blind book date

apparently second floors are allowed

Pink.  All three books were wrapped in pink.  The public library . . . because a university library would never want to have this much fun . . . has mystery books for patrons to sign out.  In honour of the month of love: Blind book dates. All were wrapped in pink paper with a barcode on the outside and a brief description to give you some guidelines as to what was behind the wrapping.  I got three.  It was so delightful to sit after lunch with my hot chocolate on a snowy Saturday and find out what I'd got.  My 'classic, British, good characters, hopeful' turned out to be Great Expectations sporting the most undickensian cover I have ever seen.  I watched the most recent BBC production last month, so I set that aside and opened the next present:  'plans, making, family fun'.  Wahooooo a book by a dad who makes the coolest stuff out of cardboard and marbles and crayons.  Spent some time dreaming along with that.  But then, oh then, I opened the third package:  'small, cozy'.  I spent the next hour picking out my dream house.  It is on page one hundred and one.  I will be putting the kitchen in the area they have off to the right beyond the stairs and keeping the whole of the great room for living and studio space.  It is 885 square feet and is called Sea Grass.  I will also extend the porch on the back so that you can walk all the way around the glassed in area off the living room. Oh, can't you just see it?

clicking through a train of thought

 745.5 F66 1987  

Just helped a student locate Plants of the Bible (who knew!) BS (as all good religion related books are) 665.M71.  Being keen to be helpful even as she charged off, I dropped my eyes to the subject link: Nature in the Bible. Click.  I think there was something about nature, but, calligrapher and illuminator such as I am, my eyes fell on: Decoration and Ornament. Click.  I am offered the option of 59 subsections:  Click.  And what do I find? Felt Marker Decoration!  A train of thought leading to the joys of the Curriculum Collection of the Education Library.

favourite title of the day

So, as I shelf read (making sure all the call numbers bounce along in the order they should), or arrange books at the shelving point ready to pack, or packing them, onto a shelving truck, my eyes run over the titles and now and then my eye is caught.

Today:  An Idiot's Fugitive Essays on Science*,  with a two page errata no less.

*Q 126.8.T78 1984.  And don't get any ideas the common denominator is any brighter thirty years on.

inside books

It is amazing what people use as bookmarks.  I have been putting the cover back on Western Canada Law*, from 1921.  As I spread the pages out fell a postcard, an RSVP really, from 1921.  Yes, it has been inside that book all this time.  And I will put it back.  It was to be sent to P.E.C. Ecob, Secretary Graduates Association, Collegiate Institute, Saskatoon.  As the city was only incorporated thirteen years before the simplicity of address is understandable.  Mind you the nice white interlopers had been hanging around since 1883 on the general spot, and if my great granddad's buffalo hunting stories are anything to go by had been seen in the area a lot longer. But still, 1921, and no need for a house address, a street name, least of all, a postal code.  And next year I will have to use the provincial area code just to phone next door!  The really pleasing part was the back of the post card, the language of the response:  Dear Sir, In reply to your invitation to the University of Saskatchewan Graduates' Reunion on May 6th next, I beg to say that......, Yours faithfully, ....  What a delightful luxury of language. I think I'll go to the party.

*Full title just for fun: Western Canada law : a concise handbook of the laws of western Canada, as the same are applicable in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, together with other information of value to business men, farmers, secretaries, justices, police magistrates, and all other persons interested in the laws of western Canada / by Arthur E. Popple

Loving the book

A friend of mine came over for tea yesterday.  She has an e-reader.  She was unable to get it to let her read.  Asking her beloved, men always know these things, right?, and he gave advice. She followed his advice.  Twice, to be sure.  Nada.  Nothing.  No action.  Without giving in to the madness of doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different response, she called tech support.*  She was helped.  And I thought (after 'I love tech people like that'): Tech support.  Give me a book.



