Thursday, October 21, 2010

Daily Thoughts 10/21/2010 (William Gibson, The Art of Nonconformity)

Morning perusal, 1916, Oil On Canvas, Antonio Parreiras

Daily Thoughts 10/21/2010

On the train to work, I finished reading Difficult Personalities A Practical Guide to Managing The Hurtful Behavior of Others (and Maybe Your Own) by Helen McGrath, Ph.D. and Hazel Edwards, MEd.  It is about difficult personality types and different ways to interact with them.  The author draws a lot from the DSM-IV.  It is a hard book to read, because it often is quite direct about how to deal with difficulties.

The article The Library of the Future Today by Barbie E. Keiser in the periodical Searcher on October 2010 is truly excellent.  It describes how information is changing and ways to think about how the functions of librarians is changing.  It is focusing on a user centered model where librarians focus on the information needs of the people coming in instead of primarily as a source to store and retrieve physical materials.

I put the book Djibouti by Elmore Leonard on hold.  I like the idea of reading a novel about modern day pirates in Somalia.

I spent more time going through the order journals.  Two books caught my attention; Advantage How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge by Adam Segal and Destined For Failure: American Prosperity in the Age of Bailouts by Nicholas Sanchez and Others.  Both of these books address something which American policymakers are not talking about much;  innovation and new ideas from industry and getting Americans to produce more on its own shores. 

I spent a lot of time today reading through order journals.  We also had a meeting discussing our November gala for fundraising and different events we could have for fundraising during the next year.

On the way home, I started reading The Art of Non-Conformity Set Your Own Rules Live The Life You Want and Change The World by Chris Guillebeau.  This is not a new set of ideas more of a way to collect together a number of strategies for change and personal freedom.  He follows the philosophy of full freedom to make decisions in his life.  This has a little bit of the feeling of Jonathan Swift or Richard Burton.  I did two of the visualization exercises in the second part of the book;  imagine what your perfect day would be like and write down your most important goals.  This kind of free association often touches on other things because it is about change.

It reminded me a bit of William Gibson's article in the Wall Street Journal, The Future of the Book.  http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/09/06/william-gibson-on-the-future-of-book-publishing/  It would be interesting to see a print on demand machine that would print a hardcover book with low acid paper.  I would take it further with some other ideas.  Make the book out of 100% recycled material with plant based inks and design the printer so it was cradle to cradle; easy to repair, easy to upgrade, highly efficient with low energy use, and able to dismantle and recycle all the parts.

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