The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Just saw this film last night.  It's a very good documentary, and like everything that Arron worked for and valued, is free on the Internet. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58

Arron was a child prodigy, and most definitely in his short life, showed that he was a genius. At 3 years old, Arron taught himself to read.  When he was only 14 years old, Aaron co-authored RSS, the specification used for updating news and blogs on the Web.  While still a teenager, he helped create the Creative Commons.  Before he was 20 he founded a company that would become Reddit.  When he was 20 he created the Open Library for the Internet Archive.  I found out about this film after looking at Howard Besser's website (my former advisor at UCLA).  Howard writes that:                                      
                                                                             
"Most of Aaron's work was driven by his passionate belief that society would be a better place if people had access to original material that shaped their lives and environment.  He sometimes employed direct action tactics to shame governmental and non-profit organizations into releasing works that they kept behind economic walls. And he was one of the major architects of the campaign to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the co-founder of Demand Progress, an activist organization fighting against Internet censorship.                                                                   
                                                                              
In 2009 he downloaded millions of documents from a pay-per-view database of Federal Court decisions (PACER) and made these publicly available on a website dedicated to making government information freely available to the public. (we all know that government information can't be copyrighted, right?)                                                                       
                                                                              
The troubles that likely led to his death began about 18 months ago, when he brought a laptop to MIT and downloaded a massive number of journal articles from the library journal archive service JSTOR.  The US Department of Justice prosecuted him for this even though the alleged "victim", JSTOR, declined to press charges.  And recently, JSTOR announced that it would make more than 4.5 million of its articles freely available, likely a result of Aaron's action.  But the US Attorney continued to vindictively prosecute him on charges that might have resulted in 35 years jail time and $1 million fine."

I love the fact that Arron loved libraries, so much so that he advocated for them and for what they stood my previous post on Oranges and Peaches.  I also like it when people I've met get interviewed for documentaries.  Brewster Kahle speaks about Arron.  Of course listening to his parents and siblings and the people who know him is very moving.  Although the film is about his life and death, it's hopeful and fascinating and very much worth watching.

New Years resolutions: Reading Pulitzer Prize winners

Okay, I know, why am I doing a New Years resolution involving reading when I have so much already to read for my PhD?  Maybe I want to read these books and I just need an excuse.  So here it is: I will read 12 books (roughly one a month) this year that have won the Pulitzer Prize.  Whether I have time to blog about them, is an entirely different matter.

I've finished my book for January which is The Swerve.  I had time to read this when I was in Normandy staying with friends between Christmas and New Years Eve.  The Swerve jumps around quite a bit between the middle ages, the late Roman Empire, and the beginning of what historians would call the early Renaissance.  You follow a scholar (formerly attached to the Papal court) trying to locate a manuscript by the poet and philosopher, Lucretius, which summarises the philosophy of Democritus, in work called On the Nature of Things [translated].  It worked that I was in Normandy and visited Mont Saint-Michel, because I was thinking about being an early humanist, going to remote abbeys like Mont Saint-Michel... and freezing my butt off, especially in winter.

Before the age of printing monks used to copy out manuscripts by hand, and their production depended on whether their hands would get stiff from the cold or if their ink would freeze.  (Then they'd have to take it outside and thaw it, I guess, since no fires were allowed near the books or them when they worked in the scriptorium copying and copying). They used to write little notes on the margins, I guess I would too if I had to follow a vow of silence, with laments like "This parchment is too hairy!" (meaning the person who was supposed to have prepared the skin did a bad job preparing it) or "Thank God darkness is coming, so I don't need to write more today."  In a way, these whinging monks were doing graffiti on the manuscripts, but it's the kind of graffiti that wouldn't be see for years (or centuries later). 

I took an Ancient Philosophy course at USF.  I'm a bit outraged in retrospect that we didn't study Democritus... but as the course what taught by conservative Catholics, so conservative that the President of USF had to close down the program and restart it again years later, they wouldn't have taught it since Democritus doesn't sit well with neo-Platonism.  (Democritus never said God didn't exist, he just said that if deities did, they had better things to do than be concerned with what humans wanted or did. They would be outside of Nature and Nature, itself, was governed by certain laws.)  I knew that he theorized the existence of atoms, but not that Epicureanism philosophy (derived from Democritus's teachings) was actually about.  I remember being taught at USF that it meant pleasure seeking was a good thing and they were about seeking pleasure in the extreme.  In this book, Greenblatt actually shows that it was early Christian groups that distorted the original meaning of this philosophy. Epicureanism advised followers to live modestly, and in that way they would get pleasure from life, which was all there was.

Anyway, I did enjoy the book, although a few chapters dragged a bit.

