... according to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor ...

It was on this day in 1731 that Ben Franklin founded the first circulating library, a forerunner to the now ubiquitous free public library. He started it as a way to help settle intellectual arguments among his group of Philadelphia friends, the Junto, a group of civic-minded individuals gathered together to discuss the important issues of their day.

[...]


[from Jessamyn West's blog: librarian.net]

Labels: factoid, history, libraries

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:07 PM|| |

[prior screeds]

Had a heads-up from Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground mid-May:

Dear Friends of Joe D:

The next step toward civic improvement in North Beach is to say:

"Yes, I support the Library Commission and the Recreation and Park
Commission in unanimously approving the North Beach Library / Joe
DiMaggio Playground Master Plan, including the relocation of the North
Beach Library to 701 Lombard Street, including the closure and
greening of Mason Street. Completing this project will provide a
much needed new library, greater green space, and improved parkland
that is more accessible to all North Beach residents!"

Please show your support for the new library and future playground
improvements by writing to:

Bill Wycko, Environmental Review
Officer, San Francisco Planning Department
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400,
San Francisco, CA 94103

[...]

With clicks and links to this and that. ...

So, I wrote a letter. Sent it off a bit after noon today with a copy to David Chiu (President, Board of Supervisors, and also our very own District 3 Supervisor) and Luis Herrera (City Librarian).

I'd talked with David Chiu at the SPUR Urban Center opening event yesterday afternoon and told him to expect a copy of what I was sending to the City.


Mr. Wycko,

A note from Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground (FJDiMP) asked me to send you a note beginning, "Yes, I support the Library Commission and the Recreation and Park Commission in unanimously approving the North Beach Library / Joe DiMaggio Playground Master Plan, including the relocation of the North Beach Library to 701 Lombard Street, including the closure and greening of Mason Street."

Although I am a member of the Friends group, I support neither the placement of the new library at 701 Lombard nor the closure of the segment of Mason Street that's being asked for to facilitate the 701 Lombard location.

My concerns:

1) re closing Mason
-------------------
I have suggested in the past, and continue to suggest: (from e-mail to SFPL Commission, dated 28 Aug 2008) "The City should temporarily close the [Mason] street segment for [at least] a month and see what =really= happens to the traffic patterns. Such closure would ease the minds of the neighbors, if the traffic patterns flow as the models suggest, but could put the kibosh on the idea of closing Mason if the traffic patterns change as neighbors anticipate.

"While the K-rails blocking Mason are up, label them:

Temporary closure of Mason.
Permanent closure is proposed as part of
plans to build the new North Beach Library
on the Triangle.

"In addition to the temporary closure and signage, story poles need to be erected on the Triangle, showing the outline of the new library so that neighbors can see the impact of putting the library there."

There is considerable controversy over what effect closing Mason would have. A temporary closure would help address those issues.

2) re placing the North Beach Library on the Triangle
-------------------
Luis Herrera (in an e-mail 03-Sep-2008) stated, the Triangle location, "meets our service program requirements, including additional book and materials capacity of up to 15%."

"up to 15%" in collection expansion? The North Beach library collection has been undersized for decades. "up to 15%" expansion is far less than the community needs or expects from a new library.

Currently the NBE circulation stats show ~ 6.4 turns per collection item per year. (Circ: 250K Collection: 39K items) That figure is 26% higher than the branch library =average= for SFPL, which shows 5.08 turns/item/year. (Branch circ: 6116K Branch collection: 1203K)

Currently the NBE circulation stats show 9.26 checkouts/capita/yr. (Circ: 250K Popn served: 27K) The City's average for all branches is 7.42/capita/yr. (Circ: 6116K Popn served: 824K) The State's average for public libraries is 5.78/capita/yr.

The North Beach library and its collection are heavily used. A potential incremental 10-15% collection growth over the life of the building is not enough from the get-go.

My major issue with the Triangle location is that if we ever need/want to expand the library, there will be NOWHERE to expand. Any further expansion beyond what is already planned (onto Mason, assuming Mason can be closed in part to make way for the new library) will be impossible without rerouting all utilities that currently run underneath that segment of Mason. Hardscape and landscape are suitable on top of a closed Mason, but structures cannot cover the utilities because of access issues.

While you are considering the impacts of closing Mason, could you also investigate the costs (financial and environmental) of re-routing the utilities under Mason when the library needs to expand onto that area in the future? Is re-routing even possible?

3) re alternatives to the Triangle and closing Mason. Environmental impacts?
-------------------
I asked Luis Herrera in an e-mail dated 03-Sep-2008: "Was any thought given to blocking Greenwich at Columbus for added space for expansion? Blocking Greenwich would raise far less outcry than blocking Mason as there is an island in the middle of Columbus at that point preventing Greenwich-west drivers from turning left onto Columbus or proceeding through onto the western end of Greenwich, and vice versa.

"The last garage access off Greenwich between Powell and Columbus is at ~735 Greenwich, which leaves a major chunk of that roadway with no current requirement for vehicle traffic access. Are there issues with what lies under Greenwich similar to the issues with Mason?"

Luis Herrera replied, "The closure of Greenwich at Columbus was not discussed as that location would also provide for the proposed size to the programmatic needs."

As part of the environmental impacts investigation, the City should investigate the environmental impact of closing Greenwich as an alternative to closing Mason. The new library could be placed where the tot lot currently is and expand onto Greenwich as far as any underground utility issues allow. This would address some of the issues that some FJDiMP members have regarding loss of a tennis court and location of the tot lot. The tot lot would be relocated elsewhere, perhaps to where the library currently is, adjacent to the bocce courts.

Which road closure (Greenwich or Mason) has less impact?

Thank you for your time.

Labels: libraries, North Beach, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:14 PM|| |

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions today launched the World Digital Library, a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site -- located at www.wdl.org -- includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

from the site: The WDL focuses on significant primary materials, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other types of primary sources.

See also UNESCO's Memory of the World project.


[via LOC's Twitterfeed]

Labels: history, libraries, maps, photographs, resource, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:29 AM|| |

The 18 most memorable movie library scenes in honor of National Library Week

Library of Congress proudly twitters that they nab two of the spots!

Labels: books, libraries, movies

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:45 PM|| |

I was gone yesterday. Awoke a bit after 5A to catch the 9X over to the Cow Palace for the day-long Get Motivated! seminar (more on =that= experience to follow).

I left the seminar early (mid Michael Phelps' presentation) to catch the 9X back to Washington Square Park, where I transferred to the 30 to get to Fort Mason where I met up with his nibs to kill time (kill time, check-in and get wristbands, kill time, stand in line outside in chilly breeze, kill time) until we were let inside (Front Row for us!) for the Zócalo/New America Foundation joint event with Craig Newmark.

