Bookselling has always been a tough business and since the rise of Amazon it has become a near impossible undertaking. Whatever barriers to entry that existed previously where obliterated with the advent of e-commerce. A unique username and a valid credit card have become the only requirement to become a "bookseller". Enter Glenn Pladsen who purchased the stock of a used bookstore that was closing in Boulder, Colorado eight years ago. His hope was to set up shop on Amazon and become a bookseller. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out. He soon realized that the race to the bottom pricing that is a pillar of...
Still Harmony: The Work of Jacqueline Rush Lee
Jacqeuline Rush Lee has been creating bookworks for over 15 years. Her work has been and remains a staple in most anthologies that deal with contemporary bookworks. In 1998 Rush devised an experimental process where books and periodicals were fired in controlled kiln environments and transformed into what Rush calls "fossilized" books where "the books were no longer recognizable in their usual context, but transformed into poetic remnants of their former selves–ephemeral and ghost-like forms suggesting internal landscapes and a trajectory of time, transformation and memory…” These "poetic remnants" emit a still harmony that retains the power of the book while transforming them...
Uptown Funk at the Library
For National Library Week the crew at Pogona Creative and the Orange Public Library in association with Chapman University took the runaway hit by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars and gave it the book treatment. Ladies and gentleman, here is Unread Book featuring the one and only Guy the guybrarian Enjoy! [youtube]https://youtu.be/J6zcIFUvdJ0[/youtube]
Orange is the new green at the Multnomah County Library
The Multnomah County Library in Oregon (think Portland) has become the first major library in the country to sustainably source the paper it uses to print patron receipts and hold slips. The library, which uses upward of 10,000 rolls of paper each year for these slips, has moved from the traditional white paper that contains bisphenol A (BPA) or bisphenol S (BPS) to an alternative paper that uses a vitamin C formulation instead. That's right vitamin C, though the paper has a yellow tone it is actually sourced from oranges! And just how many oranges are needed for a years supply? How about...
Computer-assisted cooking: IBM puts Chef Watson to work
Remember a few years back when IBM's incredible computing machine Watson appeared on the television quiz show Jeopardy!? Well, like most technologies a lot has changed since then. Watson's system performance is 2400% greater than in the Jeopardy! days and it has gone from the size of a master bedroom to three stacked pizza boxes! Now Watson enters a whole new realm, from simply being a storehouse of vast amounts information to now being able to actually create new knowledge. And one of the areas best suited for this new foray is the food universe. In 2014 IBM teamed up with the Institute of Culinary Education (ICM)...