In another blaring act of AbeBooks.com's systematic neglect of the booksellers who put the company on the map they announced today the release of BookHints. A book recommendation feature that utilizes their current hot property LibraryThing.Basically it is the Amazon recommends technology with better visuals and instead of using an algorithm it uses the books in their users library to come up with suggestions.With only 10% of the listings on Abebooks having been fitted with the BookHint technology why the press release now? Can you say Shelfari. It wasn't more than a few days ago when the news of Amazon's...
Now They Are Blowing the Books Up
A car bomb went off in the Mutanabi Book Market in the historic booksellers’ district in Baghdad. The market named after an Iraqi poet who lived in the 10th century was once the gathering place of the city's intellectuals.The explosion killed more than 20 people and injured at least 65. There are no estimates as to how many books were destroyed or damaged.The ongoing madness in Iraq has already severely impacted the city's library system. All you need to do is read the journal of the Saad Eskander, the head of the National Archives in Iraq who reports on the...
The Roethke Pool
“There are those to whom place is unimportant, / But this place, where sea and fresh water meet, / Is important. . . . ”from “The Rose” which he read to an enthusiastic audience at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962Theodore Roethke is arguably the greatest poet to have spent a significant amount of time living in Seattle. His years teaching at the University of Washington (1947 until his death in 1963) put the region on the literary map. "The sixteen years of Roethke’s residence in Seattle changed the region’s literary maturity and taste."He is to the Northwest School of...
The Book Designs of John D. Berry
For over 25 years John Berry has been designing books, editing books and writing about typography.He was house designer for Copper Canyon Press in the early 1990s, and more recently has both edited and designed several books for Mark Batty Publisher, including U&lc: influencing design & typography. John Berry is also one of the foremost writers on typography and design. His first two Dot-font books are selections from the essays he has been writing for the last seven years in his “dot-font” column for Creativepro.com. In these direct, colloquial essays, he turns a critical eye on the role of design...
Southern Oregon County to Shut Down Entire Library System
In what seems like a surreal event the entire library system of Jackson County, Oregon is on the brink of closure. Their funding runs out April 7th and if nothing is done between now and then it will be the largest library closure in U.S. history. "I wish we could call FEMA; this feels like a natural disaster to me" says the county's interim library director Ted Stark.The 15 libraries that serve this rural community have lost $7 million in federal funding this year or nearly 80 percent of the system's budget and the Jackson County residents voted down a...