First came across Ed Brubaker’s (and Sean Phillip’s) work in “Sleeper“. This one is another solid piece of work where the writing goes. Good artwork too.

ISBN: 1563896702
Ed Brubaker (writer)
Michael Lark (penciller/ inker)
Sean Phillips (inker)

Two stories in this graphic novel (the second one is very short).

WARNING: PLOT SPOILER!

Main story is set in contemporary San Francisco (I could tell from the cars parked on steep slopes). Protagonist, Jack Herriman, is a private detective hired by a woman to find her sister who’s missing. Jack finds the person. Supposed to be an open-shut case. But she’s murdered the next day. Jack decides to uncover the truth as to why she was killed. Finds his way to a commune. Finds more clues and something relating to an earlier case of arson. Case gets more complicated and there’s a hint of something else that Jack is implicated somehow (which is revealed in the end — the pieces fit together in the end). The murderer is unveiled, and turns out to be… [sorry, you gotta read it yourself; it's good stuff]

Second story is a very short piece: Jack goes after a man who absconded from a court case. Gun fired. Bystander gets shot. That’s just the storyline. The deeper story is about Christmas and modern day miracles (I’m being deliberately cryptic).

5 out of 5.

Good stuff.

I found each page beautifully drawn. Gripping storyline as well (Kurt wrote the Astro City series, and he doesn’t disappoint in this one).

In a way, it’s the typical Conan the Barbarian story, with swords and bloodshed, magic and sorcery.

ISBN: 1593075472
Kurt Busiek (writer)
Cary Nord (artist)

In this graphic novel, Conan starts off as an impetuous youth not yet wise to the world. He gets cheated. Then eventually ends up in the City of Thieves, where he hones his craft as a thief. He then steals into the Tower of the Elephant and meets a being with an interesting story to tell.

Last part of the graphic novel is an essay titled “A probable outline of Conan’s career” by P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, PhD. It’s an account, by these two gentleman who were fans of the Conan series, that traces the likely development of Conan as a youth to his elder years, based on Robert E. Howard’s (Conan’s creator) series.

Apparently, Howard didn’t really plan how the Conan stories developed chronologically. John D. Clark wrote to Robert E. Howard (Conan’s creator) in 1935, and he was encouraged by Howard to continue with the outline. John rewrote the outline with Schuyler after Howard’s death in 1936. Pretty good stuff if you want an overview of Conan’s career.

I’d give this 5 out of 5.

