Not Really A Dilemma

Via Slashdot: An ethical question involving e-books.  Check out the post and some of the very good reactions.  Here’s my take:

First of all, I’m generally a fan of supporting artists and the capitalist system, but I don’t get the need for complicated ethical calculus here.  Ever borrowed a book from a friend or the library?  Awesome, you just denied money to the author and publisher.  This book is already out of print, so just download the pirated version, read, and delete, which isn’t that different from borrowing it (except for lack of authorial control.)  When I was a kid I got my favorite books from the library over and over again without being called a pirate.  Nerd, yes; copyright infringer, no.  (As a bonus, you can consider yourself in the tradition of my favorite historical figures: all the intriguing, bawdy, scheming, pirating early modern printers.)

But better yet, purchase (or borrow from the library!) a used copy and “lug around the dead-tree version.”  If you’re so interested in this story that you would spend time and energy agonizing over its copyright why not just deal with the hassle of reading an actual book?  This might surprise some computer nerds out there, but the codex was one of the most revolutionary technological advances in history precisely because it was compact, portable and easily cross-referenced.  I’ve certainly never had a problem finding room for one in my luggage.  The codex: 2,000 years of convenience.

Besides, you’ll be supporting a used book dealer somewhere, many of whom provide valuable services to their communities – same for patronizing a library.  And as far as environmental concerns go, I doubt that a one-time used book purchase and plane trip produces enough carbon dioxide to matter, especially when compared to the likely similar amounts used to produce and power e-readers and store electronic editions on servers.  And the used copy you buy will stay out of the landfill for that much longer.

Photos

A few months ago I wrote about the publisher Thomas Boreman and his Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants and Other Curiosities in Guildhall, London.  A few weeks ago I saw the current giants in person at the Lord Mayor’s Show parade.  And I’ve finally gotten around to uploading a lot of other photos, including those from my trip to Oxford’s Merton College, a Saturday morning in Trafalgar Square, Regent’s Park, and Kew Gardens.

Books in Painting

The Moneylender and His Wife (1514) by Quentin Massys/Metsys.  I recently saw this painting at the Renaissance Faces exhibition at the National Gallery.  According to the Louvre website the book represents spiritual duty, and the woman is being distracted by from it by the man’s activities, which represent worldly desires.  At first glance I thought it might be a book of hours, but the text is wrong, so my next guess would be a book of saints’ lives.  There were quite a few paintings in the exhibition featuring readers or individuals holding books, as well as two illuminated pieces, one a miniature by Simon Marmion (I wish I could remember the names of some of the other works so I could post them).  Otherwise, the exhibit was just meh.  But I did some googling and ran across a book that sounds interesting, The Look of Reading: Book, Painting, Text.  I’ll try to pick it up at the library tomorrow.

Two other recent exhibits (that I enjoyed more) are Cold War Modern at the Victoria and Albert Museum (running through 11 January) and Darwin: Big Idea at the Natural History Museum (to 19 April).

Anyone up for an angry protest outside the Wood Green Crown Court?

Farhad Hakimzadeh, an Iranian academic who has pleaded guilty to stealing pages from early printed books in the British Library and the Bodleian Library, is being sentenced today in London.  The British Library has discovered about 150 books that were likely damaged by Hakimzadeh between 1998 and 2005, primarily works from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and not all the missing pages have been recovered.  The whole thing is quite shocking, not only because Hakimzadeh should have known better, but because he was committing the thefts in a very public place full of other readers, librarians, security staff, and CCTV, and he got away with it for so long.  I’m not sure how much the security has changed at the BL since 2005, but from my near daily reading there over the last two months I can guarantee that to pull off this type of theft you would have to be extremely motivated and plan quite carefully (in addition to being a complete ass, of course.)  Hopefully he’ll get slammed in the sentencing and in the civil case, as well.

Further reading:

• British Library press release
• Audio interview with Dr. Kristian Jensen, head of collections
• Guardian article
• BBC article

Europeana

Europeana, a portal compiling 2 million objects from 1,000 institutions in the EU, went live today.  Or it tried to go live and failed, with Wired reporting that it’s been receiving 10 million hits per hour.  Nice!

Europeana says that the goal is not only to merge existing resources but to promote further European digitization efforts.  Just the idea of having a single portal for so many different resources is fantastic, and I’m quite intrigued by this statement:

You can use My Europeana to save searches or bookmark things. You can highlight stuff and add it to your own folders.

Will we be seeing social networking and bookmarking applications along with the content?  The site is currently in beta, with version 1.0 scheduled for 2010, and I’m definitely excited about watching its evolution.  Hopefully things will have calmed down enough in a few days for a good look.