"He's just like I expected," said his nibs.

"You should read his blog and Twitterfeed," I answered. "He's exactly as he is. Which is a good thing."

(But then we've always identified with engineering rather than marketing and sales. ...)

Writeup and video with photos here.

There I am! (We're #3 & #4 in line. I'm wearing black, shades, carrying my handy-dandy AAAS-NSF bag stuffed full the night before with the paper/pens/stuff I thought necessary for the day's events.)

We walked home. Walked up to Bay and headed east. Cut over onto Columbus and stopped off at LaTrappe (corner of Columbus and Greenwich) because I was in need of some moules frites and Koningshoeven La Trappe Quadrupel. Sal satisfied, we continued home, arriving after midnight.

Ada Lovelace Day had been and gone.
My post praising techie women would be late. Alas.


Let us now praise techie women

Ada Lovelace Day is/was an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

The list of people I could honor is near endless. Grace Hopper was my first choice, but I decided my Ada Lovelace Day post should honor a living WIT. (Others chose differently, honoring, among others, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Rosalind Franklin, and Marie Curie.)

Who to choose? Who to choose? Who to choose?

Let us now praise, Jessamyn West, purveyor of librarian.net (since 1999) and her personal blog abada abada.

Back in 2001, I wrote the following about Jessamyn.

[n.b. This extract is from my Feb 2001 column for Computer Bits [RIP]. The column was titled, ROLL OUT THE CARPET - PASSIONS GREET THE MILLENNIAL DAWN, and covered a batch of sites run by people who were passionate about a subject. The Degree Confluence Project was mentioned earlier in the column.]

I thought I was so clever. I thought, "I'll pop the Degree Confluence Project into Altavista [yes, Altavista was my search engine of choice in those days] and see who else links to it and maybe write about those sites." and got sucked into hours of roaming the links of Jessamyn (not that Jessamyn) West's personal site. http://www.jessamyn.com

West linked to the Degree Confluence Project because she has a quirky page where you can note a latitude and longitude and find out where you'd end up if you tunneled through to the other side of Earth. I knew West was a kindred spirit because her tunneling page also links to the Library of Congress map pages, mentioned in my November 2000 column.

West has links to everything that interests her and beyond: Naked Librarians (indeed!), Tracy Kidder, confluences and her journal, abada abada -- and a fine journal it is. I'd heard of the huge numbers of people these days who keep their journals upfront and personal on the Web, but I'd never had the inclination to check out the sites. "Boring, self-centered clods," I thought. Boy, was I wrong.

West's journal includes such life slices as the description (with pictures!) of how she wound up with a printing press last year. "It started out innocently enough, playing pool with my friend Margaret talking about getting a hobby. Next thing you know, I'm en route to a scrap metal place in Burien and before you can say "dingbat" I am the owner of a tabletop letterpress machine. As my Mom said to me 'this is how your father wound up with the pipe organ...' "

Dad, by the way, is Tom West, featured in Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine. On her Tracy Kidder page, West remembers how Kidder stashed himself on the couch at the Wests on weekends as he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

West's journal starts in January 1997. I turned my mouse to this month, then that, another year, a different month, fascinated, clicking links, watching West's writing style and interests grow and change over the past four years. Check out West's journal and site and you will discover what the attraction is, why I've becoming a peeking Sal, peering into someone else's life and passions.

Is Jessamyn technically a technological woman? She doesn't do HW design. She's not a SW engineer. What Jessamyn is is a community technology librarian, a guide to the wonders of the Web and technology, a friendly host, an answerer of questions. She works to get technology working in small community libraries. She is a moderator at MetaFilter.com and runs the Q and A part of the site, Ask MetaFilter. She is the visible face (and the sometimes cranky voice) of library technology. People like Jessamyn West are the link between the technically inept and the technology available these days at your local public library.

There is a boatload of information online and for those who can't afford to have a personal connection in their home, the public library is the nearest and friendliest place.

So, what do we need to do? Get the technology into libraries. Get the library staff up to speed on using the technology.

Add patrons with questions and problems. Voilà! Solutions. Questions answered. Problems solved. Here is how you fill out the online food stamp application. Here is how you file an SSD or SSI application online. Here is how to use Craigslist or other online resources to find rentals. Here is how to file a complaint online. Learn to budget. Repair a faucet. Find a mechanic. Be a mechanic. Here is a site that lets you study and practice for your driver's exam.

Let us now praise Jessamyn West and her sisters in library and technology who are wielding the machetes of technology to lead the lost and bewildered through the jungles of confusion to the "good" stuff available on the 'net.

Let us now praise Jessamyn West and her sisters in library and technology who spend their days at sometimes thankless work, without whom the interWeb and its resources would be unavailable to a large swath of the public.

('sted, K, Eva, others. You know who you are. Consider yourselves praised as well.)

Labels: libraries, technology

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:54 PM|| |

Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and 10 Legs [NYTimes article]

Great story of Alfa and Beto, the biblio burros, Luis Soriano, their keeper, and the mission they've devoted ten years' of weekends to.

Labels: books, goodworks, libraries, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:09 AM|| |

The Library in the New Age

by Robert Darnton. (The New York Review of Books. 12 Jun 2008)

Late on this. Just saw a May 2008 link from Robert Berkman's friendfeed.

The article concludes, Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital repositories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.

Darnton also says (and I concur, oh, how I concur), Information has never been stable. That may be a truism, but it bears pondering. It could serve as a corrective to the belief that the speedup in technological change has catapulted us into a new age, in which information has spun completely out of control. I would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.

Don't trust the newspapers. Don't trust books. For heaven's sake, don't trust blogs or online news sources or the story that a friend of a friend told your best friend.

Believe, but believe with healthy skepticism because the more I read and the more I know, the more I know what I read is at least twenty percent balderdash and another twenty percent complete fraud. (And despite her protestations to the contrary, the great great whatever great aunt did not trace his nibs' family roots back to Lady Godiva and beyond.)

Labels: history, information, libraries, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:53 PM|| |

Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker's Library

Everything from an original Sputnik 1 satellite to a Kelmscott Chaucer.

Oh. My.

Labels: books, libraries

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:39 PM|| |

After meeting with two flooring contractors for bids (and calling a third to meet up with tomorrow), we headed over to Book Bay at Fort Mason (the Friends of the San Francisco Library used book store) to look for a copy of Gibbons' DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE -- a special request from the younger niblet.