*The lovely (a comment on personality and duty qualifications) woman at tech support said,
"See x icon on the left?' 
"Yes."
"Click that."  Pause.
"See y icon?"
"Yes."
"Click that." Pause.
"See z icon on the left?"
"Yes."
"Click that."
Voila, she can read again.

salt mines

Okay, this is too cool.  As we go digital there are those with the brains to preserve paper copies of stuff. Cause, guess what, the digital stuff, as I have probably noted before, have to keep changing their format (good thing we have those lucky people in India and China who risk their lives and their health to break up our junk and pull out the useful bits).  So in the legal world there is LLMC.  And yes, I will give that to you in English.  Law Library Microform Consortium.  It is saving legal information, statues and the like, in microfilm form - high quality Silver-Halide, thank you -, in digital form, and, here comes the cool part, in original paper form in salt mines in Kansas! (Cause its archivally dark down there.)  

Happy Leopard contest!

Yes, it is true, they are having a contest and you can win a handmade book: The Pink Penguin.  You do need to produce a piece of art and send them a jpeg of it, it has to involve a "Painted Cookie" which is the name of the bistro in the story. Check out the details at Happy Leopard Chapbooks.

100 more handmade books

Those babes and babers are at it again at Happy Leopard Chapbooks.  A new book is out in time for Christmas raising money for Farmers Helping Farmers. This story is a comic for grown ups about a pink penguin who "goes with the floe" to find out where he belongs in the world.  And he belongs on the Edge Islands at a cafe called The Painted Cookie.

Watch the Happy Leopard site, I hear there is going to be a contest!  You could win a book.

Random sample

The Law Library here has a wonderfully high ceiling.  In places, five stories.  I can stand on the third floor and look down on all the baby lawyers, and one must face facts, baby business people too, as they study.  I stopped to watch them today.  In the howl of the digital worship around the world I found what I saw enlightening, and to my paper booked little soul, comforting.  Of the 47 students I could see from my vantage point, 2 were asleep, 7 were working solely with computers, 8 were reading from paper (4 books, 4 printouts), the rest had computers and were surrounded by paper and were bouncing between the two technologies.  Like the pencils that went into space with the Russians, some technologies have staying power.  Even when new ones claim they are dead.

A book start to finish: part 4 publication delays

This kind of thing often happens in the publishing world.  The author (me) is late getting the manuscript done for one reason or another ( I am taking Legal Writing and Research to enhance my abilities to help the law students in reference and my mind is currently being bent into a pretzel - ouch is the word, but it is a good ouch, like a new yoga pose), or the publisher changes editors (not happening here), or the illustrator breaks her wrist grabbing her two year old out of the way of her four year old who is pretending to be a bulldozer (also not likely here), or the printer has had a flood and all their paper is soaked and on drying racks so the publisher has to wait for a sunny day and the paper to dry out (remote, but not impossible), or the truck delivering the goods to market has a flat (I might have a flat on my bike bringing the book over to donate it to the library, but I can still walk the distance, so no worries there).  It is just the way of things. 

And if the e-book kiddies out there are feeling smug just remember you also have authors who have lives, and uploads that get eaten, and digital jigjags, and incompatible files.  Oh, and the battery on your e-book reader just died and you have a flat tire and can't get home to plug it in.  Too bad it doesn't have a little solar panel, you could hang it up with the paper.

When my brain has been thoroughly lawified I will get back to the manuscript of George Cecil Harris and his memorable fender.  Don't give up hope, I am only on the closed memo. 

A book start to finish: part 1 the inspiration

The thing about a book, aside from the fact that you will still be able to use if after you've spilt coffee on it and it has been handed down from your great grandmother to you, is what is inside it.  What's inside it makes it worth hanging onto when your great gran passes it on to you and your uncle Dwayne drank coffee on it the morning of his wedding and knocked over his mug in a nervous action checking on the ring in his pocket. I have been planning a book for the library where I work because we've got a little story and that little story grew a bit over the summer and I thought it should have a little book to go with the bits left over from the event and the legends that surround them. 

