[dlpdev] No go for 9th . . more later

[Paul Barrett]

We'd be more than happy to host a meeting in Bradford during May or 
June if people want to travel that far - the refurb work is almost 
finished and the organising of books will be in progress - we have 
agreed on a completely ad-hoc system to start with (!) - putting books 
together that we feel have some kind of meaningful connection, and then 
seeing what 'categories' we've ended up with in order to map the 
library.

I was interested in Fabian's idea of a kind of floating library (I 
haven't listened to Gong or Here and Now for ages. Honest), where the 
collection moves around to develop new categories to meet current 
needs. If we can get multiple keywords going, and the idea discussed 
last year of being able to identify other reader defined links between 
books (a bit like the Amazon "people who bought this bought that too", 
but based on our subjectivity, not consumerist habits) then we should 
be able to create virtual collections or reading lists very quickly, 
without resorting to physically reorganising books and therefore having 
to remap. The position of books on shelves then becomes more a matter 
of discoverability and mapping rather than the largely bullshit 
categorisation systems libraries usually opt for. Libraries could be 
organised physically around size, the alphabet, chronology, author, 
spine colour, nationality, publisher, moments in time, whatever, even 
just the order they ended up being numbered and put on a shelf. Or, as 
we are doing in Bradford, user preference.

On the point of links, I'd ideally like to be able to create whole webs 
or matrix of books, authors, events, currents, tendencies etc, with the 
opportunity to add a few words on why that link exists incase anyone 
was remotely interested. This then creates pointers, contexts and 
points of reference that rarely exist when just browsing hundreds of 
book titles. This is reminiscent of Amazon's comments, reviews and 
lists I guess.

For those currently wrestling with the physical organisation of a 
library, you may be interested in an important (honestly) development 
in our system - the Budweiser Box System. After the collective 
carefully sifted the entire collection, a range of titles were 
separated out. These were re-sifted to ensure no titles had been 
selected by mistake. The separated books were painstakingly  packed 
into Budweiser boxes (interestingly, at this stage the categorisation 
system had moved from 'subject' and 'content' to 'book size'). Once all 
were packed in their appropriate boxes, they were unceremoniously slung 
in the attic. Some (including myself) argued that such halfway measures 
are always largely joyless and wanted a more radical re-categorisation 
under headings such as 'car boot sale' or 'Oxfam' or even 'recycle bin' 
  (apparently 'incineration' is too fascist, but I think there would be 
a certain amount of hedonistic pleasure to be derived from using that 
heading now and again). I think for some this is a bit of a journey 
down the Congo - the horror! the horror! However this new, albeit 
halfway, system has already led to some immediate improvements and I 
will be encouraging the others to revisit the remaining collection 
again soon for a second run.

Paul



On 31 Mar 2004, at 22:37, Fabian Tompsett wrote:

> We discussed the situation at our meeting.
>
> Saul said that they were working on a funding proposal and should hear 
> back in a week or two. From then, one way or another things should 
> jump forward over the next coupl of months.
>
> So . . .
>
> we want to have the meeting in May/June, when things should have 
> prrogressed somewhat. From that meeting it is hoped to have something 
> to take to Belgrade which deals with the technical, conceptual and 
> social sides of how the distributed library scheme could bear fruit.
>
> Hope this sounds good to you.
>
> Fabian
>
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