Book Patrol: A Haven for Book Culture

Book Patrol is a place where you can share in Michael Lieberman's passion for the printed word, the history of the book as an object and as a cultural artifact.

Monthly Archives: March 2007

Mar 31, 2007

The Chinese Paper Trail

Chinadaily.com ran a story a couple of weeks ago titled “China Wages War on Piracy”. As you would expect “Pirates and bootleggers in China produce 120 million counterfeit audio and video products” a year and cause all sorts of havoc for record and movie companies. What was a surprise to me is that these pirates also publish “500 million unauthorized books a year”.

For a little perspective, that would be almost 3,000 copies of each of the 172,000 new books that were published in the U.S. in 2005

Liu Binjie, vice director with the General Administration of Press and publication, said “the rampant piracy of audio and video products and books has seriously affected China’s international reputation and future investment prospects”.
Binjie also acknowledges that “book piracy has left publishers and distributors…in a very unfavorable position”.

You had to figure something was going on for the government to publicly make such a statement. It is the first time I have heard of anything affecting “investment prospects” in China.

and then today –presto!

The NYT has a story “In Big Shift US Imposes Tariffs on Chinese Paper”

The Bush administration said “it would reverse more than 20 years of American policy and impose potentially steep tariffs on Chinese manufactured goods on the ground that China is illegally subsidizing some of its exports.”

Looks like paper is first up. Two Chinese makers of high-gloss paper have been hit with immediate tariffs, one at 10.9 % and the other 20.4 %
Only 5% of the high-gloss paper we use currently comes from China. The paper is mostly used for brochures, catalogs, annual reports, movie posters etc.

Obviously China has a “strong objection” and “urges the U.S. side to reconsider the decision and reverse it as soon as possible”

Of course this “new policy could lead to duties on imports of Chinese steel, plastics, machinery, textiles and many other products”.
Which could lead to a trade war, which could lead to a balancing of the playing field, which could lead to a resurgence of American manufacturing, which could lead to…

Mar 30, 2007

Seattle and the New Koolhaas Central Library: Is the Honeymoon Over?

Before we dive into the current flurry of the form vs. function debate regarding our Rem Koolhaas designed Central Library lets step back and take a look at the big picture.

The library is one of the many gifts of The ‘Libraries For All‘ 1998 bond measure that passed by the largest margin of victory for a bond measure in Seattle history.

Seattle got a new Koolhaas designed Central Library, 5 other new branches and improvements to all 22 existing branches in Seattle.

The impact on our city has been profound:
-library usership is up citywide
- the Central Library has become a top tier tourist attraction pumping millions of dollars into the city
-each project has added something positive to the neighborhood. The latest library opening occurred earlier this month in my West Seattle neighborhood. A stunning addition.

In the Seattle PI on Tuesday Lawrence Cheek offered up his take on the Central library in his piece, “How the New Central Library Stacks Up”.
An admitted cheerleader when the library opened Cheek is now ready for his “post-occupancy evaluation”.
He dissects the building one feature at a time concluding that each of them “exist to draw attention away from the fact that most of its work and pleasure spaces are actually cheaply finished or dysfunctional…failing at fulfilling the promise of its stunning skin.”

In 2002 Cheek did an article for the Seattle Weekly on the remodel of the stunning Suzzallo Libary at the University of Washington. In talking about the grandeur of the building he says “Few new public buildings of any kind today even try to provide big, dramatic spaces…The magic show is over…ALL GREAT ARCHITECTS eventually figure it out: interiors are more important than exteriors–they’re why buildings are buildings and not just big lawn ornaments.”

He’s an inside guy.

He then does a bit of a flip-flop and admits:

“The Central Library hasn’t stumbled in its iconic mission, not at all. It has energized our urban center more than any building in Seattle’s history. It has launched both the image and substance of the Seattle Public Library into a new era.”

That sounds like a positive function to me.

Towards the end of his Weekly article Cheek’s ponders what the proposed reading room at the new central library might be like:
“the new Seattle Central Library promises a dramatic reading room on the eighth floor with nearly the footprint of Suzzallo’s (50 by 200 feet) and a view of Elliott Bay. Judgment will have to wait until it’s finished.”

Judgment day has arrived.