Couldn't find a copy, but did find several other books I wanted as well as fourteen books on the $.50 (3/$1) table. Couldn't find a fifteenth, but the staff gave me a deal.

With my Friends of the Library discount and one of the "extra 25% off" coupons they give you when you renew your annual membership, I got 35% off my purchase: eighteen books for $15.60.

But not a DECLINE AND FALL.

Talking it over with his nibs, I realized I should just rummage through the book boxes labeled HISTORY and pick one of the duplicates that isn't an old, old copy. His nibs remembers having a copy his Aunt Burta bought used back in the first quarter of the last century. I know I had a 2v. copy when I was in my late teens and we probably have other editions as well. I'll find a good -- but not valuable -- copy to send. I'm assuming that any book I send to Ukraine will not be coming home in 2010, and I'd hate to have the younger niblet worry about damaging a book I held dear.

Nice trip to Book Bay, though.

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:13 PM|| |

North Beach Library and why it matters. The original.

Addendum 1:

Someone involved with pushing the Triangle site asked me to explain to her what my issues were. (She's happy that the Library Commission stamped "go forward" on the paperwork to put the North Beach Library on the Triangle at yesterday's meeting.)

I wrote back: (some of this you may have seen before)

The location is the wrong one.

Playground supporters would rather not have the Library at Greenwich and Columbus where it would take away some playground space.

Playground supporters and financial issues with the RecParks budget (or lack thereof) are driving what should have been a neighborhood effort to build the best possible library for North Beach.

Instead we are getting a triangular library, a known issue that Brian Bannon told me he had problems with initially as well but he thinks the architect has come up with a solution that will work within the confines of the location.

"Will work"? Is that the best possible library for North Beach?

The Triangle is not the best location for the library. The architect should not be asked to "try" if they can make a less than optimal location work if what we want is the best library possible.

The parcel is 4120 sq ft per assessor's records. The proposed library is to have a 5700-5950 sq ft footprint. Do the math.

If it =is= possible to squeeze out over existing sidewalks and squeeze into Mason to create a footprint that's 40% or so larger than the current lot, then we will certainly be at the outer edges of what's possible within the perimeter bounded by Columbus, Lombard and Mason's utilities issues.

The library at that site will never grow any bigger. Ever.

It can't.

... unless you believe in flying pigs who will pay to relocate the works that are under Mason some time in the future when the library is (again) bursting its seams.

The library should be at a site where it can grow, if in the future it needs to. Heck, it should be at a site where it can be larger than what's proposed for the Triangle from the get-go.

The proposed library site was shifted over to the Triangle because (1) the Triangle turned out not to be as useful an acquisition for RecParks as originally billed and RecParks had no money to develop it anyway and (2) playground supporters didn't want to give up =any= of the existing playground area.

Shame that.

So we wind up with a subpar library for North Beach with scant additional space after bookcases and tables and chairs and staff workspace &c. and so on are set in a triangular footprint with ADA spacing.

I expected better. I'm really disappointed that there wasn't more support from Joe DiMaggio supporters and NorthBeach moms & al. to get the library North Beach deserves.

Instead of something genuinely bigger and better and wonderful we're getting something cramped into the Triangle, putting bulk on a major piece of the Columbus corridor and adding more walls where people were promised open space and greenery during the eminent domain kerfuffle.

Carlo Cestarollo had a fit when I told him about the library plans.

But it's supposed to be a park, he said. Some place for people to rest as they walk from North Beach to Fisherman's Wharf. Benches. Shade. A bit of green. When did they change their minds?

Indeed.

We'll have a new building! Wonderful! We'll be ADA compliant! Wonderful! We'll have more computers and all that whizbang! Wonderful. Why Luis Herrera even promises me that we'll have room to expand the collection by 10-15%!

Wow. Being as our current collection is squeezed and too small already and being as we should be planning a library that should at least be viable for twenty years -- scratch that ... make it fifty years being as that was the last time we got this opportunity -- we should be demanding a building that will handle far far more than a collection expansion of 10-15%. And, to be honest, I think Luis Herrera, whom I like, was giving me the most generous estimate for collection expansion possible because he knew how steamed I was about all this.

I am really disappointed in the location chosen.

Should the library be built there we won't have the best library we could have had given the possibilities and that is really too bad in the end for the library, residents, families, children, and seniors of North Beach. ... and for me.

... and so it goes.

Labels: libraries, politics, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:08 PM|| |

I've been having a nice back and forth exchange with Luis Herrera, the guy in charge of the San Francisco Public Library, re the Library's dumb idea to put the new North Beach Library on top of the Triangle.


View Larger Map


Some history.

Years back a couple of guys wanted to build a four-story building on the 4120 sq ft triangular piece of land bordered by Columbus, Mason, and Lombard. The top three floors would be "handicapped-accessible" apartments (including one for the 84-year-old mom of one of the owners) and the ground floor would be retail.

The guys had worked their way through the planning process and the neighbors' objections and finally got approval when our esteemed District 3 Supervisor decided that the land was really needed more for parks and recreation and pushed through eminent domain proceedings for the parcel.

You had neighbors for buying 701 Lombard (the parcel) for parks parks parks. We need every inch of green space we can get, was the cry.

You had neighbors adamantly opposed to using eminent domain to take the parcel.

Oh, what a mess it was.

The parcel was taken through eminent domain. Case closed. Park to follow.

But wait.

Five years later the Triangle re-enters the picture. The parcel has continued to be used for a parking lot because San Francisco Rec and Parks doesn't have the money to turn the parcel into a park, plus it's so tiny, plus Mason Street cuts through and separates the parcel from the rest of the Joe DiMaggio Playground, plus it wouldn't do for the tot playground (too close to busy Columbus), nor the bocce courts (you must be nuts to even consider it), nor ...

Enter the Library.

North Beach Library was built fifty years ago and it shows. The library (at its most optimistic) is 5337 sq ft and serves a population of 27K, according to some statistics. (As a notch point realize that all the work to expand the Saratoga Library, which serves 35K as a generous estimate, was to expand it from 18K sq ft to 48K sq ft.)

At a public meeting, Wilma Pang -- one of our candidates to replace our esteemed termed-out District 3 Supervisor -- said that the Library was too small even when she was growing up way back when. (She's sixty-seven now.)

Too-ing and fro-ing over the years. Maybe we could put the Library where the boarded up Pagoda Theater sits. That idea was knocked down. Maybe we could. ...

So public meetings were held. Three of them. After the second, it seemed the Library was leaning toward tearing down the old library and building a new 8500 sq ft library at the corner of Greenwich and Columbus. Hooray.

