via Book Patrol
May 152013
Jan 042013
My personal little alchemy of the present – How to distillate the true qualities of real books in a real room – and change the bookshop into something else.
On the last few days of November we had the pleasure to host the 2012 edition of the biennial HAIP Festival. The main theme this year was Public library.
It was very interesting. Especially if you are anyhow involved in the existing bookselling eco-system.
Many great people came over. My personal highlights include Aaron Ximm, Sebastian Lütgert, Dušan Barok, and Marcell Mars.
My overall impression was: Bookselling is dead – Long live bookseeding!
Well, maybe. Maybe not so literally. But still.. very close.
HAIP visited Behemot on Wednesday and Friday evening – and on Thursday I was invited to give a ten minute talk within the Lightning talks part of the festival.
My presentation starts at mark 12:45 and ends at mark 22:45.
I am very happy for the spontaneous applause and for Marcell’s beautiful comments.
Later, in the discussion part, Josephine Berry Slater asks important question – “And what about the reader?” I try to share my understanding of the problem between the mark 1:10:00 and 1:17:00.
Enjoy, share, fight, discuss. I hope you might find my bla bla inspiring, interesting, anything.
Dec 242012
Branch in Brooklyn
activism, libraries, local community
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Dec 182012
During the recession, people take for granted that there must be cuts in transportation, parks, libraries and other public amenities. Branch seeks to change that assumption by pooling existing resources to occupy, re-imagine, and transform underutilized public spaces in partnership with the people using them.
Microlibraries
activism, libraries, urban intervention
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Dec 132012
HAIP Festival got me interested in the phenomena of public libraries. Here is an article about micro-libraries in urban spaces. Very interesting.
Fear of public libraries?
anti-corporate, books, internet, libraries, text digitization
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Nov 302012
Interesting article on HAIP blog. See you tonight at Behemot and the City Art Gallery on the second part of the conference.
Jun 182012
via Cory Doctorow and BoingBoing
Dec 032011
The wonderful Michael Lieberman at Book Patrol talks about the birth, death and hopeful rebirth of the OWS Library. In this moment one of the most interesting and promising libraries.
It seems that 1% is getting afraid. To me, only fear explains such brutality.
Montag, silently.
anti-corporate, books, libraries
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Nov 202011
I would hand copies of Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm to NYPD. I would like to hear Obama says something.
Nov 152011
Update, 20th November: Unfortunately, they do destroy books. And they do hurt people.
This short Boing Boing post got me madly furious in less than a second.
Luckily, here is Huffington Post update on what really happened.
And here is a picture of books stored in dry and safe place.
Let’s hope tents for people will be allowed. It’s getting cold out there.
Oct 052011
I am very enthusiastic about this unique library.
The People’s Library is the collective, public, open library of the Occupy Wall Street leaderless resistance movement.
Located in the northeast corner of Liberty Plaza, the library provides free, open and unrestricted access to our collection of books, magazines, newspapers, ‘zines, pamphlets and other materials that have been donated, collected, gathered and discovered during the occupation.
Library of Amazon
libraries, science and society, text digitization
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Sep 152011
Anything that touches internet becomes free, right?
In the near future we’ll hopefully get a free online access to all the books ever published in English language.
Good. I have no problem with that.
The problem was never not having enough good books to read. The problem always was and always will be that in a lifetime one can only read a very small fraction of these. A tiny, nearly insignificant number.
Tim Carmody writes about Amazon negotiating with major publishers for the price of their backlists.
Let’s assume that Amazon convinced one or more major publishers, or a handful of mid-level ones, to sign on with this plan. One of two things could happen:
1) The service doesn’t get traction with customers, for whatever reason — bad implementation, the catalog is too small/big or poor-quality, readers would rather own than rent — and it crashes and burns. The publisher just went through a ton of work to pore over its giant catalogs, digitize more back content, figure out author compensation for this weird new thing. And now they look like idiots.
2) The service is a smash hit. A big free catalog of books helps Amazon sell its next generation of tablets and e-readers faster than Foxconn can make them. Book clubs are binging on your back catalog and your content has more visibility and relevance than ever. A year into the deal, Random House CEO Markus Dohle (or whoever) is on stage with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. They clasp hands, and raise them over their heads to thunderous applause. As Dohle’s smile widens and flashbulbs pop, only one thought is on his mind, which he fights to keep off his lips: “I should have asked for a lot more money.”
It seems that Amazon has decided to push the limits of what we understand as a library. No wonder publishers are perplexed.