The Beasts of the Earth

Today I began research on a new essay topic: the medieval bestiary.  While this sounds like a type of natural history text, bestiaries are actually theological books that examine the forces of good and evil in the natural world.  They were based on classical Greek writings tweaked to present a Christian perspective, and readers were expected to identify moral lessons in the behaviors of animals, plants, and even rocks.  The compilers of bestiaries drew on a variety of sources but eschewed writers like Aristotle, who viewed the natural world through the lens of empirical observation.  What was important was not accuracy, or whether the animal even existed, but what it had to say about human behavior, Christian values, and the workings of the Divine.  (Though some species were presented simply because of their economic importance.)  Bestiaries were extremely popular in England and France between the 12th and 14th centuries.

An excellent example of bestiary allegory is the fox, who is usually illustrated by this tale:  When the fox becomes hungry it rolls in red dirt to appear bloody and then pretends to be dead.  When the birds come to peck at it, it devours them.  This symbolized deception, heresy, flattery, false religious leaders, and Satan.  The birds are unwary Christians, always at risk of being led astray by evil forces.  In bestiaries the fox was sometimes placed in an antithetical position relative to the unicorn, to emphasize the differences between the treachery of Satan and the purity and self-sacrifice of Christ.

The above image is from one of the most beautiful of the remaining works, the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24), made in England around 1200.  The University has created one of the best websites I’ve seen for a medieval manuscript, featuring:

• general information on bestiaries
• photos and commentary for each folio
• translation and transcription of the text
  
• a history of the manuscript itself
• a great introduction to codicology, the study of the materials and construction of books
• an excellent bibliography, which I’ve used as the springboard for my research.

Election Day Links

— Do what Colin says.

— You’d better listen to Will Wheaton because he is a Space Nerd and knows all about the future.

— On the other hand, Headless Lenin III makes some good points…

— Ace Jet 170 point out that we’re voting in the future-tastic election of 2008.

— Women voters of 1917, from Shorpy.

— Yeah… you knew this was coming.

I’ve cast my absentee ballot already, so I don’t have to stand in any lines.  Unfortunately, I can’t get full episodes of the Daily Show etc., over here, which is quite a disappointment.  Instead, I’ll be seeing the new Bond film waaay ahead of all you suckers in America!  But seriously, go vote and have a happy and safe election day!

One of these things is not like the others!

I was scrounging through loose change today, looking for laundry money, when I ran across a £1 coin that stood out a bit, with a completely different texture, weight and color from the others in the pile.  Upon closer inspection I saw that, though it was dated 2000, it was more scuffed then several older coins and it was also wider by a hair’s-breadth.  Fairly certain now that I was dealing with a fake, I flipped it on edge to check out the inscription.  And what a typographical travesty awaited me!

Yep, the one on the top is the counterfeit.  What with the poor spacing and the total lack of serifs on a hideous, evil typeface. If you could even call it a proper typeface, as the letters are wildly inconsistent.  Seriously, scammers, come on.  How can society be expected to function with such ugly text scattered willy-nilly?

Anyway, I did do some internet research to make sure that it was a true fake and not just a really bad day at the mint.  There are several common, easy to spot errors among counterfeit pounds (most of which my coin gets correct: they did include the cross in the inscription, and the alignment of the two sides is spot-on).  One of the best ways to tell is by making sure that the reverse image and the inscription match up.  This ostensibly being a year 2000 Welsh dragon design, the inscription actually should have been the Welsh PLEIDIOL WYF I’M GWLAD, rather than the Latin DECUS ET TUTAMEN.

According to the BBC, 1 in 50 of these coins are now fakes.  If you find one you’re supposed to turn it in, but I think I’ll keep mine as a souvenir (a souvenir which cost me approximately $1.70).  And whenever I look at it I will silently thank the people who spend their lives designing attractive typefaces.

Links

— One of my favorite things this week, the winners have been selected in Bookninja’s book re-branding competition.  The first-place entry had me doubled over laughing.

— Also in humor, the New Yorker discusses literary Halloween costumes and invites readers to submit their own.

— On the bizarre side of things, Richard Dawkins makes cringe-inducing statements about children’s literature.  There’s an opinion piece on this in the Guardian, as well, with lots heated of commentary.

— Audra of The Vespiary presents an excellent list of web resources for learning about book structure and care.

— Jeremy keeps us up-to-date on the bizarre Durham Folio case.

— William shows off a sweet thift-shop find: a copy of Treasure Island printed for the Taft Hotel in New York City.  I had no idea that books like this even existed.  Might be fertile ground if you need a dissertation topic!

— Another brilliant, retro book cover shared by Ministry of Type, Our Friend the Atom.

— Vintage Halloween ephemera on flickr, via Morbid Anatomy.

— Slate has a nice slideshow on Art Spiegelman.

— Also at the Guardian, London’s finest bookshops.  If only I had time and money!

— This has nothing to do with book history, but it made me laugh, so enjoy.