Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 59 of 147)

Poetry supporters and Stanza offenders

Rus of Poetry and Poets in Rags tells us that two papers other than News and Observer do a great job of publishing poetry — the Oregonian and the Washington Post — but they also screw up the lines and stanzas in their online versions.

Yikes!


Here’s May Swenson’s, after David Biespiel discusses it
[ in the Oregonian]

For doubles-spacing, the Washington Post does it all the time. Here’s Pinsky discussing O’Hara last month

Same poem with stanza breaks [at Book of Joe].


And here’s a poem by Dorianne Laux turned into a prose poem by the Oregonian.

2006 of ibiblio

As the New Year begins I’ve been writing an annual reportish thing on my wiki. I’ve done some brief, but I hope interesting, stuff so far.

I’ve invited ibiblio contributors and staff and now you to add, expand, correct the wiki and to email me or to leave a comment here if you like with changes. Things left out may be things just not gotten to yet.

Please go ahead and have at it. Our year is also your year.

Watch this guy

According to the News and Observer, there are 7 people to watch in North Carolina in 2007. Why only seven when most places do 10 or more? Downsizing? Budget? No next three people as important as the seven noticed?

At any rate, Tom Jensen here in Chapel Hill is one of the seven. We’d gotten to know Tom and his political interests during Sally’s campaign and have kept in touch since. He’s definitely one to watch. Tom gets initial attention for his Sierra Club work, but there is much more along with that.

Song(s) of Joy

As you were warned, my poem “Song of Joy” came out today in the News and Observer‘s Sunday Reader. The print version looks really nice and the Sunday Journal section is full of interesting photographs from the past year. The downside is that the online version totally ignores the stanzas. You’d think by now that the folks there would have worked on their templates — it’s been several years now and the templates are aging — or they would have fixed the problem — the problem has persisted for several years.

Here’s what you see at the News and Observer site.

And here’s a version I fixed and uploaded in about three minutes so it’s the right way — damn it!

North Carolina Miscellany (Treasures of ibiblio)

Just added the wonderful North Carolina Miscellany to my RSS feeds. I should have done this a long time ago. The Miscellany, a product of Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection, is full of regular posts discussing new and upcoming books on North Carolina topics, state history in the news, treasures from the stacks of the North Carolina Collection, and general “Tar Heelia.”

A regular treasure trove amongst the treasures of ibiblio. On-going since June 2005.

When 2 Million is Not Enough

On Marketplace, I’m quoted first as saying that we all want instant gratification from our purchases (of course the book kiosk then is not as good as getting a text on a good electronic reader if one were to ever exist) and I say that the 2 million books available to OnDemandBooks (all from the public domain) are not enough.

Is a collection of 2 million titles really too few?

As you might have guessed, there was more to the conversation than met the ear. What you heard was skillfully taken from about 30 minutes of nuanced conversation. No nuance in a piece that short. No blame for that. What I said is that ODB’s kiosk holding those particular titles wouldn’t be competing so much with a publisher like Knopf or Doubleday or Crown, but with Dover’s dollar books and Penguin Classics.

I love the public domain books, mostly from the golden age of writing in the 19th century, as much as anyone. But I also know that the book market is highly skewed toward titles from within the last 75 years and within that highly skewed toward the most recent titles — those of the last few years.

Like it or not, that’s how we read. The book may be a Civil War book, but we’re more likely to buy the latest E. L. Doctorow (out this past year) or the slightly older Charles Fraiser (already in paper and already reissued with a movie tie-in cover) than to buy say Grant’s Memoirs (and this is an exceptional book). Now think of the titles in the public domain that you would never buy if any occur to you.

The “long tail” power of Amazon is that you can get all three books there and more. You can get the books that refer to those books and those which those books refer to themselves. You can build a library if you desire that is fairly deep, if narrow, very quickly and with collective expertise.

Availability is a major part of satisfying the market. Customer support during and after purchase are also major. Whether provided by smart staff or by smart computer programs. Support makes the sales and the second sales.

Google in the Carolinas

Local Tech Wire and WCHL are reporting that Google is in discussions with NC Dept of Commerce about opening a Google in the Lenoir (Caldwell County) area. But the Google quote shows that it’s far from a done deal:

“We are evaluating a number of sites, including one in Lenoir, N.C., as possible locations for new technology infrastructure to support the strong and growing demand for our services,” said Barry Schnitt on behalf of Google. “We appreciate the efforts of the state and local governments to work with us through the evaluation process and hope to have additional details to announce in the coming months.”

The Local Tech Wire story also mentions a larger installation planned for the Charleston, SC area.

This post is a follow on to Fred’s post of about a week ago.

Sally and EdCone and Scoble (and me) on Edwards announcement etc

Bloggers on the forefront of the Edwards announcement and campaign (from Greenespace and from EdCone and from Scoble)

UPDATE: I took a call earlier this afternoon from Dan Siler of WCHL 1360 am. It was for Sally whose great blogpost is at Greenespace above), but she insisted that I do the radio bit. Dan and I talked about the net.savvyness of the Edwards campaign. Yes the campaign is net.savvy. Yes Edwards himself is aware of how important it is to have people involved in all kinds of ways. Note, I say, that his announcement combines not only YouTube, bloggers, MySpace, etc, but also some good old fashioned barnstorming to significant places. Does the accidentally leaked announcement mean the campaign is not so net.savvy? (asks Dan). I think the leak helped the announcement, which was pretty predictable, become a slightly bigger story. Accident? Perhaps.

My sentence on Marketplace

The Marketplace bit on On Demand Books ran this morning. Running time less that one minute. The show isn’t chopped so you need to listen (carefully) or advance the stream. The books on demand story starts at 3:33. My one sentence is said at about 3:55 in. And the whole books piece is ends at 4:25 (out of a show that runs 8:24).

UPDATE:
The show is chopped and online and has its own webpage. Very Nice! (and very brief ;->).

Here’s the text (also on the Marketplace site).

MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: A vending machine for books — Janet Babin reports from the Marketplace Innovations Desk at North Carolina Public Radio.

JANET BABIN: The machine looks like an elaborate printer. It can produce up to 20 fully-bound books an hour, in any language, all by itself.

On Demand Books is marketing the machine. You can see a demo of it on the company’s website:

[ Demo: “All fully-integrated, automated, and under the control of one computer.” ]

Professor Paul Jones at the University of North Carolina says this type of machine will make it easier for bookstores to compete with online retailers like Amazon:

PAUL JONES: One of the things we’re going to see more of is the ability to be able to walk in and have your reading and other interests satisfied right there.

The company says it will have access to more than two million book titles, most in the public domain. But Jones says it will need much more content to become successful.

I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.

Edwards – Scoble connections

If you’ve been to any NC Blog events, you are aware of how aware of the web, social networks and blogs John Edwards is. He met with podcasters before Podcastercon, with some folks at ConvergeSouth, with others during danah boyd’s visit here this fall, etc. And those who he hasn’t met, Elizabeth Edwards has met. She is very very internet aware; her book will tell you how and why.

Now on the eve of Edwards’ probable announcement of his run for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Robert Scoble announces that he’s joining the Edwards campaign.

I’ve also heard that Matthew Gross is on the Edwards campaign.

All in all this will make for an interesting net.campaign for 2008. Who will be following Edwards onto the net?

Notes: Steve sends “John Edwards on youtube today announcing he will announce tomorrow [YouTube]” and the BBC and others have noticed that Edwards’ website accidentally had an announcement of his candidacy up already.

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