Severus Snape Does Not Deserve Your Pity by Emily Asher-Perrin

I came across this post in Tor.com. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/severus-snape-does-not-deserve-your-pity.  Although it's an older article, it was one of the most well-written and accurate analysis of one of my favorite Harry Potter characters, Severus Snape. 

JK Rowling is brilliant and did a great job of creating a disturbed, flawed character, that many people, including myself can empathize with.  But, don't misunderstand him or pity him!

The Invention of Craft by Glenn Adamson

I'm cheating a bit with this post. I was asked to write a book review for the Art Libraries Journal. I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it by November, because I have so many more things to read, however, I found this to be one of the best books I've read and actually very relevant for my research into the time period I'm studying.  So I include it here. This is what I turned into the ALJ. Obviously it may be edited when published in the journal.

In the 2006 film, The Illusionist, Edward Norton plays a nineteenth century magician, Eisenheim, who is challenged to reveal secrets of his craft by Crown Prince Leopold, played by Rufus Sewell.  Prince Leopold is a clever, highly learned man with a scientific bent—he embodies what Adamson describes as ‘modernity.’  Until I had read Adamson’s book, The Invention of Craft, I had no idea that Eisenheim was based on an actual historical magician, Robert-Hodin.  Robert-Hodin was so well regarded that later illusionist, Erik Weisz chose the stage name ‘Harry Houdini’ to honor him.  Several of the illusions the audience sees in the film – an orange tree growing before their eyes, apparent ghosts walking among the living, and the trick that puts Eisenheim a odds with Leopold: taking the prince’s sword on stage and challenging anyone to lift it as King Arthur lifted Excalibur from the stone—are all based on the crafty performances of Robert-Hodin. “He is trying to trick you,” Leopold says, demanding that the lights are switched on during Eisenheim’s command performance at the prince’s palace. “I am trying to enlighten you.  Who has the more noble pursuit?”

Robert-Hodin is an artisan, states Adamson. Artisans have been around for centuries.  Artisans have different creative practices and diverse skills, from cabinetmakers to weavers of lace, from locksmiths to performers on stage.  The artisans traditionally belonged to guilds that regulated how craft knowledge was disseminated through personal networks, following stages of apprenticeship, to journeyman and finally after years of dedicated hard work, to master. Going through each stage, one gained experience of the craft.  The guilds protected artisan mysteries, allowing artisans to set the price on their own work.  The guild system allowed artisans to be independent from outside control.

The guild system and this artisan process of slow emersion into life-long careers started breaking down prior to the Industrial Revolution, asserts Adamson.  He shows how different trade shops and enterprises began dividing up labor, creating specialists in certain specific tasks so that large jobs that were commissioned could be done faster, and more efficiently.  What happened then (Adamson shows how this happened at different times in different trades) was that rather than apprentices being fully knowledgeable about the whole process of making something like a cabinet or a wood engraving, or the details of each trick in performance, people became specialists.  Adamson points out that the problem with this process was that someone from outside (like the encyclopaedist Denis Diderot, or a captain of industry, or a political figure), someone with a lot of influence and often power, gets the impression there is no actual skill or talent going into the craft process.  And what’s worse, promote this idea widely.

Adamson alludes to our awareness that at some point between 1750s to the 1850s the concept of a division between the ‘fine arts’ and the ‘craft arts’ occurred, with the fine art emerging as the superior of the two.  Adamson strongly argues that the whole notion of ‘craft’ was invented in order to: first, control artisans that were operating within their own economic and social communities; and second, to provide something in opposition to the concept of ‘progress’ in the narrative of the Industrial Revolution, that was effectively peddled by emerging entrepreneurs, industrialists and capitalists.  Many professions and new jobs emerged during the Victorian era. Natural philosophers became physicists and chemists.  Natural history practitioners were transformed into geologists and biologists.  And with some slight of hand, traditional artisans were rechristened as architects, designers, and engineers, or ‘mere’ practitioners of craft such as draughtsman or mechanics.  The actual magic being performed was through rhetoric, and Adamson shows how skills that were once admired and well paid for were either relegated into the lower ranks of society, or cleverly made invisible. For example, it was said that performers, like Robert-Hodin, used their creativity and skill to ‘merely’ make money, so they were considered ‘base’ because they didn’t contribute to something ‘more useful’.  Designers on the other hand, who did much useful work to plan, produce, and then finish products, like rifles or cabinets were obscured by talk of wondrous machines that ‘did everything.’  No credit or extra compensation was provided for laborers who worked with the machines; who were told they only had so-called mechanical and unthinking tasks to perform.   

The Invention of Craft is actually a cultural and social history, that challenges readers in an compelling way to ask questions like, why did the nineteenth century belief in progress and self-improvement lead to exploitation, not just of workers in Great Britain, but of raw materials and other cultures on distant shores? How has craft knowledge, which has been hidden, or belittled, or ignored since the nineteenth century, actually remained an empowering force with potential to change the world?  This well-researched book is worth getting just for the references alone—it’s a bonus to find the text so engaging.

