Who needs Google. Thanks to Muranushi Takayuki you too can make your own automated scanner. This is way over my head technically but you got to love the ingenuity.Thanks to .ike for the lead. His new blog Digitizing Books and Media will be a place where he shares his process of finding a way to digitize his book collection.
The Google Quandary: Book Search or Text Search?
Apart from the text does Google Book Search really have anything to do with the life of a book?I am not so sure.As Paul Duguid points out in his illuminating piece Inheritence and loss? A brief survey of Google Books:"Even with some of the best search and scanning technology in the world behind you, it is unwise to ignore the bookish character of books."Using Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy as his book of choice Duguid exposes some major quality control issues inherent in Google's digitization process. From missing pages to poorly scanned pages to the complete absence of vital data (like...
The Life Tree
You Are Here40" x 60"2 color screen printGreat typographical poster that "was originally meant to be a tongue-in-cheek, semi autobiographical but mainly fictional guide to graphic design for students. It soon spiralled (sic) out of control and became a bittersweet journey through the many different lives of a graphic designer."Created by the design firm johnson banksHere's a close-up of the top left section: Thanks to Lu Terceiro for the lead
George Gloss: A Bookseller to Remember
Picture this:It is 1969. The American Counterculture is peaking. Woodstock, Flower Power, and the Beats are upending the stale establishment. You're high as a kite walking around the streets of Boston and you see a covered wagon coming down the street. Horses, cowboys and the whole bit. From the covered wagon books are being thrown freely. On the side of the wagon it said: "Go West, Booklovers -- Go to 5 West Street -- Brattle Book Shop."Some people might not have recovered.This was the work of George Gloss, the owner of the Brattle Book Shop. A bookshop "As powerful a...
Breaking the Book Collector Stereotype
It is time to give up the image. Book Collecting is no longer a pursuit confined mostly to rich middle-aged white men.The picture above is of Sophie Dahl and appears in her piece for Men's Vogue titled book lust. On Sept. 11, 2001 when evacuating her NY apartment Dahl says "I took a small bag and filled it with my grandmother's jewelry, childhood letters from my parents, a toothbrush, and a pair of jeans. But the lumpy bulk of it was incurred by my books." This solidifies Dahl's place with the most ardent and true collectors."Miss Dahl is, after all,...