My 2007 Reading List

1. A quantum murder/ Peter F. Hamilton
2. ABR (Australian Book Review)/ Feb 2007
3. Across the nightingale floor/ Lian Hern
4. Acoustic guitar/ Mar 2006
5. Adbusters (journal of the mental environment)/ #72 (Jun - Jul 2007)
6. Analog science fiction and fact/Oct 2007
7. Analog science fiction and fact/ Dec 2005
8. Analog science fiction and fact/ Jan-Feb 2006
9. Analog science fiction and fact/ Mar 2006
10. Analog science fiction and fact/ Nov 2005
11. Asimov’s science fiction/ Aug 2007
12. Asimov’s Science Fiction/ Feb 2007
13. Asimov’s science fiction/ Jan 2007
14. Astro City: Confessions/ Kurt Busiek [Re-read this, actually]
15. Batgirl: A knight alone
16. Batman: Arkham asylum
17. Batman: Dark knight dynasty
18. Batman: Fortunate son
19. Batman: Gotham by gaslight/ Brian Augustyn & Mike Mignola
20. Batman: Hush (vol 2)/ Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee
21. Batman: Hush returns
22. Batman: Officer down (New Gotham 2)
23. Batman: Terror/ Doug Moench & Paul Gulacy
24. Big Guy and Rusty the boy robot/ Frank Miller & Geof Darrow
25. Blogs: Understanding the Information reformation and how it’s changing your world/ Hugh Hewitt
26. Bookmarks: For everyone who hasn’t read everything/ May - June 2006
27. Brilliance of the moon/ Lian Hern
28. Brownsville/ Neil Kleid & Jake Allen
29. Captain America: Red menace
30. Computer music/ April 2006
31. Death by spaghetti/ The Big Issue
32. Delta force: Operation Michael’s Sword/ John Harriman
33. Delta force: Prelude to war/ John Harriman
34. Diary of a duty manager: A collection of short stories/ Cyril Peter
35. Doing a little good: A book of the Riding for the Disabled Association of Singapore
36. Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder/ David Weinberger
37. Entrepreneur/ Dec 2006
38. Fantastic Four: First family/ Joe Casey & Chris Weston
39. For us, the living: A comedy of customs/ Robert A. Heinlein
40. Frommer’s Vienna & the Danube valley (5th ed.)
41. Ghost force/ Patrick Robinson
42. Grass for his pillow/ Lian Hearn
43. Greetings, carbon-based bipeds!/ Arthur C. Clarke
44. Guerrilla creativity: Make your message irresistible with the power of memes/ Jay Conrad Levinson
45. Hellboy: Odder jobs/ Frank Darabont, Charles de Lint, Graham Joyce, Mike Mignola
46. Hellstrom’s Hive/ Frank Herbert
47. Hocus pocus/ Kurt Vonnegut
48. Home recording power: Set up your own recording studio for personal and professional use/ Ben Milstead
49. How to draw manga vol. 3: Compiling application and practice/ Society for the study of Manga techniques
50. How to draw manga: vol 4
51. Jonah Hex: Face full of violence/ Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti & Luke Ross
52. Judge Dredd: Featuring Judge Death
53. Loving a schizophrenic: A true story of love, loyalty and courage/ Raymond Anthony Fernando
54. MacAddict/ Aug 2005
55. MacAddict/ July 2005
56. Macworld/ Oct 2005
57. Military gadgets: How advanced technology is transforming today’s battlefield… And tomorrow’s/ Nicholas D. Evans
58. Minivanity: An ADAM collection/ Brian Basset
59. Misspent youth/ Peter F. Hamilton
60. Modesty Blaise: Cry Wolf/ Peter O’Donnell & Enric Badia Romero
61. My Michael/ Amoz Oz
62. Mythology: The DC comics art of Alex Ross/ Chip Kidd & Geoff Spear
63. Norwegian wood/ Haruki Murakami
64. Orphanage/ Robert Buettner
65. Playing the Guitar (Everything You Need to Know About…)/ Jack Wilkins & Peter Rubie
66. Poetry/ May 2007
67. Rose/ Jeff Smith & Charles Vess
68. Rough guide to Vienna
69. Secrets of podcasting: Audio blogging for the masses/ Bart G. farkas
70. Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade/ Kurt Vonnegut
71. Snow Crash/ Neal Stephenson
72. Spot the Frog: A Cartoon Collection/ Mark Heath
73. Squadron Supreme: The pre-war years/ J. Michael Straczynski & Gary Frank
74. Starman Jones/ Robert A. Heinlein
75. Starship troopers/ Robert A. Heinlein
76. Stonehaven: Milk cartons & dog biscuits/ Kevin Tinsley & Phil Singer
77. Superman, Aliens 2: God war
78. Tales of the dying earth/ Jack Vance
79. Taxi talk: Tall tales, bright lights and stories of hope and yearning/ Zheng Shuying
80. The Authority vol 1: Relentless/ Warren Ellis
81. The begotten/ Lisa T. Bergren
82. The best of the best: 20 years of the year’s best science fiction/ edited by Gardner Dozois
83. The complete idiot’s guide to creative writing/ Laurie E. Rozakis
84. The dark knight returns/ Frank Miller, Klaus Janson & Lynn Varley
85. The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy/ John Carnell & Steve Leialoha
86. The house that Jack built/ Graham Masterton
87. The legend of Drizzt book III: Sojourn/ R. A. salvatore
88. The moon is a harsh mistress/ Robert A. Heinlein
89. The protector’s war/ S. M. Stirling
90. The ratvolution will not be televised (Pearls before swine collection)/ Stephan Pastis
91. The story of strauss in words and music
92. The three tensions: Winning the struggle to perform without compromises/ Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro
93. The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference/ Malcolm Gladwell
94. Thriving on vague objectives/ Scott Adams
95. Timeout: Vienna (3rd ed)
96. Tom Strong: Book Three
97. Tom Strong: Book Two
98. Tomorrow stories: Book Two/ Alan Moore
99. Undaunted courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the American west/ Stephen E. Ambrose
100. V for vendetta/ Alan Moore & David Lloyd
101. Virtuoso strauss transcription. Piers lane. Piano
102. Waggin’ tales: A Red and Rover cartoon collection/ Brian Basset
103. What Matters in Learning?/ Tan Ai Girl
104. Welcome to the monkey house: A collection of short works/ Kurt Vonnegut

SUMMARY:

