Bookseller from the Jinrin kinmo zui (人倫訓蒙図彙; An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Humanity) Attributed to Makieshi Genzaburo, 1690
Daily Thoughts 11/14/2015
I read a little bit of Islands of the Blessed by Nancy Farmer this morning. I like the description of the norsemen as well as Schlaup Half-Troll.
I checked the gift books and the displays this morning.
I also spent some time talking to a colleague about rules and policies for the electronic resources department.
The Memoir Writing Class is today from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
I worked with a colleague on an order of e-books.
I also looked through the New York Times Bestseller list and the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.
The World Brain
I am thinking a little bit about an idea called The World Brain which is a book by HG Wells written in 1937. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brain In many ways this is precursor to Wikipedia as well as Google Books and the Internet Archive. I have a copy of the book in front of me.
There are other later books that have a similar feel to them. My favorite book on this theme is The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon R. Dickson. I am also fond of Jorge Luis Borges short story, The Library of Babel which is about a place which contains every book that ever could be written in the english language.
There is a computer simulation for this which came out recently. https://libraryofbabel.info/About.html
There is also a film called Google and the World Brain.
http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/
Originally, Google Books was planning to scan all the books in print by 2020. This slowed down and stopped for a while.
Google Books Reduces Its Digitizing and Preservation of Old Books While Internet Archive Increases Effoert at the Same Thing.
http://blog.eogn.com/2015/03/28/google-books-reduces-its-digitizing-and-preservation-of-old-books-while-internet-archive-increases-its-efforts-at-the-same-thing/
The Internet Archive started scanning all of the books in the public domain. They also started archiving all the physical books they could get their hands on. The goal for both Google Books and the Internet Archive project was to create a total record of the book, not to eliminate the books themselves.
Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive.
http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/
The Google Books Project is not just about books, it is also about data from books and artificial intelligence. An example of this is the Google Books Ngram Viewer. https://books.google.com/ngrams
Web Bits
Another Fallout 4 Librarian Article
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