featherloom

I spent most of today finishing a few cataloging exercises for LIS 655 (Organization of Knowledge I) and it reminded me a lot of my fabulous time as an intern at Raymond M. Sutton Jr. Books.  I thought I would share a little bit about that experience with my buddies. :)

First of all, how I got the job: I didn't even know this place existed (in my hometown, no less!) until this past summer, when the local public library was undergoing renovations.  We were ordering new shelving but had to get rid of our skeletal, metallic racks we were using previously. Our director came upon the idea of asking Suttons if they needed more shelving for their warehouse.  They did, and I found out about the rare and out-of-print natural history bookstore located in an unmarked, squat brick building on Main Street. I remember going inside for the first time. Not many people remember anymore, but Williamsburg used to be one of the main epicenters of commerce and society in southeastern Kentucky, the location of the corporate owners of surrounding coal mines.  The community has gone downhill since then, but some hints at the past still remain.  Sutton Books' main shop is located in what used to be the offices of mine officials.  On one marbled glass window set into a door, the title "Mine District Manager" still hangs with peeling black paint.  There were many offices involved in the business, and thus Suttons is a small hallway branching into small rooms crammed floor to ceiling with relics, antique furniture, and, of course, books. One room has a skylight which feeds a collection of giant ferns under the constant eye of a brilliant sun lamp.  Another has the scattered look of a gentry study, half-cataloged manuscripts on a round table, and Victorian chairs around a dusty display case filled with the oldest and most valuable books in the collection.  It's the sort of bookstore you would expect to find something wondrous in, like a lucky coin or a map of the Alexandrian library.

Suttons does not usually sell to locals.  Few 'Burgians are interested in old natural history books about the anatomy of blowfish, and even fewer could afford them.  Actually, a large percentage of the store's customers are internationals from all over the world.  Two of the books I cataloged were eventually shipped overseas, one to France and one to Japan.  However, there wre some amusing things I learned about the tastes of collectors: Really, when it comes to wanting books, we're all alike.

1) Collectors like pretty things.  It pains me to write simply "ill." for the books we catalog in 655. While working for the bookstore, you mentioned every folding map, every frontispiece and every colored plate to attract the interested customer.  Even buyers who want a book for academic reasons will prefer something with pretty drawings in it.  To show how important that is, here's an example: A book of (hand-painted!) plates of birds was missing one plate showing bird eggs.  It was so vital to get that plate and complete the book that the store actually had it fetched from the gallery where it was being shown and bound into the book. Without that one plate, the book might well have sold for less than half of what it was actually worth.  Plates are that important, especially if they're colored.  They're also important because they often show diagrams and illustrations necessary to understand the text, especially in the anatomy books. 

Additionally, the binding must be pretty for a book to really sell well.  Most of what I worked with was bound with original printed wrappers, meaning that the cover is simply the same type of paper printed at the same time as the book (i. e., cheap).  The best books are hardback, like cloth-backed boards, or, even better, leather or buckram. They last longer and look far more impressive than wrappers or pressboards (Let's face it: pressboards help books stay together just as well, but they look SO cheap.).  I think the worst "binding" I ever saw was a disbound volume (no title page) glued into a manila folder by someone's seven-year-old (at least that's what it seemed like, looking at the crazy loop-de-loop patterns seen through the back page). My favorite thing about that book was the fact that someone had put cloth tape on the "spine" of the folder in an attempt to make it look slightly professional.  I can just imagine whoever thought up the manila folder binding slapping on that cloth tape in a zest-filled desperation to make it look dignified enough to put on a shelf: "Yeah! That's the stuff! No one will EVER KNOW." We'll be lucky to give that book away for free. Then again, I've seen books with intact wrappers bound with duct, masking and electrical tape so really, nothing should surprise me.

2) Collectors like exotic subjects.  I'll be honest: Most of my stuff won't sell well.  This is because most of it is about the cranial structure of tuna. Now, there are some very dedicated fans of tuna anatomy out there.  There are little guys like billyfish which have their own international fan clubs, during which they present and post papers which later brighten an intern's day by revealing that there is, in fact, a very serious billyfish fan club.  However, most collectors want to read and be seen reading exciting books about topics like sharks, dinosaurs, adventures on the high seas, and older books from the frightening era when sea monsters were all too real.  I got really excited about a book that was actually in three pieces but was about bats in the colonial Bahamas.  There wer even tinted plates of bats in flight, baring their fangs!  That cool subject might well be enough to counter the damage the book has faced in its century-and-a-half-long journey.

