Ten innovative e-books that use interactivity to enhance your reading experience.

Archives' stacks - photo by flickr.com user dolescum, CC-licensed

Not every writer’s personal papers end up preserved forever  in a library or archive.

The personal library of US novelist David Markson has found its way into a bookshop. Markson’s heavily annotated hardcovers are scattered among the shop’s stock, sorted by subject and all available for sale.

“There are too many inscribed books for any one civilian to buy; most have notes, check marks, underlined passages. I’d guess that a few of them – especially the more heavily annotated ones – belong in a proper archive. And yet, here they are: hundreds of hardbacks …, some of them with price tags covering Markson’s name, as if the buyers were afraid that his signature would somehow diminish their value.”

Bookshop owner Fred Bass said, “David wanted the books recirculated at the Strand. And really, if you face it, a university library, what are they going to do with them? They end up storing them. I think he realized that. This way, his books are in circulation.”

Photo, above: Secret Nuclear Bunker by flickr.com user Tim Ellis, CC-licensed

In its Top Secret America feature the Washington Post told a story:

“…not about criminal conspiracies or rogue elements or corruption in the usual sense. No one’s dedication to the cause of protecting America is questioned. The tale has no villains… It is an exposé about a secret world, but it exposes no secrets… Virtually all the data that the paper collected in the two years it took to prepare the series was already in the public record.

“And the bulk of the public record is no longer to be found in library stacks, dusty courthouse files, and microfilm rolls. Just as its subject is a new kind of bureaucratic enterprise, ‘Top Secret America‘ is a new kind of journalistic enterprise, pairing expert reporting of the traditional shoe-leather variety with the information-gathering power of the Internet.”

Read more of  Hendrik Hertzberg’s article in The New Yorker.

Blogging at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald predicted that  Top Secret America would be met with a notable lack of reaction. Distracted by the trivial and nonsensical melodrama that constitutes political reporting, he said, we would:

“…continue to fixate on the trappings and theater of government while The Real Government churns blissfully in the dark — bombing and detaining and abducting and spying and even assassinating — without much bother from anyone.”

Five days later Greenwald observed:

“After a one-day spate of television appearances for Dana Priest and William Arkin — most of which predictably focused on the bureaucratic waste they raised along with whether the Post had Endangered the Nation by writing about all of this — the story faded blissfully into the ether, never to be heard from again…”

The reason, Greenwald suggested, was that the current national security environment:

“…provides not only the ability to exercise vast power with no accountability, but also enables the transfer of massive amounts of public wealth to the private national security and surveillance corporations which own the Government.  Very few people with political power have the incentive to do anything about that.”

If that cynicism seems to be a product of the 21st century’s particular angst, think again. William Boyd has been re-reading John Le Carre’s classic novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. He describes it as a “superb, tough, highly sophisticated novel” that says something profound about the nature of humanity.

The action of the novel takes place 50 years ago, in a world entirely different from the one we know today. Nevertheless, Boyd argues the book’s unrelenting cynicism is completely modern:

“One forgets just how unsparing the book is, how the picture it paints of human motivations, human duplicities, human frailty seems presciently aware of all that we have learned and unlearned in the intervening decades.”

Photo, above: Alysn Souza is working on restoring a painting in a drawing room at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The room is used for public programs. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times / July 7, 2010)

Many a scholar dreams of bequeathing an academic library and knowing it will be carefully tended for posterity.

Brick walls hide the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library from passersby and most UCLA undergraduates have never heard of it. Those who know the rare-book  library say it is unmatched and unforgettable:

“In 1926, (William Andrews) Clark donated the collection (then around 13,000 books) and the library grounds, along with a $1.5 million endowment, to the Southern Branch of the University of California, which later became UCLA. The school assumed full control when Clark died in 1934. His will contained only one restriction — that books could only leave the library for repairs.

“The endowment covers book purchases and library maintenance, while UCLA pays staff salaries.

“The library is open to the public, but readers must register and provide photo identification. On a typical day, 10 to 12 people visit, Whiteman said. Summers are the busiest time because that’s when scholars from other universities are free to travel.

“Each year, the library hosts a visiting professor who plans a series of literary conferences, and offers several graduate fellowships. The library also produces a winter concert series.”

Undergraduate students use the library for collaborative group work during semester as they work on problem-solving and team-based assignments. Towards assessment time, individual study is preferred.

Research students look for quiet spaces where they can safely leave a couple of books and a laptop while they browse the shelves or take a break from reading and writing. Academic staff in the humanities and social sciences tell us they want similar quiet spaces in the library; academics in other disciplines tend to use their offices or other locations for study. Retired academics would also appreciate this type of space: retirement doesn’t mean the end of intellectual life.

Like most academic libraries we have a ‘special collections’ reading room where accredited researchers can view rare or ancient books, manuscripts and other items.

The NewYork Public Library operates what NY Observer journalist Molly Young calls the city’s last silent place, the Allen Room, a hush-hush space on the second floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (formerly the New York Public Library main branch) on Fifth Avenue:

“I wish there were more drama,” said [author] Alexander Rose, “but it’s convivial and collegiate. There’s no Norman Mailer trying to kill his wife in here. No tension, no melodrama.” … Founded in 1958 as a tribute to Frederick Lewis Allen, the historian and editor of Harper’s Magazine, the room serves as a workspace to a rotating group of authors. Rubberneckers take note: The door is locked at all times, and access is restricted to those who have book contracts, a photocopy of which must accompany requests for a key card. “It’s like Aladdin’s cave,” Mr. Rose said of the room, which he heard about through the literary grapevine. “I looked it up, and it actually did exist.”

Photo, above: Watered Glass - by Looking Glass, CC-licensed. Entrance of the National Gallery Victoria, where the permanent collections are free.

