Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Monster Poem, Daily Ruminations


Deluxe Monopoly Pieces

Monster Poem

There is a monster under my bed

It helps me sleep through the night

It feeds on dreams taking my nightmares

I knowingly let it take my bad dreams

The price is contentment lack of a future

The monster smiles it lives on ordinariness

I live in the peace of the contented dead

Daily Ruminations

I have been reading more of The Long Tail on the train. It has made me think about how my library is organized. We probably need to merchandise the collection more. This will be a slow process of negotiation. I don't think it will happen immediately.

I have finished part of my order for the business books, $2000. I still have about $1000 more dollars to spend. I found enough review material and sites to order a considerable amount of newer material. I ordered The Long Tail for our collection.

Now, I am going to go back through the collection and order basic materials. I have a book in front of me called, The Basic Business Library Core Resources, 4th Edition, Edited by Rashelle S. Karp. It is an older book, but it will allow me to look for and fill gaps in our collection.
The Basic Business Library Core Resources, 4th Edition, identified another resource for me to look at. The March 15 yearly issue of Library Journal lists the best business books.

I have sorted through the last six years of the magazine to add more to my growing list of business books. It seems I will have enough room to start on a much larger order, social science books. I will be glad when the initial order of business management books is done. It takes a decent amount of time and effort.


I have been thinking a lot lately. I am working on a short essay on the concept of how a build on demand manufacturing system could be integrated with a cradle to cradle remanufacturing system. It is just an idea. I think it is possible to combine fabbing with inbuilt remanufacturing capabilities. Imagine a future with highly interchangeable reusable parts. You read these books like The Long Tail, then somehow, it mixes with the book, Cradle to Cradle, and then it mixes with Bruce Sterling's essay, Shaping Things and you get something entirely weird. It is a ghostly thought waiting to be released. This is of course all wildly speculative silliness.



2 comments:

Jack Payne said...

I Was taken by your interest in building a library of business books. I spent a long career writing them--55 in all. The thing that struck me was that you are so orderly and respectful of the process, whereas I have become quite sloppy, in fact, no longer have even one copy of several of my books (gave too many away). Just shows the difference in people.

Book Calendar said...

Our collection development librarian who had been in the library for many years retired. Now the collection responsibilites are being broken up. Large areas of the collection need to be redone.

Print on demand changes a lot of things with books. I think there is at least one publisher where you can order single copies of a book to be printed. It is rather expensive for one copy, but it can be done. http://www.lulu.com/en/services/vintagepublishing/

There really is no such thing as out of print anymore. The word is that it is on backorder. Very short runs can be printed economically. I think it costs something like $200 to setup a self-published book with Lulu.com. Then you can set the price above wholesale.