At the third meeting, the Library said it had decided the Triangle was the best spot for the Library for various reasons.

The Triangle? I asked Luis Herrera before the third meeting began.

"We've worked it all out." he told me and passed me over to Brian Bannon, head of branch libraries, for soothing. Brian said words to the effect that he hadn't liked the idea of a triangular library either at first but that the architect had come up with some ideas that would make it work.

Make it work?

Do we want the best library possible for North Beach or do we want one where we go to the architect and say, we know this is a really lame spot for the Library, but can you possibly make it work?

Luis Herrera has been very patient answering all the questions I've thrown at him in e-mail, but it still doesn't work.

How, I asked him, does a 4120 sq ft parcel (per the City Assessor's records) support a library with a 5700-5950 sq ft footprint. (Plans are for a ground floor of ~ 5900 sq ft for public service areas and an upstairs level that will be 2,800-2,950sf that will include a community room, staff lounge, 2d floor bathrooms, &c.)

Well, of course, we close Mason Street and push as far into Mason as we can without disturbing or blocking access to the utilities that run under Mason. (Oh! Don't let the neighbors hear about that!)

So the Triangle, as far as I can calculate using my rusty algebra (Hey! There IS a Use For Algebra!) is 85' on the Lombard side and 96' on the Mason side. [Anyone want to go out there and measure it for me?] The new footprint, if my Algebra holds, will be 98x107', pushing thirteen feet across the sidewalk and into Mason and another eleven feet up toward Greenwich.

All of this exercise is, of course, funded by bonds and such that citizens passed to retrofit our aging libraries, to build a couple new branches, to add more computers, and to get the libraries up to current ADA standards. If we had just rearranged stacks &c. at the current library to meet ADA standards, we would've lost considerable public space in a library that's already so cramped.

The theory is that this new library with its 5900 sq ft ground floor will have room to expand the collection 10-15%. Really?

Maybe.

The other feature this new library will have, which has not been mentioned, not even a peep, is no way ever to expand any more. Once we build on the Triangle, we will have pushed the envelope to the edges of the utilities under Mason, which cannot be covered by anything that can't be dug up when needed. (Think grass, concrete, garden.)

Expand further, should it turn out we need to? No. There will be no way. Ever. Unless, of course, the City bites the bullet and moves the utilities. Did I mention that I was quoted a cost of $2.1million to relocate the tot playground and rework the tennis courts? Imagine what shifting underground utilities would cost!

So who is pushing for the Triangle site? Folks concerned with the Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground do not want the Library to have a larger footprint and take any playground area. Hey, I'm a member of Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground and I've worked to raise money for the park, but I never realized that a decent library wasn't important when it came to sharing dirt with the playground. Some people would rather shove the Library onto the Triangle (which turns out to be a pretty useless piece of dirt for the park to utilize) and recapture the dirt where the Library now stands.

Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. It's all about dirt, isn't it?

I asked Luis Herrera if anyone had thought of shutting down Greenwich from the west-most garage door to Columbus, freeing up some additional square footage that way. There'd be less squawk than the squawks about closing Mason. The extra dirt the library would need would be offset by the dirt from the closure. The Triangle could be a greenspace with benches and a statue of Joe DiMaggio or whatever.

Well, no. No one had even considered closing Greenwich, because the space available there was sufficient for programmatic needs without pushing onto Greenwich, that is, of course, until the push to use the Triangle came along.

Last week I stopped off to talk with Carlo Cestarollo, who runs the Alfa Center across the street from the Triangle. Had you heard, I asked him, that they're planning to put the new library on the Triangle? Two stories?

Carlo was flabbergasted. It's supposed to be a park, he said. Some place for people to rest as they walk from North Beach to Fisherman's Wharf. Benches. Shade. A bit of green. When did they change their minds?

Good question. When =did= they change their minds? And why?

Last week, I wrote the following to the Library Commission, which meets today to put their stamp of approval on the Triangle location.

I've been wondering whether to head down there and do my public testimony. Probably not. After all this bickering back and forth, I'm fed up. Do the people pushing the Triangle location care about libraries or about tennis courts?

Enquiring minds think they know the answer.

Commissioners:

I received a note from Julie Christensen asking me to write a note in support of the plans for our North Beach Library proposed at the August 21 18 Community Meeting. I won't be doing that, and here are my reasons why.

The Triangle is the wrong place for the proposed "new" library. The people proposing the Triangle as the right place care more about the park and finding some "useful" purpose for the Triangle than they do about our little library that could, our little library that needs more room, more books, more staff space, more everything to better serve our community.

With the public spaces (except for the program room) kept on the ground level at the Triangle site due to staffing issues, the public spaces in the new library will not be much bigger, if any at all, than the old.

Add in staircases and elevators for the second floor program room and staff space, the acute angular corners, and other factors and we wind up with a "new" library but not much of one. Sure we will be ADA compliant, which is important. Sure we will have wiring for additional computers, which is important. The "new" library will have a much-needed teen area (we have the second highest YA circulation in the City) but at what expense for other public spaces?

We'll have a new building! Yippee! But where's the added space that's been needed for decades, let alone any hope for an expanded collection, room for services, or even additional chairs and tables?

The Triangle will give us a new library but none of the extra space, services, facilities that we've needed for years.

***

There is no rush to approve the Triangle as the spot for the new library. Take some time to make the right choice, because once the choice is made, even a "preliminary" choice, it will be hard not to fall in line because the choice has been made, and it's in the works ...

Whether the architects can "make do" or "find a way to make it work" is not the question.

Is this the best site for the library?

Is this what is =best= for the library?

Before any decision is made about whether the new library should be on the Triangle, at least two things need to happen in tandem.

Sal Busalacchi, who lives on Mason, suggested at the 21 18 August meeting that instead of =modeling= what =might= happen if Mason is closed, the City should temporarily close the street segment for a month and see what =really= happens to the traffic patterns. Such closure would ease the minds of the neighbors, if the traffic patterns flow as the models suggest, but could put the kibosh on the idea of closing Mason if the traffic patterns change as neighbors anticipate.

While the K-rails blocking Mason are up, label them:

Temporary closure of Mason.
Permanent closure is proposed as part of
plans to build the new North Beach Library
on the Triangle.

In addition to the temporary closure and signage, story poles need to be erected on the Triangle, showing the outline of the new library so that neighbors can see the impact of putting the library there.

Put the K-rails, the signage, and the story poles in place. See how it works out. In the mean time, neighbors can discuss the Triangle location, which is not the location that seemed the location of choice in the meetings leading up to the 21 18 August meeting.