The first bit is the sad bit.  In June of 1948, a farmer, named Cecil George Harris, told his wife he was going out to do some work and he'd be home around 10pm.  He did not arrive.  Mrs. Harris went out and found poor George pinned in a nasty manner by his farm equipment.  She got neighbours and they got George out, but two days later George gave it all up.  When his tractor was inspected it turned out George had not been entirely idle during his hours of captivity.  He had used his penknife to scratch a will into the fender of his tractor.  That fender was used a court case about George's will and proved useful because everything did indeed 'go to the wife'.  The tractor fender, now evidence pretending to be a tractor fender, was kept in the court house in Kerrobert.*  Many years later the court house was closed and in a fit of keen preservation the fender was presented to the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan.  They dutifully built a lovely case and the fender was set up in the Law Library on display.

Until this summer when I took a phone call from the Discovery Channel.....

*The Kerrobert Court House is now used as the Town Hall and an art Gallery.  And John George Diefenbaker, whose murder case seems to be responsible for its ghost, is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan College of Law and his portrait hangs over my desk and haunts me.

Coming in first for the environment....the library

In a contest between the book and the e-book, the library wins.  I sparked off this picture* because, being me, I wanted to know what happens after we are done with the tool.  What I have long suspected is true, books are the superior technology.  Using the quick comparison presented by Daniel Goleman books cause less damage in production, in transportation ("You’d need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader"), and in disposal. Now, go to the library and use a book we all own, read it, and someone else will read it, and someone else will read it, and someone else....all without making more copies.

Libraries are brilliant.

*I found it on Stephen's Lighthouse, the original article by Les Grossman gives a bit more, but he is talking about a different aspect of the advantages of books.

books for health

Long has it been suspected, and my eyes agree, that staring at the screen is wearing: tired eyes, more expensive glasses.  Today I checked out the new Dentistry Library guide and find that not only are they encouraging people to save their peepers with books by having a tab "Finding Books", they have an educational photo (scroll down) to demonstrate books are also excellent physical exercise.  Look at that lifting power. You can't get that with an ipad. 

Also I direct you to Stephen's Lighthouse where he points to studies (of a few people) who find they remember better when they read from print.  My guess is its because they are not straining their eyes so much, so they can focus on what they are reading.  The researchers have other theories. But in an aging population (and who isn't aging, I ask you) can better memory be a bad thing?

senior technology retains cache

Well, its coming in folks, the stats, and it turns out there are a goodly number of us who are still looking at the long term, and I might point out, long lasting, out lasting, and bio-more friendly, technology of print on paper over print on a screen (do you really want to know what screens turn into when they try to biodegrade?  ---- eeeeeekkkkk run screaming from reality).

Barry W. Cull has written a paper on the subject, my favourite quote from which is: students prefer to read on paper, although they also want the convenience of online digital text. Liu has found that graduate academic library users like the access provided by online electronic resources, but prefer to print the electronic documents in order to read them. 

My little bookmaking heart is filled with glee.  My poor eyes, currently starting at a screen, as are yours, think longing of ink on paper.  Even if that turns out to be e-ink on e-paper? Given the attributes of the common denominator I expect so (remember to run screaming from reality).  When, I wonders, are we going to start pronouncing that ei-nk (sounding remarkably like ink only longer in front), and what will the anthropologists think of us with such a large part of our vocabulary showing e's out front?

spinal injury

When the spine of a trade or mass paperback cracks like this you have an opportunity to repair your patient such that it will look very like it has never been in hospital.  The tricky bit it not getting the glue down into the break.  Tip back the opening and run a line of glue, or (and) spread it in with a narrow paint brush.  The trick is getting the two sides to lock back into place.  The book will try its best to just rest in position leaving it riding up on one side.  I find it best to put the two tip edges together and push them down onto the glue.  Then I viciously place the spine against the edge of my desk and run it down sharply.  This is where you find out you have put in too much glue...on one occasion it shot out so far it splatted on my shirt. But there is nothing like experience to teach you how much is too much. And how much is too little, as when your book falls apart again.  Like flour in the bread dough, you get a feel for it.

visions of ebooks

I am a maker.  I make my own bread, my own yogurt, my own clothes...okay I only alter at this point, (one of the vicious realities for people who's legs are not regulation length, I can out height you if we are sitting down), and as you will note from the 100 handmade books saga, I make books. And I don't mean I just physically make them, I do, but I also write and illustrate and do the layout design on them too.  But books are coming out in a new form. I can't say I look forward to having to read an ebook, not enough tactility for me, but...cooooollll, how do I make that?  Well I took an introduction to Adobe Acrobat (six hours just to say hello) and that's how you make that.  I can do all the layout and put in videos and snarky talking giraffes and then presto, a pdf which will grow up to be an ebook.