That's the other thing about these books: they keep moving around.  Books rarely stay in the same hands over a decade, and they sometimes go through some pretty amazing things.  Most of the books I cataloged survived that big earthquake in California back in the seventies.  Others I've seen went down with ships and were subsequently rescued.  Books are hardy things, and they have a lot of stories to tell.  You learn to pay attention to all the little drawings and notations in the books, the people whose hands have touched it.  It's really neat sometimes what they can tell you about an era.  For example, I cataloged many manuscripts from the 40s in Japan and the 50s and 60s in the Congo.  It's interesting, the complete isolation and denial of scientific works on nature published during those times, the complete disavowal that anything at all is going wrong.  Perhaps in times of strife you turn to your passion for shelter.

I'll post some more collector quirks later on, and some more bookstore experiences.  :D

"But Iz Warm!"

The sooty cat emerges
"Purr, purr, mrow?"
Cheshire grin from the fireplace.

This is a more traditional 7, 3, 7 haiku rather than the 6, 5, 6 I did last week.  It was inspired by a paper-cutting Dad brought back from China two years ago.  Paper cuttings are intricately cut with tiny scissors or knives from colored paper (with no base for tracing!).  The finished works are placed on a plain white base and gently wrapped in protective plastic.  The one Dad brought me shows a plump black cat snoozing on a wicker chair.  I need to get it framed someday, but I'm terrified to even shift it - the paper is so delicate and fine, and so riddled with cut-out patterns, it can easily tear.  It's a pretty kitty!

I wanted to write this one for Candi.  Maybe Nana can figure out how to use Floo Powder and emerge from the fireplace in Hawaii. ^.^

"Jealous Lover"

I'll show you cosmic.
"Eyes like quartz!?"
Trinitroluene BANG!

Hee. Feels great to write for fun again. :)

So I have been wondering what to write about since I returned home, and the story of a mama cat on our street for some reason has really grabbed me this summer.  Prissy was adopted by some icky folks as a kitten, and her owners refused to pay the money to get her spayed.  She gave birth to her first litter when she was barely out of kittenhood herself, and all but one died, a little gray kitten who was later, we think, killed when our icky neighbor's crazy Doberman escaped.  This family was horrible to animals, probably made drugs in their basement, and by living sloppily completely ruined a house that used to belong to one of my childhood best friends.  I was glad when they got into almost constant trouble with the cops and were eventually forced to leave.   They left the young mother cat in our neighborhood when they relocated, and she was left to fend for herself.  She got pregnant again almost immediately, and all of the kittens in this litter died except one.  This young male, Bleaker (because he's always going "meep" "meep" "meep"), has been the only one of her kittens to survive to adulthood.  Some time right after this second birth, a beautiful woman who lived down the street began feeding the mom cat, who she named Prissy, and her young son.  After the woman died, her daughter (Ms. D) took up the responsibilities and even constructed little cat houses and beds for them to use.  They've become so cutely loyal to her, rushing like little puppies from anywhere in the neighborhood when Ms. D pulls into her driveway.

Anyway, Ms. D decided it was high time to get Prissy spayed.  However, after trapping her, Ms. D realized that Prissy was about to give birth again.  She didn't want to kill the kittens, and she thought it would crush Prissy to do so, so she let her go and decided to keep a close watch and get both mom and babies to the vet as soon as possible after they were born.  It's proven difficult to do that.  Prissy's mommy skills seem to have improved dramatically since her last pregnancy, and it might have to do with experience, age and the fact that she's healthier now that she's being fed regularly.  As soon as the babies were born, Prissy began moving them around a nightly basis.  She remains separated from them at night after she stashes them for the evening.  During the first several pregnancies, she stayed with her kids all the time and we think rival male cats may have killed them by following her.  If this is the case, she may be trying to throw other cats off track by staying separate from her babies for long periods of time.  She spends most of the day with her kittens and then goes back to Ms. D's at night to stock up on foodstuffs and lovings.  She always looks exhausted, and her behavior annoys the jealous Bleaker, who must now sulk on the porch all day while she looks after the young'uns.