Don’t miss the comments or Soundoff section at the end of the article. There are 40+ and leaning negative

Seattle Public Library group on Flickr . Over 500 images

Natalia Ilyin’s article in Metropolis “Why I Like the Seattle Public Library”

Rob Forbes, founder of Design Within Reach, article “Taking an overdue notice of a library”

Video of Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus,
who was U.S. Director of Rem Koolhaas’s Office of Metropolitan Architecture during the libraries construction, deconstructing the collaborative process of building the Seattle Public Library. If you want to know how it all came together the first 10 minutes of this video is for you.

Mar 29, 2007

When the Space Needle Was a Baby

Picture

When was the last time 10 million people visited Seattle at once?
Answer: The 1962 World’s Fair

BibliOdyssey has a magnificent post on the Century 21 Exposition that gave birth to our beloved Space Needle and our sometimes beloved Seattle Center.

In addition to the great visuals there is some solid content and great links to more, more, more
including the PI’s special report on the fair.

Worth a visit

The Borders Trilogy: Reward the Loyal Less, Kill the Speciality, Withdraw From Parts of the World

The Border’s Trilogy. Sponsored by the Oprah Book Club who’s latest pick The Road by Cormac McCarthy…

We won’t get into the possible psychological motives for such a choice but let’s just say that I can’t understand half of what McCarthy writes, he is a bit reclusive and has given one interview in the last 40 years and he is going to Oprahland!

As surprising as this pick is for Oprah is how unsurprising the recent news is from Borders.

New CEO George Jones laid out his blurred strategic vision for the company.

It includes a new and less improved loyalty program
and “significantly reducing investment in segments that have not provided a satisfactory return, including the International segment and Waldenbooks Specialty Retail segment”

Linguistic highlights of the strategic vision press release:

“Focus on Core Domestic Superstore Business”.

“urgent need to go on the offensive and drive significant change”

“mission to be a headquarters for knowledge and entertainment”

“Highly aggressive efforts…to right-size the Waldenbooks

“Reinventing the company by leveraging innovation, technology and strategic alliances to differentiate Borders in the marketplace, including the debut of a new proprietary e-commerce site in early 2008.”

The holes in the machine:

The potential of success for a “domestic superstore” in this country is on borrowed time for most industries and will not be a viable business strategy in a few years. Simply the use of the phrase while talking about a bookstore is flawed.

A company first coming to the e-commerce table in 2008 is at a tremendous disadvantage. Reinventing and leveraging? This is Web 1.0

The story is a familiar one:
company losing money
bring in a CEO from outside the field to turn things around
company keeps losing money
sweeping reforms and changes are announced
some people make a lot of money
The company is sold or goes out of business

Sadly, in this case, there are books involved.

I can’t wait to see where this one goes.

Michael Cairns gives his take on what the strategic version should be
Booksquare take
Related:
my post “Barnes & Noble: Is The End Near”after they reported their 3Q 06 earnings.

Mar 28, 2007

Keeping Up With the Gates Foundation at the Library

I had a look at the 8 minute video/infomercial The Gates Foundation has released to help library advocates make the case for funding in their communities.

The video is an accessory to the announcement by the Gates Foundation at the ALA mid-winter meeting this past January in Seattle that pledged 5 more years of support so “public libraries serving low-income communities continue to provide free, high-quality computer and Internet services and training to their communities”.

As advertised the video has a strong focus on minority and low income library users who are in some ways becoming dependent on library technologies to do many of the online tasks that are becoming commonplace in society. Imagine not having a computer in your house.

The problem is that the smooth production is as much about computers and Microsoft as it is about the importance of the public library. There are more than twice as many shots of people interacting with computers at the library then with books. There are even a few gaming shots and a plug for x-box.

It is a noble deed to provide access to technology to underprivileged segments of the population but it is as important, if not more important, to provide them access to books and reading.

We can’t expect the Gates Foundation to help us with this.

We need a campaign that is as polished and well funded to get the message out about the books.

Why isn’t the publishing industry producing similar videos?

As I said in my post after the announcement of the grant:

“Our hats go off to the Gates Foundation for their support let’s just hope that support is not limiting the technology options for our libraries and ultimately our citizens”

There was a comment made recently by Karen Cunningham who is head of libraries in Glasgow, Scotland, the largest municipal library service in Europe. She “accused the public libraries sector of “taking its eye off the ball” and getting distracted from reading by IT…It wasn’t that we diverted financial resources but we did divert our thinking time, our planning time and our staff time away from books and reading”

Librarians Beware.

Got the video lead via the Mississippi Library Association website.
Karen Cunninham lead via The Good Library blog
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