Revisit this question in 2009. Plans to build a new library aren't even on the 2010 calendar. Take more time to pick the location.

The Triangle is not the right location for the North Beach Library.

Have I mentioned I don't agree with Julie Christensen's views on the proposed siting of the new North Beach Library?


Sal Towse
34 Darrell Place
San Francisco, CA 94133



=====================================
What Julie asked us to write:
=====================================
Let them know:
I support a new North Beach Library on the triangle.
I support the conversion of the adjacent block of Mason Street to park land.
I appreciate our department leaders working hard to come up with a real solution to our needs.

The proposed joint Library/RecPark plan (as shown at the Aug 2118 Community Meeting) does the following:
1. Gives us a new, spacious library.

2. Allows the old library to stay open until the new one is ready.

3. Opens up the existing library site to be added to recreation and green space.

4. Lets the library move ahead without waiting for RecPark funding, which we hope will come in a 2013 parks bond, if not sooner.

5. Saves money that will be lost to inflation if the library schedule is delayed.

[Yes, indeed. I did say August 21 instead of August 18 for the meeting date throughout the note. May the kittehs forgive me. ...]

** Addendum 1 **

Labels: libraries, politics, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:43 AM|| |

Department of Elections: Election Summary

100% of votes counted. Results posted 17 Nov 2007. Only ELEVEN DAYS to count the votes!

35.77% voter turnout. Yay, us! (Really, people. That's pathetic.)

Mayor: Gavin Newsom with 73.66% of the vote. Next highest vote getter: Quintin Mecke with 6.33% of the vote. Least highest vote getter: Michael Powers (who?) with .36% of the vote.

(Just kidding ... "Michael Powers, 42, owns the Power Exchange sex club, which welcomes gays, lesbians, heterosexual couples, and bondage and domination devotees - demonstrating, he says in his official campaign statement, "my capacity to embrace every kind of alternative lifestyle and manage multiple environments housed in one totally law-abiding and successful business." That record of embracing tolerance, he said, "guarantees that I will listen to all San Franciscans." [ref: SFGate])

No write-ins at all for mayor. 1.51% write-in for DA. Kamala Harris got the other 98.49% of the vote.

MEASURE
A - passed (55.49) - Transit Reform, Parking Regulation and Emissions Reduction
B - passed (71.21) - Limiting Hold-Over Service on Charter-Created Boards and Commissions
C - passed (68.19) - Requiring Public Hearings on Proposed Measures
D - passed (74.48) - Renewing Library Preservation Fund (Yay! Libraries! They scored even better than Gavin!)
E - failed (51.39) - Requiring Mayor to Appear Monthly at a Board of Supervisors Meeting
F - passed (51.53) - Amending Retirement Benefits for Police Dept. Employees who were Airport Police Officers
G - passed (55.39) - Establishing Golden Gate Park Stables Matching Fund
H - failed (66.95) - Donald Fisher's effort: Regulating Parking Spaces
I - passed (59.14) - Establishing Office Small Business as City Dept. and Creating Small Business Assistance Center
J - passed (62.26) - Adopting a Policy to Offer Free City-Wide Wireless High-Speed Internet Network
K - passed (61.84) - Adopting a Policy to Restrict Advertising on Street Furniture and City Buildings

Can't remember the specifics about the different measures? October 2007 Urbanist newsletter from SPUR has great and gory details on the different measures that were up for vote. [PDF]

Labels: libraries, politics, San Francisco

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:06 PM|| |

In comments on "Stuff," SourGrapes wrote

TA with all that, but I'd include books too. What are ya keeping them for? In most cases it's not to refer to. They're intellectual bling. It's very very unusual to have a couple thousand books, but that guy forgot to say "in our class of people".

I keep books I want to look at again. And the rest go off to subsequent readers. Books are made to be read, not to be shelved.

Ouch, pal.

There's something about books and not just as intellectual bling. I'm happiest in a nest full of books, all that unrealized and unread or waiting to be reread potential.

Yesterday I was rummaging through my stash of travel books, looking for old books on London for someone who's working on the animation for (don't spew) A CHRISTMAS CAROL, due out in 2009. (Jim Carrey will be voicing Ebenezer Scrooge/Ghost of Christmas Past/Ghost of Christmas Present/Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. I told you not to spew!)

Didn't find any, but found some early 20thc. Baedekers covering London and GB, found some old books covering places we'd been walking in N Wales, got sidetracked by a book on Mount Athos. ... All that roaming around and a very cozy afternoon reading wouldn't have happened if I gave away my stash of books. (I am giving away some of the books, ones I know I'll never need/read/want to see again. But ...)

I just love the potential of masses of books, love libraries. I was absolutely blissed out this trip by the Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin.

I was || this close to settling in to help them keep track of the 200K books they have stashed away there. (And Good Lord, they should join the 21st century and start scanning that collection. If that room goes up in flames, a world of knowledge will be lost. Maybe Bill Gates would subsidize the project. I'd volunteer. ...)

What a place.

Heaven.

Labels: books, libraries, travel

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:07 PM|| |

(1) Who wrote

• Elizabeth & her German Garden
• The Caravaners
• Christopher and Columbus

I had to know -- see? -- because I'm sorting books by author and these 19thc. anonymous books were driving me nuts. Who was the author? Were they fiction or memoir?

Answer: Marie Annette Beauchamp, cousin to writer Katherine Mansfield (nee Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp). Fiction.

(2) Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Paul and Virginia. Ltd ed. 800c. 450 GB 350 USA. London. Routledge. 1888. #639.

cracking hinges. foldup box in good shape. worth?

(3) Vicar of Wakefield - Goldsmith. Rackham illustrations. Philadelphia. McKay. Printed in GB by Riverside Press. in box w/ illustration on cover. worth?

(4) War&Peace. Heritage Press. Limited Editions Club. 1938. 2 v. boxed. worth?

(5) signed prints. flowers (3) birds (2) . G. Juniga. (Zuniga?)

Oh, yes. I have a swell and marvelous time sorting books. And again. Tomorrow!

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:33 AM|| |

Book shifting. So here's the problem. The bookcases are, for the most part, filled with the books I intend to stay where they are.

That leaves hundreds of boxes of books to go through on my quest to let go ("Finally!" sez his nibs) of some of the books. You can't see into boxes without opening them. All the boxes of books on a given subject aren't necessarily together.

We already have twenty boxes of books or so packed up for the Coast Community Library. The older younger one will come by with his partner maybe the first weekend in August to see if any of the books in the additional nine boxes of SFF titles intended for CCL are ones they want. Let's call it thirty boxes of books boxed up and ready to shift out. ... and more than ten times that many still here, most unsorted.