We didn't see the kittens for several weeks, and most of us feared they were dead, but I still had a little hope since Prissy kept making trips to the bushes behind our neighbor's house.  Finally, I was talking to a neighbor, Kim, and we happened to see Prissy heading towards a thick copse of ivy and saplings under the shade of a pine.  She was followed by three little golden fuzzballs and one little black fuzzball with brown patches.  After seeing us, the kittens cautiously viewed us from behind a log while Mommy shooed them into the safety of the shady ivy.  The curious kittens obediently stayed put, and Prissy took off back to Ms. D's.  She hasn't used this spot since then, but she's still making many trips.  Just this morning, we spotted her carrying a huge bird to her little region of hiding places.  And I mean HUGE.  She was carrying it in her mouth and its feet were dragging the ground.  I'm guessing the responsible mama was bringing food for her kids in an effort to wean them off milk.  It's interesting, though.  Even while she looks exhausted, I've never seen her so happy or proud.  She holds her tail up when she walks and plays with Bleaker and even takes time out of her day to pester Susie (though that's not hard).  

So I'm sort of torn.  On the one hand, I'm happy for her that she finally has found success after so many failures; that she persevered and has learned from experience and become a confident, responsible mama; that she is seems to genuinely enjoy motherhood.  However, it's also a cautionary tale on the perils of not spaying or neutering your pets.  Had the male cats in the neighborhood been neutered, or Prissy spayed, she wouldn't have had to go through all of that pain and grief.  Also, her kittens will inevitably go through the same horrible cycle should they grow up with out being spayed or neutered.  Prissy has grown quite a bit since being exposed to a healthy diet but she's still very small and thin for her age.  Being spayed will stop her from becoming pregnant again and should eradicate her weight problems. 

The hunt for Prissy's litter continues.  Ms. D wasn't home the night we spotted the kittens, and since then Prissy has kept her ltter even more hidden than it was before.  We can only hope as they get older and begin wandering their location will be revealed and we can trip mama and babies. 

So . . . this story had a miraculously happy ending, but Prissy went through a lot of unnecessary loss and pain because of irresponsible owners.  Spay and neuter your pets!

I've been looking into the history of some of the Norse gods ever since I started collecting Thor (which has been awesome).  One of the gods I looked at (via Wikipedia, what else?) is named Balder (or Baldr, in Norse).  In the comics, he's Thor's slightly dense BFF.  In mythology, Balder is one of those unfortunate gods best known for dying.  Basically, Balder has a dream that he's going to die, and gets super-depressed.  His mother, looking out for him, makes every person and thing in the world promise not to harm Balder.  Unfortunately, she forgets to ask mistletoe, apparently because it resembled the marshmallow guy in Ghostbusters - something that makes you kiss surely can't be harmful in any way.  Unfortunately, Loki heard about this exception, and forged a spear made of mistletoe. 

Here's the hilarious part - Loki got his chance to strike when he discovered the gods had found a new game: They were chucking things at Balder and watching them harmlessly bounce off.  He gave the spear to a blind god, who, for once, did actually hit the mark, and Balder was killed.  Despite the fact this was supposed to be a great tragedy, I couldn't help but giggle.  Only in a pantheon so similar to a drunken frat party could this death have happened: "We're out of beer!  What now?" "I know!  Let's lob goats at Balder again!"  Poor Balder.   I think if I ever took up fanfiction, I would write about the Norse gods.  In no other pantheon can you have such inebriated, testosterone-filled fun.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while - I have been overrun by homework, essays, and projects, not the least of which is building a digital library on illuminated manuscripts. I am really super-tired and would like another break now, please!!! Anyway, last Saturday evening I was leaving my apartment and caught sight of some giant HOT-AIR BALLOONS near the stadium. I've put a lot of pictures up on Facebook, but I thought I'd post the videos I took here. It was a welcome break from work and lots of fun, and my wonderful Tammy was there to see them too! This was some sort of exhibition of a few of the balloons before the big race in Louisville next weekend. Lots of fun!!!





Yay!!!

Is anyone else piled under right now? It's getting done one thing at a time; I just wish it would all magically get itself done for me. In fact, I had this wonderful dream a couple nights ago that I was floating with some friends on a bus on the Seine and running my feet through the cool water, all my stuff either delayed or done. Then I woke up and felt even worse than before. :( Also, putting your feet in the Seine would probably dissolve them. Anyway, I'm alive, people! :)

"It's" is a contraction of "it" and "is."  For example, you could say "It's in the fridge" instead of "It is in the fridge."  It's the same thing as the contraction "What's for dinner?", meaning "What is for dinner?" 