Total items read

• 2007 = 104 items
• 2006 = 67 items
• 2005 = 91 items
• 2004 = 100 items

Fiction Vs Non-fiction

• 2007 = 69% Fiction Vs. 31% Non-fiction
• 2006 = 88% Fiction Vs. 12% Non-fiction
• 2005 = 79% Fiction Vs. 21% Non-fiction
• 2004 = 56% Fiction Vs. 44% Non-fiction

Subject/ Genre composition (top 3 in terms of %)

• 2007 = Art (graphic novels) 41%, Science Fiction 27%, Contemporary Fiction 4%
• 2006 = Fantasy 31%, Philosophy & Psychology/ Self-improvement 7%, IT & Computer 6% (others include Science Fiction 6%, Management 4%, Art 3%)
• 2005 = Fantasy 23%, Science Fiction 23%, Contemporary Fiction 15%, (other subjects/ genres include Military 4%, Art 4%, and Science 4%)
• 2004 = Science Fiction 26%, Contemporary Fiction 14%, Military 13% (others include Management 12%, Fantasy 9%, Library Science 5%)

Items from Singapore Collection

• 2007 = 4 (4% of items read)
• 2006 = 3 (4% of items read)
• 2005 = 9 (10% of total read)
• 2004 = 0

Formats

• 2007 = Books 46%, Magazines 33%, Graphic Novels 17%, CDs 4%
• 2006 = Books 44%, Magazines 18%, Graphic Novels 38%
• 2005 = Books 48%, Magazines 12%, Graphic Novels 40%
• 2004 = Books 73%, Magazines 22%, Graphic Novels 5%

ISBN:
NLB Call No.: 741.5 LUT -[ART]

Excellent work. I’d consider this a Contemporary Fiction in graphic novel form.

I started off not quite what to expect and ended up wanting more.

The story is about the lives of Ernie Weiss (a down and out magician), his aging and eccentric mentor Al Flosso, his ex-girl friend Esther (who punched someone in the face and ends up fleeing from the law), a down-and-out con artist, Nathan Lender seeking a better life for his daughter.

Ernie loses his confidence after the death of his brother (in the end you learn why he had this guilt). Al escapes from the home for the aged; hooks up with Ernie. They end up escaping from the landlord and the home.

Esther can’t seem to get over Ernie. She seems to lead a dull life. Nathan Lender cons Esther from some money when he buys coffee from where Esther works. She gets mad. Nathan gets away. Esther punches a guy who makes some disparaging remarks about her. She ends up fleeing the law.

It’s a contemporary drama that develops from seemingly very ordinary people, and unconnected lives and

Made me wonder why Ernie was so hung up about his brother’s death, why he and Esther who were clearly in love of each other but they just couldn’t get together.

And you end up sympathising with Nathan Lender, who chose a life of small cons and yet devotes his life to his precocious daughter.

The clean black & white artwork has this “cartoon-ish realistic”. Well, check it out yourself.

Nice artwork, but the story is what makes you read on.

It’s excellent stuff.

ISBN: 1595328343
NLB Call No.: 741.5952 NIH -[ART]

I normally don’t go for Manga, but was attracted by the rather morbid looking cover.

The story is set in a post-apocalypse world populated by humans and bio-constructs. Humans seem to have retreated several unknown levels down underground cities.

The protagonist named Killy, armed with superhuman reflexes and one very powerful handgun (packs a punch like a space cannon!) goes on an unknown mission, upwards towards the surface.

He seems to be searching for something called “Net Terminal Genes” but its pretty vague why. Seems everyone is searching for it.

The pages are filled with fights against the bioconstructs (cyborgs and assortment of mad machines). At one point, Killy meets some humans. There seems to be some ongoing feud between humans and artificial beings. They seem to want to kill each other species by default. Killy seems to be an exception, killing only when provoked.

Vol 1. ends with Killy continuing his journey upwards.

Unfortunately, the NLB library doesn’t seem to stock the rest of the volumes. Gotta enquire about this.

ISBN: 1840237643
NLB Call No.:

Mike Carey: writer
Michael Gaydos: artist

There’s a stark grungy feel to the black & white line drawings. Seemed messy at first but it works.

Took me a while to make sense of the story, but in a satisfying sort of way.

Inferno, or Hell, is a realm like an afterlife that’s all things bad (took me a while to figure that out).

You can’t die in Hell.

You can get killed but you are reborn in the desert and you make your way back to the city that seems stuck in the medieval times.