Adamson defines many common beliefs that are still held today, about craft and ‘traditional arts’. He explains craft ‘creation stories’ in the eighteenth - nineteenth centuries, and challenges different myths in four very dense, yet enlightening chapters. Each chapter starts with a historical figure that is seamlessly woven into a greater narrative.  By the end of each section, which builds on the last, he offers different understandings of modernity.  Explanations by Ruskin or Morris or Marx may be too simple, he thinks. Perhaps modernity is actually just a fantasy of control.   

In The Illusionist, the character Eisenheim, started out as a cabinetmaker’s son, who has to flee as a young man because the authorities were trying to control his life.  When the movie begins we know this character has changed his name to Eisenheim and reinvented himself.  The craft skills of cabinetmaker are used to create ‘magical’ artisan props, props that transform him into a very successful illusionist, a performer outside direct control of the authorities.  Eisenheim practices ‘mysteries’ which he will not explain to outsiders.  People come to his shows to experience wonder. Prince Leopold, the embodiment of nineteenth-century, authoritarian, ‘scientific’ thinking doesn’t like wonder. Wonder to Leopold equals trickery.  Wonder is something that should captivate for a few moments.  The real thrill of viewing any craft skill for him comes from understanding how something is actually done. Prince Leopold asks which of them has the more noble pursuit.  It is well worth reading Glenn Adamson’s book for enlightening and nuanced answers.  

Oranges and Peaches

Just before I left my job this week, everyone I worked with at the new Skills@Library team was invited to a presentation, which is where your line manager gives a little speech thanking an outgoing employee for their years of service.  This is roughly what I said.  I didn't exactly give a speech, it was more like a conversation, where people were asking questions like what did I enjoy the most during my time at Leeds, etc. but this is the order I would have said things.

I’ve worked at the University of Leeds Library for more than seven years.  This is the longest I’ve worked at any library during my 12-year career starting at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies in 1999.  To commemorate this event, my husband got me the Lego librarian mini figure.  

In one hand she has a “Shhh…” coffee mug,  in the other hand a book, Oranges and Peaches.

Do you know the Oranges and Peaches story?
[Since there were co-workers in their 20s and no Americans I explained…]

It is from a peer reviewed journal article that I had to read while I was at UCLA.  Basically the article talks about how the majority of communication that happens between people is miscommunication, but that human beings have little filters in their brains that correct what we perceive as mistakes.  The following example is given in the article.  [I am clearly summarizing here and using my own words.]

A kid at an American college goes the college library, and he is very freaked out.  He has a test on Monday for his Introduction to Biology class and it is Friday afternoon.  He was told by his TA that he needs to read an entire book over the weekend to prepare for the test, but the undergraduate Library doesn’t seem to have it, so he is now in the biomedical library asking for help at the reference desk.

“The book is called Oranges and Peaches,” he says.  The librarian does a search in the catalogue by title and can’t find it.

“Who is the author?” she asks trying to be helful.  He spends five minutes looking through his notes and then says, “Charles… Charles somebody.”

“I need more information about the book. I can’t find it if you don’t even know his surname.”

Completely frustrated, the student raises his voice and says, “My TA says that there should be dozens of copies of this book in the library!  It’s supposed to be, like, the Bible of evolution.  Why don’t you have it?

“Do you mean ‘On the Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin?” the librarian asks.

“Yes, that’s it!”

The rest of the article from what I remember says that staff working on the library reference desk need to be aware that although people know what they want, they often don’t know the best way to ask for it.  Even in the age of Google, sometimes you do need human mediation to help with searching.

Now at UCLA there was another class that was a requirement for us to take.  I think it was called “Information and Society”, and we went over the history of the library profession had to participate in what seemed like endless discussions about the meaning of our profession, and whether the profession, or libraries for that matter were valued.  I thought it was completely useless at the time.  I was wrong.

Every job I’ve had since I’ve been working libraries has involved in some “justifying our existence exercise.”  This is even true at places you’d think care about research.  While I was working at my first professional job at JPL, the JPL business managers had talked about possibly closing down the JPL library as a cost-saving measure and moving everything to Caltech.  I went around talking to scientists and engineers about how they felt about that and I actually met my husband because he was one of the people I interviewed.  All of them basically said, “We want our own library.  Why should we have to drive on three different freeways to get to the Caltech Library?  Sure most of the science journals are online, but what if we need to talk to somebody?  How much money will actually be saved if the different project and research staff have to waste time and keep physically leaving the JPL campus? And the priority at Caltech’s Library are Caltech University staff and students, not JPL staff.” 