"Its" is a possessive pronoun.  It performs the same function as "his" or "her" or "their."  It can also be used in a situation that would call for "hers" or "theirs."  It is used when dealing with non-gender-specific entities.  For example, if you were talking about a planet's people, you could say, "That is its people."  Or: "Don't bother the chair or its cushion."  You do NOT use an apostrophe when using this word.  If you do use one, you are saying: "Don't bother the chair or it is cushion," which implies many incorrect meanings.  It does seem counter-intuitive, but we're dealing with English, so you shouldn't be surprised.  :) 

Conversely, an apostrophe at the end of any other word denotes the possession of something else.  For example, if one says "That is a skunk's scent," the meaning of the sentence is that the scent belongs particularly to the skunk species.  However, you CANNOT say "Those are skunk's."  To denote plurality, you cannot include an apostrophe.  A simple addition of "s," or whatever ending appropriate, will suffice.  A good way of telling the difference is that every possessive phrase has to have an object.  "Scent" is the object of the phrase "skunk's scent."  They do not necessarily have to be in that order: "That scent is the skunk's" also calls for the possessive apostrophe.  "Those are skunks" has no possessive object, so there is no need for an apostrophe. 

And now I feel better after seeing these errors five times EACH in ACADEMIC JOURNALS.  I will not have these grammatical mistakes becoming acceptable in English.  I can accept many things.  I am not partial to either the Oxford or the Cambridge side of the debate about whether or not to put a comma before "and."  I can even readily accept the addition of internet lingo to the official English dictionary.  However, I cannot abide these errors.  I refuse!!!  If you are an editor, you should know the difference, darn it!!!

The weather has been crazy recently.  Last night (I don't know how it was in Danville or Louisville) it was really lightning here.  It looked like bright blue fireworks were exploding every thirty seconds or so.  I'm sure a couple definitely struck the stadium (I saw them!).  It was like someone was splashing tons of radioactive acid on the sky with a sopping brush, etching pictures on the clouds.  All of our electricity is underground and I still unplugged my computer.  That's how bad it was!  Things have calmed down in that area today, but the wind has been something else.  It was like walking through a wall coming back from the library this evening.  Seriously, I kept expecting to end up in Oz with a bunch of little singing people.  The only good thing that could possibly come out of this is if I somehow get a plucky little terrier in a basket.  

I just purchased the trades for a comic book story arc called Green Lantern: the Sinestro Corps War.  It's one of the most epic and cool comics I've read in a while.  The Green Lantern Corps (basically intergalactic police with magical rings powered by willpower) must face the rising threat of the Sinestro Corps (who have yellow rings powered by fear and are led by the evil ex-Green Lantern Sinestro).  Epic fight scenes between the two armies in space!  Epic fight scenes between the two armies on Earth!  Rookies realizing their true potential as they fight bravely!  An ancient evil dragon-like parasite with webbed feet!  Many, many shirtless men!  And - the best part - a blossoming forbidden love between two tiny blue people!!!  I just finished it and wanted to express my infinite enjoyment of this book.  That is all.  :)

Also, I know some of you already know, but I didn't get the fellowship I applied for - so no free tuition (is disappointed). :(  For some reason, I feel very insulted more than anything else.  :/  Oh, well.     However, this comic has cheered me immensely, and my cheer only grew when I found out that there is a new group - the Blue Lantern Corps - and one of its members is - wait for it - AN ELEPHANT!!!! :D

This week in one of my courses, we've been discussing copyright and how certain aspects of it are becoming obscure in the modern world.  This is a major issue for both creators and librarians, of which I am both.  How do you predict what's going to happen in the changing landscape of copyright law?  One of the problems is that publishers have managed to pretty much take control over copyright and reap most of the benefits themselves, while justifying their actions by crusading for the rights of the authors.  For example, if I write a poem, I keep the rights to it.  However, when I publish it in a magazine, often I'm required to sell exclusive publishing rights to that magazine as well.  I'm just as stuck as if I didn't own it.  I can't edit it or make changes; I can't publish it anywhere else.  This combined with price gouging of academic libraries by academic journal databases has not given publishers a good rep when it comes to libraries.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the thoughts I shared in class here.  We had a question that asked us why plagiarism was a growing problem amongst students (especially young students).  I think it is partly just due to the fact that it's easier to catch plagiarism now.  But I also think it has something to do with the way the modern internet works (which, ironically, is also partly the fault of corporate copyright holders).  Here was my response:

