Aborted Musings on Book Browsing

I have had a half-completed post sitting in my text editor for over two weeks now. It was partially on browsing for books (and how that doesn't really happen in academic libraries) and partially on how I judge books by their covers all the time. I really did intend to share deep thinky-thoughts with you all, but I just can't seem to get them written in a coherent form. Instead, I'm stuck saying things like "thinky-thoughts".

Anyway, so what I'm going to do is share all the links that got me ruminating on the topic, and maybe it'll get you pondering too.

• The Guardian recently ran an article explaining why books often get different covers depending on where they are printed.


• And there's a related post on books with similar covers but different prices over at Inklings.


• The North Carolina State University Library has released some open source software which allows users to virtually browse shelves.


• And the American Libraries website posted an article tackling The Myth of Browsing, which maintains, among other things, "Because the books in highest demand are most likely to be in use and, thus, off the shelf, browsing academic library shelves is the equivalent of hitting the sale tables on day three of a three-day sale."

Unlike most public libraries, we don't keep the dust jackets on our books. So rather than browsing our physical shelves for monographs, I browse the catalog -- pictures and descriptions, oh my! And when I go to bookstores, I rarely browse anymore -- I go in knowing exactly what I want, that it's in stock, and once I've located it (not always the easiest task in most chain bookstores -- I'm looking at you, Barnes and Noble), I leave again; on the rare occasion I do go to browse, I tend to just look at the books on display or which are faced out.

I used to spend hours browsing the bookstore, library or bookmobile shelves. Is it just me? Or have you noticed a change in your browsing behavior too? Are we doing our students a disservice by tossing book covers?

The Popular Collection, Nine Months On

The students are all busy with exams, and the library is quiet as another semester draws to a close. Sounds like a good time to take a quick look at how the popular collection has grown and changed over the last term. We're in a fairly steady rhythm when it comes to ordering now; a dozen or so titles are added to the books each month, and we've just doubled the size of the movie collection (from ~30 to ~60) after a successful first six-week run. I don't expect any big changes in that respect at this point. There have been two major modifications to how the collection is managed, though: the list is now updated automatically, and we aren't just ordering the books from YBP anymore.

Managing the Lists
The original layout was simple: a webpage listing titles and links to their catalog records. The list was split in two (books and movies) as more titles were added, but each page was still updated manually as every new order arrived. That, understandably, got unwieldy. Visit the book[1] page now and you are presented with a series of links to the catalog, one for the complete title list and the rest for various genres. These lists are automatically updated each time a new title is added to the collection, thanks to the local 690 field. Each record is augmented with a collection description as well as a broad genre listing[2] (e.g. legal classics or mystery and thrillers); these genres were added to help book browsers quickly locate the type of book which interests them. The links on the collection page are subject/keyword searches based on that information. Although it creates a tiny bit of extra work to add this information once we grab the record, it also makes the webpage cleaner, more accurate, and takes readers directly to the record (and therefore more information about the book) without the intermediate step.

Ordering
Our first orders for the popular collection were placed with two companies, Amazon (movies) and YBP (books). Every so often I'd run across a book YBP didn't carry, but the selection seemed generally good. As we moved beyond popular titles like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Pelican Brief, though, it got harder to find everything through Yankee. If it wasn't a perennial seller or new, it wasn't there. We buy a lot of mysteries and thrillers because they're checked out most often, and many of those authors write series. You can see where this is going, yeah? We could get #8 in the series through Yankee but not #1. We needed another source. There was a brief flirtation with the idea of getting books through Baker & Taylor, YBP's parent company, but we already had an Amazon account and got the movies there anyway, so Amazon won. When it comes time to place another order, I check YBP then Amazon as needed. Between the two, we can find pretty much any title we want to add.

I can't say how happy I am to see the collection continue to grow. Learning to manage that growth has been been a fantastic learning experience too, from deciding what to purchase and how to present the collection to navigating the vendor waters. Looking forward to what I learn next. As the Doctor said to the TARDIS, what have you got for me this time?

[1] At present, the movie page is still updated manually; that will change as more titles are added.
[2] Now, technically, the genres should be listed in the 655 (specifically a genre field), but our system isn't set up to search that, so the 690 it is.

Schadenfreude, Online Privacy and Me

I had a bout of self-induced schadenfreude yesterday. I wanted a quote for a piece of correspondence, but could only remember a portion of it. So, being the well-trained researcher I am, I Googled it. The first hit was exactly what I needed. And from a website I created in 2004 and subsequently completely forgot about. After some thought, a bit of trial and error and a few visits to the FAQs, I was able to login and delete the site.

