, looked at him as thought his was the stupidest question ever asked at the library. ‘We show them,’ she said, and moved on.”
Hey, it’s her private library, she can be as much of a control freak as she wants. Because, really, isn’t the history of modern librarianship or whatever its called focused on access? Librarians are there to help you find stuff, but moreover, they’re there to teach you the tools to find stuff. The private Prelinger Library is a nice exercise in an inaccessible collection with Rick and Megan, who strike me as the kind of people I would run from at full speed, set up as givers of knowledge. How esoteric. How Gurdjieffian. How nice for them.
Apart, of course, from computers, comfy chairs, and good coffee. Why (and how) I blog
Internet archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "Harper's Magazine's Gideon Lewis-Kraus spent a lot of time with us and wrote a smart (and kind) piece about Prelinger Library and where he thinks it's pointing."
Rick Prelinger and Megan Shaw Prelinger, experimental amateur librarians...think the conflict between a so-called digital culture and a so-called print culture is fake; they think we should stop celebrating, or lamenting, the discontinuous story of how the circuits will displace the shelves, and start telling a continuous story about how the two might fit together.
Aren’t bloggers, for example and after all, little but pajama’d isolates?
The river of the world runs through the actual, by the academy, and even into the virtual. All are on the same bank. They are, in this sense, all one and the same.
• Library as Place-With-Books ; [This is a great piece -- and the Prelinger Archive is amazing. Harper's Magazine on the Prelinger Archive ; Telling tales at work, Janet Holmes, Management (New Zealand), May 2007, pp.36-38. The low down on gossip – though typically overlooked, marginalised and erased from the official record, tales told in the workplace can help build a productive workplace environment. Recent research shows that a story can serve a variety of work related purposes. Stories about domestic events and exciting escapades are often told and retold as part of ongoing social talk within an organisation; they become part of the shared repertoire of work teams. Rick]
• · ; Blogging and libraries
• · This goes with the territory Great Writers are better at saying what’s wrong with our own stories than at telling us how to make their stories right ; Rich Dad Poor Dad 7 Secrets For Making Your Book a New York Times Best Seller
• · · From online personals for 'friends with benefits' to illicit blogs and even an electronic 'poke' ... It started with a click; How did critics' scourge Andrew Frost become the new face of ABC arts? Bad-boy blogger now Aunty's favourite
• · · · It was a week we travelled to Czechoslovakia with Sasha and Bella. A months of floods on Morava River. While in US it must have been June 4 or 5, 1997, because Buckley's body had floated down the Wolf River in Tennessee for a week after he went for his last swim on the evening of May 29. That's one hell of a legacy; Stephen King continues to experiment with serialization, as Esquire announced that their July issue (on newsstands today) carries a 21,000-word novella, THE GINGERBREAD GIRL, in its entirety. New King Thriller to Appear in Esquire
• · · · · Google thrives in part because of its reputation for being the best source of information on the Web. But has it compiled too much information about its users? Stand on the shoulders of giants; Over My Dead Body Now You See it Now You Do Not
• · · · · · PUBLIC servants have suffered one of the highest rejection rates in this year's Queen's Birthday honours list, but there are more public servants among the new officers in the Order of Australia than any other occupation. Of the 22 public servants nominated, 14 missed out. Of the 33 people made officers in the Order of Australia (AO, the second-highest in rank) chosen from 30 occupational groups, seven are male public servants. Among public servants many are called, but few are chosen ; If you're like me (and if you are, you're indirectly funding the college education of the children of the manufacturers of many popular antidepressants), you're spending an awful lot of time shopping online these days. Bookstore Etiquette, "Not in My Write Mind"