I think that many students who initially plagiarize may simply be suffering from a conflict of two very different cultures.  A lot of kids today have grown up with Web 2.0, which actively encourages sharing and editing information found online.  A lot of corporate agencies have taken advantage of this in order to reap the benefits of free publicity.  For example, a CNN article on Obama's Inaugural Address will often have at the bottom of the web page a variety of options for sharing the content of the article: Users can tag the article on Delicious or Digg; they can post it on Facebook, MySpace, or LiveJournal; they can comment on it on Twitter.  It's a veritable roll call of the current Web 2.0 utilities.  These options seem to be everywhere online these days; you can see them everywhere from trailers on entertainment websites to governmental blogs.  I think that some parties use these tools without really knowing what the implications are: If you add an option to post an article to Facebook, aren't you effectively giving the public the right to copy that article and publish it on Facebook?  If you allow the option for an image to be posted on MySpace, you can't reasonably complain if it is, whether it falls under fair use or not.  No one is making money from this, but some copyright holders to seem to become uncomfortable when material is reposted all across the internet, even when those Web 2.0 options are in place.  This huge rush to take advantage of Web 2.0 software has created a culture online in which material is actively encouraged to be copied and shared.  Websites like Wikipedia just make this worse because users are actively encouraged to edit and alter someone else's work.  The attitude online seems to be the more users have an input, the better the quality of the work.  It's difficult to enforce copyright in an environment in which multiple, anonymous users using codenames are separately responsible for the same work.

Upon reading Ewing's essay on copyright, I was intrigued by his statement of the attitude during the age of Enlightenment: The general idea was that inventions and new ideas belonged to the world, not the individual.  I think this is close to the attitude online caused by the ubiquity of sharing software and the belief that the more users participating in the creation of a document the better (Unfortunately, it's also resulting in the same chaos).  Take a student who has grown up in this environment and put them in the unflinching reality of academic scholarship, in which a couple uncited sentences can result in a failing grade, and problems will inevitably arise.  As others have pointed out before, education is key here, and I think teachers will unfortunately have to work much harder to get across the laws and regulations surrounding copyright laws.  I think the future of copyright will depend upon reconciling these two worlds, or drawing more definite lines between them.  It won't be an easy task, and I'm really not sure how to solve it, though I do think that copyright holders should be much more cautious in their use of Web 2.0 software.

One specific instance that I didn't use in class was on an online community that was recently deleted (with good reason; posting ENTIRE COMICS is not good.), in which a young woman posted a preview of a new comic.  Marvel and DC routinely put up previews on entertainment sites like IGN and Newsarama, to promote upcoming storylines.  I don't remember which one, but one of the Big Two complained, and while the community removed the material, it was pointed out that one of the Web 2.0 options given with the article that contained the preview on IGN was to post it on LiveJournal (I think they were located there).  My point is, it should have been a non-issue.  If you don't want something shared, don't put it online anywhere.  If you're that concerned about protecting your material, think of another way to promote it.  Do a book tour or something. :)  Now, I am all for protecting author's rights.  However, I foresee that we'll have to come up with better ways of doing that in the online world.  The old ways just aren't going to work.  For example, did you know that e-mails are copyrighted?  That's right, you own all of your messages you wrote online.  However, does this mean that every time someone forwards my e-mails I can charge them?  Should I charge myself for mentioning my own post on Blackboard?  Is it even worth it to copyright "THIS IS KEWL!!!1!" ?  Copyrighting e-mails automatically also seems a bit silly for the reasons already mentioned: A lot of e-mails go all across the internet, and are changed multiple times.  This is simply the way things go now.  If I send a message to my friends, say Miss C, Mr. T and Izzibot, and that message includes a funny picture of me and a funny story to go with it, I'll expect it to be circulated amongst my friends, commented on, and sent back to me, which creates a new document.  See the problem? Do I charge my friends for looking at it?  If I send a reply that includes their comments, could I theoretically have to pay them for it?  Chaos ensues.  My point being: copyright as it stands doesn't always work online.  What do you think?