Now, there was nothing shocking posted on that site, nothing that could make my mother blush. (One of the nice things about not drinking alcohol is that you never have to worry about people having crazy!drunk pictures of you.) But it was ... young. It also featured some really rubbish early graphic design work, and a picture of an acquaintance whom, I'm sure, is clueless I even have that picture. Had some employer/colleague stumbled upon it rather than me, the worst I could have been accused of was unequivocal glee.

So why did I delete it? Well, okay, the bad graphic design is a bit embarrassing. But I deleted it for two reasons: 1) it was digital clutter I no longer wanted and 2) it's not my place to have a picture of someone I hardly know up on a website without their permission.

1) Digital Clutter.
I'm a librarian. Part of my job is educating people about data privacy. I advocate crafting an online presence rather than willy-nilly posting for the world to see. And when you find something about me online that I didn't post myself, it's fairly reasonable to assume I know about it and don't mind it being there. So suddenly finding this old relic brought me up a bit short; here was some data I'd lost track of. A quick evaluation said it no longer represented my primary interests or provided the service for which I'd originally crafted it (for myself or anyone else). There was no reason to keep it, and deleting it would make it easier for people researching me to find pertinent, up-to-date information. (My argument is a bit specious in this case, since you'd have to have really known me to find it. But the principle stands.)

2) Privacy.
Social networking was in its infancy when I created that site. Tagging was a mere twinkle. I neither advertised my site, nor even told another about it. So when I posted the picture of that acquaintance (100x100 px, baby), it was rather unlikely that a) it would be found or b) recognized. It wasn't embarrassing, and it amused me. But today, an era in which people tag photos of each other, conduct Google searches on themselves and data is cached for long-term storage, our responsibility to others' privacy is a serious one. Forcing someone to opt-out rather than opt-in is just not how I like to do things. And sure, if I'd decided to keep the site up, I could have just taken down the picture. It just reminded me of how much things have changed online since 2004.

So, what did I learn? Keeping track of your data is an on-going process. You never know what might pop up. And be mindful of how you present others online as well. Technologies and opinions change; you have to be willing to leave them behind sometimes.

Horatio Hornblower and the law of the sea

Thanks to a Barnes and Noble sale and a moment of weakness with my credit card, I picked up the complete Horatio Hornblower series on DVD last week. My well-travelled VHS copies may finally be retired, bless. And rather than be productive around the house I had a marathon; the 1999-2003 series is comprised of eight 100-minute episodes, plus I capped it off with the 1951 Gregory Peck movie. Both are based on C.S. Forester's 11-volume Hornblower book series. Set around the Napoleonic Wars, they tell the story of a young naval officer who rises through the ranks almost as rapidly as Captain Kirk did Starfleet (a not-unfitting comparison, considering the Hornblower series' influence on Star Trek). There is plenty of swashbuckling to be had in the series as you might expect, duels and swordfights and sea battles galore. The production values are also excellent, with the greatest attention paid to detail. And let's not forget the cast. Oh, the cast!

But this blog is about law in literature, you say? There is plenty of that too. The legal code these sailors are subject to can be a harsh one. Men are flogged for theft, negligence and questioning orders while the entire ship's company watches on; officers must justify their command decisions before a court martial; and Hornblower's own daring tactics often test the extremes of interpretation under the Articles of War. The Admiralty is always the ultimate authority, but we also see repeated examples of the ship's captain being his own law enforcer when at sea. During one episode a French ally announces his intent to lodge a complaint about his treatment aboard ship with one of Hornblower's superiors; Hornblower responds with finality, "On this ship, I am the admiral." Yet even Hornblower, for whom duty is all, struggles to carry out some of the naval code's edicts, most notably when an otherwise good man is automatically sentenced to death for striking a superior officer.

The series never calls any particular attention to the role of law at sea, it is simply ever present. To be at sea in His Majesty's Royal Navy is to be subject to its laws, and those laws are enforced with swift regularity.

Now I realize this post is about the TV adaptations, not the original texts. I read the first book in the series, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower about ten years ago and, while every adaptation takes liberties of course (*cough* the elves coming to protect Helm's Deep *cough*), do remember thinking the TV adaptations were fairly faithful. I'm planning to get more of the books read in the near future.

Fire as you bear, Mr. Bush.