Now I just need to finish the three months of paper work so I can sell on Amazon....want to hear about easy as 1,2,3 Amazon style?

100 handmade books aftermath

Wow!  The launch for the Book of Days was on Tuesday evening. There was food from the recipes, music from a harpist and her guitar playing husband, a whole host of friends and well wishers.  And purchasers.  The book sold out completely. Okay, okay, not all on Tuesday, I spent Monday and Tuesday offering it to everyone I came into contact with, with great success. I collapsed Wednesday to recover from several months of drawing and three weeks of stitching and gluing.  Imagine if you will a whole day of doing only as my whimsey takes me.* Ahhhh.

I did take my camera, but I was so involved with telling people what food came from which recipe and visiting and all, that I didn't remember it till we were packing up.  You will have to use your imagination.  It is a surprising tool.  Just try it.  Close your eyes.  You are in a low ceiling room, with paintings all around the walls (local artists), there are couches, and many mismatched tables and chairs.  The harpist plays medieval music with her husband.  There is a counter top and a table full of food dishes.  You are invited to dine.  Inhale the scent of the clam spaghetti sauce, look at the thick caramel on the top of the fudgey wedgy squares.  Have a small taste of the Post Reformation yogurt....chat, laugh, eat well.

* bonus points to those who recognize the quote.

Tippin'in

When your pages are falling out.  More to the original point, when a page or two falls out.  I have never seen anything quite like this Sask. Report.  And not even all the pages that were loose made it into the photo.  The procedure for tipping in is to lay down a line of glue, dip the inside edge of the page into the glue, and gently slide it into place.  The correct place. Always be sure of that before you make contact with the glue.  Right page in page order, right side up, and right side to the outside.  All the fun you can have with a single sheet of paper.  Amazing isn't it.

I have put down my line of glue on a gridded plastic sheet which comes off the back of laminating sheets.  It is fantastic for this sort of thing. And for slipping in between pages that have been glued so the glue only ends up where you want it.

The last step I did on this Sask. Report was to turn it upside down and shake it.  After the glue had dried.  There was no other way to be sure I had found all the pages that were slipping out.

100 handmade books

Okay, truth is we are making 102 because the book has an ISBN which means the National Archive requires two copies and it is sooooo much easier to make them two copies than to buy two copies because all the money you are making on the project is going to charity.

 

I am involved with Happy Leopard Chapbooks.  Twice a year we create a limited edition book to sell for charity.  Different charity each time.  Mostly.  And if you think making one book by hand is time consuming --- I must digress here to say that while I was spending the weekend with my mother I was also spending the weekend with my father, two people who courted in Latin.  My father gave me the tid bit that manufacture, from the Latin, means to make by hand.  So Ford, you ain't manufacturing those trucks.  I just know you're not.  Nor are any of the others, but this digression has gone on long enough --- you should try making 100, and two.

If you are around, come on out for the launch, June 21st (ah summer, when the days are getting shorter) at 8pm, the Refinery 609 Dufferin, Saskatoon.  There will be food.

Next blog: Luddite finds tribe

As I am wont to do, I hit next blog today.  A bookbinder!  A bookbinder in Canada!  And she follows other blogs of other bookbinders.  Oh I think I have found my tribe.  I have certainly discovered something called PBI, Paper Book Intensive.  They do this every year, oh be still my heart.  I will have to get a passport, and rob a piggy bank.  Hope the one next year is as close to home as possible.  It was this year, of course, and happened just weeks before I knew it even existed, so next year it will doubless be in Alaska. I've been to the Yukon (yes six years old counts), can Alaska be any less amazing?  Barring certain persons who shall not be named here, but about whom it is sometimes difficult to maintain a charitable frame of mind, or even keep a straight face.