Paramoulipist

A future library project

When reading the exquisite book ‘Bellwether’ by Connie Willis, I realized my favourite spot in town could be run down very quickly. Sandra Foster, the main character, an academic researcher on fads and trends in society, goes daily to the public library. Apart of taking out the books she really needs, she strategically tries to ‘rescue’ the classics. Books that haven’t been taken out for six months, are taken off the shelves and sold. She keeps track of the files and takes out systematically the complete works of Dickens, of Brönte, etc.

Even the Simpsons make comments on the actual and future state of libraries:
(2004 citation):
Lisa: I have to research a paper. Where did all the books go?
Librarian: Books? Books are for squares! We’re now a multimedia learning center for children of all ages… but mostly bums. (motions to a table full of bums — and Homer — sleeping).
Bart: Aye, Carumba!
Lisa: (looking at the few materials left) “Everybody Poops: The Video”??? “Yu-Gi-Oh! Price Guides”???

Surfing on the net to have a look into the ‘electronic literature’, there is no way I can find the so called ‘first classic works’ in electronic literature (canon works extremely fast) without having to buy them (25$ each). It would be nice to know people are thinking about public libraries for virtual products, places with an organised/historical/specialized collection where you can ‘borrow’ freely 13 items for 3 weeks.

In 2006 the public libraries of the Netherlands collaborated with the Design Academy (Eindhoven) to think about libraries in 2040. They published a book (What if/Het boek, Biblion Uitgeverij, 2007) that you cannot consult on their website. You can have a look at the student’s films, of which some ideas are great. Three of the four films are based on the exciting ideas of freely ‘sharing’ content and information in ‘context’, like for example sharing, uploading and downloading books when you are on public transport.

Link to wiki
Read some critical comments

During five weeks all people on the globe can collaborate to the writing of a novel. The experiment – writing a novel using the wikitool – is initiated (and fully owned!) by Penguin and the students of the MA in Creative Writing and New Media of the Montfort University.

Participating into this is highly exciting. The wiki started off 5 days ago and hit more than 500 changes an hour. Hot discussions are going on about plots and characters. On the organizers’ side (an editor and a technician seem to be full time in charge of the wiki) this envolves all kind of funny problemsolving. » Read the rest of this entry «

Link to the collection

The first electronic library collection has been published both on the web and on cd-rom under a Creative Commons License ( Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives).

The collection represents an anthology of sixty works, curated by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland.

Going through the collection is an easy and exciting way to discover the potentials of the ‘technotexts’ (K. Hayles, Writing Machines).

Call for submissions for the second electronic library collection will be somewhere in June 2007. Read & write :-).

Furtherfield published a brief review and an interview with one of the curators, Scott Rettberg, hypertext author and theorist (http://retts.net).

You can also check out the full directory of ELO, a descriptive guide for more than 2300 e-literature-compositions.

Other comment on this library collection

organised by De Balie in Amsterdam on 19-1-07

Why print or not print in times of online media? How does the grey zone in between ‘on’ & ‘off’ publishing look like? How does it change publishing processes? How does the human race react upon the variety of formats and possibilities?

These are the questions that got some interesting replies during the presentations at De Balie. In the previous post I reformulated the ideas on the existing infrastructure and the POD-services (print on demand). Here I would like to present the reader’s point of view of Arie Altena (media theorist, writer, lecturer and researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy). » Read the rest of this entry «

organised by De Balie in Amsterdam on 19-1-07

Why print or not print in times of online media? How does the grey zone in between ‘on’ & ‘off’ publishing look like? How do they change publishing processes? How does the human race react upon the variety of formats and possibilities?

These are the questions that got some interesting replies during the presentations at De Balie. Thanks to the nice service of live-streaming I followed everything smoothly from my flat in Brussels, getting impatient about streamservices that allow virtual reactions form the audience.

I would like to split the presentations into ideas about ‘the infrastructure’ and ideas about the ‘reading/use’. Doing so I follow the presentation line of the evening: after the interventions of Alessandro Ludovico (editor-in-chief Neural & co-founder of the ‘Mag.Net – Electronic Cultural Publishers) and Simon Worthington (co-founder Mute Magazine, co-founder ‘Mag.Net) – based on the love for publishing, the last presenter was Arie Altena (media theorist, writer, lecturer and researcher at Jan van Eyck Academy) who talked from the reader’s point of view. » Read the rest of this entry «