One feature of British museums is “a huge loophole – a miracle, actually – of generous civic pride,” says Jonathan Jones: “You can walk into our public collections without paying a penny.”

In contrast:

“It is sad to visit museums in Europe and find their galleries empty… At London’s museums, the fizz of crowds is not tiring, it is stimulating… Culture and education are actually the same thing. To love art is to want to know more about it: to enjoy it is to learn about it. A society that is learning is one that is growing.”

Crowds in the Louvre -- almost impossible to move on a rainy summer Saturday afternoon. Photo by me, CC-licensed. The Louvre charges an entry fee for its permanent collections.

Marilyn Johnson find similar value in the the people who work in public libraries:

The people who welcome us to the library are idealists, who believe that accurate information leads to good decisions and that exposure to the intellectual riches of civilization leads to a better world… While they help us get online, employed and informed, librarians don’t try to sell us anything. Nor do they turn around and broadcast our problems, send us spam or keep a record of our interests and needs, because no matter how savvy this profession is at navigating the online world, it clings to that old-fashioned value, privacy. (A profession dedicated to privacy in charge of our public computers? That’s brilliant.) They represent the best civic value out there, an army of resourceful workers that can help us compete in the world.”

Ian Clark says public libraries can help bridge the gap beween the information-rich and information-poor:

Libraries “need reinforcing, not dismantling. We need to continue to provide a highly skilled service that is able to meet the needs of the general public. The service ought to continue to innovate… It needs to continue to bridge the gap between those who have access to the internet and those who do not, while also ensuring it delivers on other aspects of its core service (book loans, local studies materials, etc). If the service is cut, we run the risk of an ill-informed society that is ill-equipped to prosper in the ‘information age’ – a dangerous prospect for any democracy.”

Photo, above: Melbourne Library by cogdogblog, CC-licensed

Britain’s Conservative minister for culture, Ed Vaizey, thinks public library services could be improved.

“The George and Dragon pub in North Yorkshire is now delivering a library service and a pint to the community in Hudswell. That sounds like a good partnership to me.”

The Guardian reported recently that Vaizey supports some recommendations from the Labour Party’s Public Library Modernisation Review and wants libraries to help “half a million digitally excluded people” become confident Internet users in the next two years.

“He also called on library authorities to make voluntary alliances and join up backroom activities, saying that the current model of 151 separate library authorities and 151 library management teams “is too many”. “Think about how much we could save collectively if we only had 100 library authority management teams rather than 151. And those savings could help protect the service to the library user,” he said.”

Public libraries in the USA are also struggling for funds. A short article from Fox News in Chicago should strike terror into every civilized person’s heart: it poses an apparently simple question — what is your local library worth? — and offers a distressingly simplistic answer. Unimpressed, Chicago’s public library commissioner responds:

“The public library is supported by taxpayers for the common good of all the people of Chicago – just like public school. We don’t ask our schools to make profit. Neither should we ask it of the public library,” she said. “As journalist Walter Cronkite once remarked, ‘Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.’”

Still, all is not rosy in Illinois:

“Chicago’s schools offer the shortest school day in the nation. As schools slash their budgets for school libraries and shorten their classroom teaching time, thousands of children flock to Chicago’s public libraries every day afterschool, in the evening and on weekends for homework assistance from our librarians and certified teachers hired by the public library.” (full text of library commissioner Mary A Dempsey’s letter to Fox News)

In California the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanic Gardens recently concluded a six-year fundraising campaign that far exceeded its financial target.

“Huntington, once known as a bastion of old-school arts and letters, is repositioning itself as a collections-based research and education institution… Officials credit much of the campaign’s success to strategic-planning sessions and outreach that increased awareness of the Huntington’s need to broaden its mission and deal with longstanding practical problems.”

Natural History Museum in London. Photo montage by me :-)

Historically museums have defined a particular way of understanding the world. Prevailing scientific theories and historical storytelling have been embodied in the way museum collections are selected, organised and presented.

The English Museum of Natural History embraced Darwin’s evolution theory in the 19th century and organised its exhibits accordingly. Across the ditch its Parisian counterpart preferred a taxonomy and narrative based on a French scientist’s slightly different version of evolution.

In recent decades, responding to new funding models and declining visitor numbers, directors of public museums have been looking for ways to ensure their institutions remain relevant and valued.

The director of the Australian Museum, Andrew Sayers, wants that relatively new museum to participate in public conversation:

“I think the museum gives us the possibility to talk about culture in a really broad way… We can address the things that are concerning to us in contemporary culture: health, environmental degradation, what should our level of population be, and so on. All these things the museum should be engaging with, because all of them have a history we can illustrate and talk about.”

Manly Library Afloat is a mobile library that parks daily at the Manly Wharf in Sydney (click photo for details)

Growing up in a small English village, Rowan Pelling felt sorry for children at posh schools because they missed out on “the joys of the mobile library – the extraordinary Tardis-like sensation of entering a truck that became vast with the treasure-trove of books crammed within it.”

Although Pelling admits he has been a “reprehensible library slacker” he has recently come to an understanding of how that mobile library shaped his world-view:

“Just standing in the library made me remember how no other literary experience makes you feel so acutely you are part of a vast community of book-lovers, self-improvers, unfettered imaginations, armchair travellers and generally like-minded souls. Like countless others, I am the adult libraries built.”

If that idea appeals to you, you’ll love Alan Bennett’s 2007 novella “The Uncommon Reader.” Give yourself a treat and read it — it won’t take long, and it’s completely charming. Subscribers to the London Review of Books, you can read it online; otherwise, open an account at OpenLibrary.org or hie thee to your local library ;-)