I have four main areas where books in boxes (and loose now, due to the sorting) are stashed. I have too many boxes whose contents aren't easily identifiable because I didn't, back when we were packing the boxes up, always remember to label the boxes (as I do now) so that the contents labels are visible from all sides.

I have other boxes that might be labeled but are hidden by other boxes so I can't determine the content. In all I have over thirty boxes that are "unknown." I have another twenty or so that are labeled "nonfic" which need to be sorted through. I have eight that are labeled "misc" which need to be sorted through. I need to get to the "unknown" boxes and see what they might be. And I have the added twist that, due to the vagaries of the move, what is in the boxes is not necessarily as is labeled, if the box is even labeled.

Yesterday I decided that I had to get a grip on what we had, where. I spent some time counting boxes in the four areas and today I created an Excel spreadsheet (and I am so not a believer in spreadsheets) so I can get a handle on which boxes are where and what I can do to shift books around, always remembering that I don't want to end up with too many books in any one place because even though the space was built with a live load req of 40 lbs/sq foot average, you just don't want to push it and, like J Carter Brown, I think it was, have your walls started spreading out because of the load of books on the upper floors.

The purpose of this first pass is to get the nonfic and misc and whatever books rough-sorted into categories so that I can then take each category and sort it more definitively and then take those sub-sorts and figure out what stays, what goes.

So ... my box count yesterday. After feeding the data into Excel I find I have over seventy "subject" sorts of labels for the boxes, and that's even with me throwing physics and biology into a greater superset of science when I was making the book count.

Seventy subjects is about fifty too many. I'm having a problem though with sorting some titles. Are they "essay" or "memoir"? When does "memoir" segue into "autobiography"? Would "Letters" be autobiography or memoir or essay? How about if they're Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son? When do memoirs belong in history?

So I sort and sort and resort. My "reference" boxes had contained all sorts of things. My "facts" boxes had started out as trivia/factoid Uncle John's and Cecil Adams sorts of books but had wound up also including flags of the world and Amos, Amas, Amat. And around and around and around.

The gross decision is that Area 1 will contain fiction, which still needs sorting. Fiction is all that fiction stuff that isn't SFF or MYS. Area 2 will contain history & biography & autobiography & memoirs? essays? Area 3 will have SCI-related for now and JUV. Area 4 (the largest area and where I've been sorting) will get liberal arts (except history and biography) and all the stuff that needs sorting.

My kludgey spreadsheet tells me how many of what are where so I can wrap my head around how many non-fiction things are in the fiction area (24 boxes! that's not bad) and how many fiction things are elsewhere (2 ... okay).

The sheet also tells me that I have about 400 boxes of books, which (take out the thirty destined for CCL or the older younger one) means (hurray!) over half of the books moved in are either on shelves or headed out the door soon.

When I was making my notes, I didn't note how many of those 400+ boxes have already been through the primary sort, but there have been loads. Heck, I probably missed some boxes anyway, but close enough is close enough.

A light's glimmering at the end of the tunnel.

One thing, no, two things, I found day before yesterday were two identical copies of Kipfer's THE ORDER OF THINGS, an interesting book but don't ask me why I have two copies. The table of contents may help me with some of the "How do I sort out the science-related books into subcategories that will make it easy for me to see what I have?" sorts of decisions.

Does Feynman go in "essays" or in "physics" or in just what?

How do I make sure when I'm sorting through for dups that I have all the Feynmans in one place?

Odd, isn't it, that I haven't been buying many books at used bookstores or thrift shops lately?

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:17 AM|| |

I'm tired.

There are boxloads of books to go through.

Still.

So, what's taking so long, Sal?

Let's recap.

We moved ~ 800 boxes of books up here. I have no clue how many are left to sort through. We moved a bunch of shelves as well, but most of those shelves are full so the sorting is taking a long while, while I move boxes from this end of the space to that.

The cookbooks are out of boxes (for the most part) and against the wall in the eastmost room. The travel books (pure travel and travelogue) are in two banks of bookcases perpendicular to the cookbook bank.

The SFF books take up three banks of book shelves to the west of the two banks of travel books (and, yes, perpendicular to the cookbook bank).

There are no more shelves in this room, which is the room where I've been sorting books out of boxes and into other boxes since last week or so when I finished sorting the SFF books. (The SFF books wound up with four boxes of books with no space on the shelves and another five boxes of SFF short stories that didn't fit on the shelves.)

The hall between the eastmost room and the westmost room has stacks of book boxes, mostly boxes marked HIST or PHYSICS or SCI plus boxes with several Harvard Classics sets. Oh, and my SUNSET Magazine going back to forever, and a box of Christmas craft/recipe magazines and books, and ...

I have all the crime fiction (six+ bookcases) on shelves in the westmost room along with a couple shelves of writing books. That room also has a bunch of art (pictures, posters, paintings) and music (78s, LPs, tape, CDs and the occasional 45RPM) that need sorting through eventually (not now) and another twenty-five boxes or so of a motley collection of books, which will be sorted in the current go through.

The alcove outside the westmost room has the SUNSET magazines mentioned up there plus a bookcase full of assorted Tightwad Gazettes and how-to-make-it and FIX YOUR PLUMBING sorts of books that need sorting. Oh, and there's probably 25 boxes labeled HIST and S/W DEV and TECH and what-not.

The hall leading out from the alcove outside the westmost room to the door on that level has a few bookshelves that I may use for sorting the books in that area. Mostly the area has boxes of adult fiction books and (currently) seventeen+ boxes of books destined for the library and nine boxes of SFF books waiting for the older younger one to poke through plus some NF and some MISCNF and ... oh, it goes on and on.

My pal came through today to pick up some cookbooks I'd offered. She took a few. Offered me some of hers that she was getting rid of.

The books she didn't take were reboxed for the library.

I found a box or two of duplicates and things I didn't want/need today. I brought home a list of titles to check in alibris.com and abebooks.com to make sure I don't accidentally give away a first edition of Sue Grafton's KEZIAH DANE.

What did I find? Well, here are some examples.

I found TWO sets of the 2vol. THE PIMA BAJO OF CENTRAL SONORA, MEXICO. by Pennington. 1980. Univ of Utah

I found a selection of slim pamphlets with dust covers by David Starr Jordan and printed roundabouts 1912 by Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin in San Francisco. Titles:
KNOWING REAL MEN
THE PRACTICAL EDUCATION
THE SCHOLAR IN THE COMMUNITY

Google /"David Starr Jordan"/ if you don't know who he is.