It feels like these cycles of having to justify providing good library service and maintaining good collections keep repeating themselves.  I’m here again at the end of this job which has just undergone a restructure.  A restructure that basically negates the the value of the excellent collections, and the expertise in them that only happens after spending several years working closely with the collections.

I think in a years’ time it will be good that Skills@Library will be moving into the new Laidlaw Library currently being constructed, and staff will have the chance to spend time working on general enquiries.  I was sad when it was decided that Faculty Team Librarians would stop doing that.  I think it’s good for staff from all levels of the management structure to spend some time during the month on the frontline, that way we are in contact with library users, that’s how it was when I worked at Oxford University.  And what I enjoyed most about being a librarian was one-on-one contact with students and researchers.  By helping them, I learned a lot.  Even about things I wouldn’t have been interested in asking about for myself.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about books and knowledge as well as the state of the library profession. Probably because the topic of my PhD research is “Democratising Knowledge: Chambers’s Illustrated encyclopaedias.”  Chambers’ was/is a large publisher that began 200 years ago and has been profitable selling education books cheaply to anyone who wanted to teach them self about anything.  The publishing company is still running.

Books are not just books. Books symbolize aspirations, especially at a place like this university.  You come to university to learn what is in those books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.) and you become a different person because of that knowledge—a person who can practice science; or history; or medicine; or law.  Or who can write articulately. The people who write those books aspire to share their knowledge.

“Librarian” is more than just a job title to me. A librarian is someone in the unique position to connect people with books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.).  In other words, someone who belongs to a profession that enables people to help themselves.

I’m not going to completely disappear.  After looking at COPAC records, I’ve found that many of the books I need for my research, (which overlaps with graphic design history, Victorian culture, history of science, bibliography) is found here at the University of Leeds Library.  So, if I come by, I’ll probably bother some of you to have a cup of coffee with me. 

The Song of Achilles

My son is keen on everything related to the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans at the moment.  So we've been visiting lots of places in Cambridge this week with lots of collections on Greek and Roman civilization material. When we were in Cambridge Central Library (curiously in the middle of a huge shopping mall) I came a cross this book.  I finished it in two days.  It is an absolute page turner. 

It tells of a 20 year period, prior to and encompassing the Trojan War.  The novel is told from the perspective of Patroclus, the companion of Achilles.  I understand this novel took Madeline Miller 10 years to research and write, and I can believe it.  The historical/mythic detail is rich, the settings are lush, and the characters develop and change, and the descriptions of love and death are sensual and vivid.  This novel is not for the faint of heart.  While reading some scenes, my heart was pounding.

When I was in college, I read the Iliad and I must say I didn't realize how much of my Greek mythology I forgot, which worked out fine, because the things I did remember were not featured in this novel, so I was genuinely surprised when I read certain scenes.  The Iliad is mostly about battle, and as it was written down long after the events were supposed to take place after being transmitted by oral culture.  Therefore, while the story is interesting, you mostly get, this happened, then that, then because of an offense caused before which we will flash back to, this is now happening.  This novel on the other hand flushes out personalities, character motivation, rules of the ancient society, so that along with the story, readers are sucked in.  

You fall in love at the same time that Patroclus does.  You fear for his life when he is cornered.  You are humiliated when he is ridiculed publicly.  You despise Agamemnon and share Patroclus' wary respect for Odysseus.  This is all very cleverly done and I'm glad this first novel of Madeline Miller's won the Orange Prize. 

The Giver

I read this book when I was visiting Los Angeles this past week.  It is excellent.  I follows the life of a boy, Jonas, from the age of 11 - 13 in a future society where choice has been removed from the world.  Everyone is taught to be pleasant, to manage their emotions, and to conform to the Rules.  When children become 12 years old, in his society, a group of elders decide what work they will spend the rest of their life doing.  Jonas, because he seems to have a certain talent for "seeing beyond" is selected to be the Receiver.  There is only one Receiver in the community, and s/he holds the memories of the past society.  The memories are needed to make wise decisions, but it was decided elders in the past that in order to maintain the "sameness" i.e., conflict and keep order, only the Receiver of memories should be forced to experience the joys as well as the pain of life.

Jonas receives a year of training from the current Receiver, who he starts to call the Giver.

The writing flows very well as does the story, and as readers you make the journey with Jonas, discovering that further and further unsettling things about the community.  

It looks like a film adaptation of this book is scheduled to be released in August, later this year.  I find the preview interesting.  When I was reading the book, in some ways it was playing out like a film in my head.  I actually imagined something like Pleasantville where the movie first takes place in Black and White, and as more memories are transmitted to Jonas, he starts seeing the world in color.  I guess this just means it will be a different adaptation.