I found a slim, HB, blue jacket with gilt SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN REFERENCE BOOK. 1891. Munn & Co, Office of the Scientific American.

I found MASTERING MAGIC CARDS by George H. Baxter and Larry W. Smith. Wordware Publ. 1995.

And I found everything in between and to both sides.

My method is thus: rather than go through just once and decide toss/save, I'm going through once, sorting out the dups and things I know I really have no need of and repacking the boxes, relabeling, if necessary. (Thanks be for masking tape. Rip off the old, on with the new.)

I relabel boxes which had been NF or MISC or VERY MISC as FIC REF FACT phil/psych/soc HIST SCI or whatever and sort the books into them with a gross sort of sort.

The next pass will be another pass for duplicates and "do I want to keep this?" and an opportunity to sort the general (SCI, f'rex) boxes into a finer sort so that I can wrap my head around what I have instead of just thinking, I think I saw that title or one like that about five boxes ago. I'll have a chance to pull everything out of the FUN & GAMES boxes, f'rex, and see just how many copies of 150 WAYS TO PLAY SOLITAIRE I have. (I found three today.)

Then there'll be a third level sort ... then ...

Come 2009, I may have things under control.

Update: The library all the boxes of books are intended for is the Coast Community Library in Point Arena, which serves the northern Mendocino coast communities.

An old friend is heavily involved with book hugger issues up there and showed us around the library when we were up visiting him in Gualala last May. What a neat library. Great community support. What a story that library and its Friends group have.

When the library was moving from their dinky digs into the old Mercantile building (which the Friends raised money to buy and restore), over a hundred locals lined up along Highway One through town for a "book worm" bucket brigade and moved the books across Highway One and down the road a piece to the new digs, hand to hand until the books were all moved and settled on their shelves in the restored building.

How many places have that kind of community support for the library?

We told Don that he can come down here to get books and if they all don't fit in his van (and they won't, it's now apparent), we'll take books up and the library can take what they want of the books and sell the rest to make money for the library. That offer to Don last May is what precipitated all this sorting activity. That and the fact that books in boxes do you no good when you're looking for your copy of Watts' THE WAY OF ZEN and all you know is that it's here somewhere in one of these boxes ...

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:55 PM|| |

... of sorts.

Doesn't help to be tied down here because the solar guys were supposed to put the panels back up on the new roof today but never showed. Maybe tomorrow his nibs will work from home and set me free to sort some more ...

Sour Grapes offers in comments re Barchester Towers If I win you can have it. I've got it already.

Thanks. I was just feeling left out because I wanted to enter the contest too! I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere -- probably in a box marked "classics" or "misc" or "fiction" or ...

The book sorting goes apace. Well, "at a pace" anyway.

All travel books (except for USA travel) are out of their boxes and shifted over to adjacent bookcases, sorted by continent and country. The BENELUX titles and others of the ilk are a problem. I found multiple copies of some titles, which seems always the case, but not that many multiples. Even with the travel books settled, I get sidetracked thumbing through old travel books about Venice and travel memoirs and ... well, I get sidetracked a lot.

After I shifted and sorted the travel books, I moved the cookbooks that were in the shelves over there over thataway to fill in the empty shelves where the travel books had been (adjacent to the bulk of the cookbooks) so now all the cookbooks are in one bank of shelves instead of scattered around. There are still boxes (six or so) that are boxed up because there's no shelf space plus an additional box with a set of "Grande Diplome" cookbooks that I picked up used somewhere and two boxes that are filled with the Time-Life cookbook series that I picked up used here and there over time. A friend asked if I'd be willing to give her a set of Time-Life cookbooks and I said sure, but she's got to get herself over and pick them up.

Most of the cookbooks still in boxes are "community cookbook" sorts of titles. I've sorted the titles on the shelves into "baking" "country-specific" "barbecue" "old" "San Francisco" "California" sorts of categories.

On the shelves after sorting, I discovered multiple editions of the Household Searchlight Recipe Book: three from different years in the '30s, two from the '40s and a couple from the '50s. (The name changed to the Searchlight Recipe Book in 1942.) Different editions! Keep them all! Well, no. Turns out even though the books have different edition numbers and different publication dates, the contents of the 1st-14th editions are the same, according to this site.

I have multiple editions of Fannie Farmer's cookbook, two copies of Larousse Gastronomique, multiple copies of James Beard books, two copies of Rene Verdon's The White House Chef Cookbook (and tell me, should that be a general USA cookbook or should I put it in "San Francisco" because Verdon ran Le Trianon here for years?) There are, of course, multiple copies of some Sunset cookbooks, multiple copies of other titles. I filled up two boxes worth of duplicates for the library. The weirdest, though, was the duplicate copy of Madame Chang's Long Life Chinese Cookbook. Two copies? How did that ever happen?

The cookbooks are pretty well sorted now, although I may find that I have a French dessert cookbook in with dessert cookbooks and another copy in with French cookbooks. Those will sort out in time.

Next up is to start getting the SFF in order. My SFF books are the most likely to have duplicates because my brother and I had copies of the same books in our collections and those collections combined after he died. The most egregious example of too many copies of a title is a Heinlein title for which I wound up with two paperback copies, two hardbacks and one mass market paperback.

I'll take the empty bookcases that had held cookbooks and setup a rough sort (A-Z by author, 'natch) of the SFF books and winnow out the duplicates. I won't be able to get all of them on the empty shelves I have remaining, but I can at least sort through them in alphabetic shifts. Thanks be that I had the SFF boxed separately from the fiction, and labeled so I could find them in amongst all the piles.

After the pass through the SFF is complete, I'll start sorting through all the boxes labeled MISC and VERY MISC and NFIC and, of course, those boxes that are somehow unlabeled. I'll get the books organized in some sort of fashion so I can easily see that I have two copies of How to Build Your Dream House for Less Than $3500 and get rid of duplicates. (Yes, I know I have two copies, maybe three of that book. I'd bought one for myself, you see, because I'd loved my parents' copy. I gave a copy to my brother because I knew he'd love it. I may have bought a spare at some time too. ...)

I'll rough-sort the misc and pull out the fiction titles and the juv and sort the rest into some broad categories: science, essays/memoirs, biography/autobiography, history, reference, gardening, computers ... I don't know. I need to think out the sort before I get seriously into it or I'll wind up sorting and resorting and ...

I also have all the boxes of books that are already labeled "science" and "physics" and "law" and "reference" and whatever that I needs must go through because there was some higglety-pigglety-ness in the boxing up before the move and who knows what may have been tucked into an almost-full box at the last minute.

Once I can lay out all the PHYSICS or GEOLOGY or SOFTWARE DESIGN books in one place I can get a handle on duplicates and other titles that I don't need to save shelf space for.

Maybe along the way I'll find my copy of Barchester Towers and Vanity Fair and Morrison & Boyd's Organic Chemistry. Why own a book if I can't find it?

Yes, I am being unduly obsessive/compulsive about this (Why do you ask?) but I'm also using the exercise as one enormous procrastination project while I mull over the rewrite on the great American crime novel.

Productive procrastination, I call it. (The dupes and discards will be given to the library to use or sell! It's for the library! Think of the public libraries!)

(And I have visions of my darlings having to sort through all of Mom's old books after I take my dirt nap, looking for those of value. Better that I weed the collection now and save them at least some of the effort.)

Labels: books, libraries, life

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:03 PM|| |

Found a link at the Sentinel to a video of Gavin presenting the 2007-2008 budget. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the photograph of Gavin to commence viewing.

The video (and the presentation) clocks in at just under an hour. Luckily, with a video you can click on the pause button if you just can't spend an hour watching him go over his proposed $6b budget.

If Gavin hasn't had a speech coach, he doesn't need one. If he has had one, that person should crow. I love watching Gavin in action. Smooth, so very smooth. Even those who don't like his message usually admit he speaks well. Watch the hands. Watch the movement back and forth with the microphone. Watch the facial expressions and listen to that roughened voice with just a bit of folksy drawl. Self deprecation. Public nods to the good things done by those rascally supervisors. Thanks, Tom Ammiano. Thanks, Ross Mirkarimi. Close your eyes and you can almost picture Clinton (that's Bill Clinton, not Senator Clinton) up at the podium.

If you don't have the patience to listen to Gavin 'xplain the budget, he did mention something cool near the very end of his presentation. This year you can access the proposed budget on line, hot links and all.

Well, that's all very well and good but I couldn't for the life of me find the proposed $$ for the public library. (Shouldn't the library be under Arts and Culture or somewhere like that? I searched everywhere) I finally had to break down and pull up the Mayor's Budget Book to find the answers to my questions.

Labels: libraries, San Francisco, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:12 PM|| |

The younger younger guy is out visiting from Boston for ten days or so. Yesterday we drove over to Santa Cruz to meet up with the older younger guy and his partner, have lunch and visit the family matriarch.

The older younger guy's partner went back to work after lunch and the three of us decided to kill the time between then and when the matriarch expected us by hanging out at LOGOS Books.

For the last week or two, since his nibs and I returned from a short four-day trip up-coast to visit with an old friend and explore, I've been making a stab at sorting through the tens of thousands of books on shelves and in boxes (lots and lots of boxes) to identify the duplicates and the not-wanted to donate to a library effort.

In the last couple weeks with a couple full days' effort and some partial-day exercises, I've managed to shift all the crime fiction onto shelves (about eight bookcases worth, sorted by author and by title within the author) and to start getting the travel books organized. (roughly sorted by continent and country, natch).

The travel books include not only books we bought while traveling but also books we bought new and used in stores and a good number of older books that his nibs' great-great aunt Burta purchased in her day.

I've sorted out five bookcases of travel books and have at least another two cases to go before even starting on the United States travel-related books.

Yes, as expected, I had multiple copies of Chandlers and Christies in the crime fiction collection, multiple copies of JD MacDonalds and Karin Slaughters. I found I was missing Q and R from my run of Graftons (said lack since remedied). What I had not expected were multiple copies of Lowell Thomas titles and multiple copies of "glimpses of Europe" sorts of titles in the travel collection. Along the way I discovered that some books had been masquerading as travel but were actually garden titles or history titles or geology titles.

Yesterday at the LOGOS bookstore. I was poking through the crime fiction, the children's books, the "how to draw" art books, the gardening books. There in the gardening books was this old book that, when I pulled it from the shelf, looked very much like a book that I'd sorted out of the travel books late last week because it was more a garden book, not a travel book per se.



The book I'd come across last week, with illustrations painted by Beatrice Parsons, was titled something like Old-World Gardens and had pictures and descriptions of European gardens.

I looked at the LOGOS book in my hand. Interesting, I thought. How much?

I opened the cover and found this



... the tell-tale spore of Burta -- her initials (MBB) handwritten in pencil on the front free-endpaper.

I probably wouldn't have bought the book otherwise, but how could I resist? I will reunite it on a shelf with its old pal when I start sorting through the gardening titles.



                    ***


It took until I was driving back to San Francisco to realize just how one of MBB's books had wound up in a used bookstore in Santa Cruz.

His nibs' father's twin brother had lived in Aptos, where the older younger guy currently lives. We hadn't realized he'd had any, but Uncle Burt must have had at least this one of Burta's old books. One of uncle Burt's children must have sold the book or given it away to someone who sold the book to LOGOS.

Thank goodness I thought of a reasonable explanation for how the book wound up seventy-five miles away from San Francisco in a town that Burta, who so far as we knew, had never visited. Very spooky it was to pick up a book in a used bookstore in Santa Cruz and see her scribbled initials.

Labels: books, bookstores, libraries, woowoo

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:52 PM|| |

A random Stumbleupon click took me here, where I found a collection of photographs lifted from Candida Höfer's book LIBRARIES.

Beautiful.

An essay by Umberto Eco on libraries serves as an introduction to the book. Except for the introduction, there are no accompanying essays, just 137 full-page photographs, each faced with a blank page.

My favorite of the photographs Jaime Morrison posted is that of Trinity College Library, Dublin. [link to artnet's scan added: buy a n/100 print for $1850]



Oh. MY.

Yours?

(Or are libraries and books not something you lust after?)

Update:Candida Höfer's LIBRARIES may well be the second book I buy in 2007. I need to check with abebooks.com and Amazon and others.

I was going to say it would be my first book purchase of the year. I almost forgot I bought something today when we were at Book Passage in the Ferry Building. A post on all that follows, in good time.

Labels: books, bookstores, libraries

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:35 PM|| |

I don't see many films, but this seems a worthwhile exercise.

It is estimated that 50 percent of the films produced before 1950, and 80 to 90 percent made before 1920, have disappeared forever. The Library of Congress is working to stanch those losses by recognizing, and working with many organizations to preserve, films that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today [26Dec2006] added 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry (see attached list) to be preserved for all time, bringing the total number of films on the registry to 450.

Press release with list of twenty-five films just added

• National Film Registry
  
• List of prior entries by title
  
• Chronologically
  
• Some films not yet named
  
• Publicly-nominated films not yet named

Nominate films for the film registry

Labels: film, libraries

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:56 PM|| |