John Travis finds himself killed for no apparent reason and ends in a desert — Hell’s desert. He makes his way to the city and subsequently learns he’s really Jacomo Terence who escaped hell 800 years ago and is now back with some secret.

But John Travis has lost his memories (Jacomo deliberately made it so) and much of the plot goes on about his recovery of the hidden memories (in the form of crystal balls). He’s helped by Nostradamus and a Changeling named Shule (she transforms into any being by eating part of the flesh).

The mystery comes from the search for the memories, which seems to imply some deep dark secret (it’s not really a deep dark secret, but let’s just say the ending isn’t disappointing and actually gels the entire story together).

Suspense comes from the trio being hunted by the minions of Lord Baal (ruler of the city of hell), particularly a Captain Malateste who wears a suit of iron armour to literally contain a demon within)

It’s a weird tale that’s very “British” (best way i can articulate it). Rather sandman-ish in fact (Neil Gaiman).

ISBN: 156163459X
NLB Call No.: 741.5 KLE - [ART]

The Jewish Mafia.

That’s the main premise of the graphic novel in a sense.

Gangland slaying. Racketeering. Prohibition.

How a young kid got drawn into the lucrative world of crime. And ends up paying for it, with his life.

I’d rate this graphic novel “kid friendly”. I guess if you’ll allow your child to watch “Road to Perdition“, then this is really nothing.

The cover shows a sepia tone scene with men in hats, suits and coats, a car (model?) in the foreground; some men entering a candy store but you get the sense from the picture alone that they’re not there to buy candy.

It’s a graphic novel about gangsters in1930s Brooklyn. You might even say there’s nothing unique about the plot — nice young boy unwittingly enters into a world of crime; he profits from it but in the end the hard hand of the law comes down on them and they all crack. But not any gangsters — Jewish gangsters to be precise.

It’s a nice story. Good pace, interesting characters and character developments. Credible plot, with some level of suspense. The art work has it’s own appeal. Only thing I’d criticise about the art is that at the beginning, I couldn’t tell who was who ‘cos the characters seem to look so alike. But it worked out in the end.

I guess like all crime stories (which is true in life), a life of crime may pay at the beginning but sooner or later, you end up paying a high price for it.

I highly recommend this graphic novel.

I decided to read this book after it was highly recommended by a Robert Silverberg, who wrote a column on Jack Vance in the Feb 2007 issue of Asimov’s.

Silverberg wrote of Vance’s “use of colour, courtly dialogue, sardonic wit” and gave this excerpt:

“I respond to three questions,” stated the augur. “For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak to a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.”

And I was hooked.

NLB Call No.: VAN

The book was available at the library so I borrowed it.

The edition I read comprised of four stories - The Dying Earth, Eyes of the Overworlds, Cudgel’s Saga, and Rhialto the Marvellous.

Written in 1950, the writing style certainly is very different from current writing standards but nonetheless interesting.

It’s definitely a Fantasy genre, although the earth which Jack Vance writes is one where technology has reached such an advanced stage that technology and magic is indistinguishable.

Civilisation has regressed to a stage where technology is only remembered and invoked as spells and incantations, though there are occasional glimpses of technology.

In the foreword to Rhialto the Marvellous, a paragrah explains that:

“A spell in essence corresponds to a code, or a set of instructions, inserted into a sensorium of an entity which is able and unwilling to alter the environment in accordance with the message conveyed by the spell.”

Ok, makes sense to me, lol.

Silverberg (a successful SF author) was spot on about the descriptive powers of Vance.

Beautiful lines like… “sunset across the northern wastelands was a mournful process, languid as the bleeding of a dead animal” and “timp, fluke-mites, gangue and pust vecame his hated enemies; impactions of the clote were a major annoyance, requiring the sub-surface use of reamer, drench-bar and hose, in a position which, when the impaction was eased, became subject to the full force of the effluxion“.

Vance’s Dying Earth contains fantastic creatures like Worms (whose riders are called Wormingers), Deodands (feral human/ leopard hybrids), Saponids, Twk-men (tiny humaniods who rides on dragonflies and trades information — librarians!), and various demons of colourful and vivid descriptions of floral and

Oh, you just have to love the names of characters and places that Vance comes up with.

Like Lehuster the T’sais (twin sister of a character named T’sain), Benefer, Vermoulian the Dream-walker, Pendelume, Mazirian the Magician, Iucounu, the Cutz Wars of the Eighteenth Aeon, the Land of the Falling Wall, Chun the Unavoidable, the Spell of Forlorn Encystment.

What I didn’t really like in this book were the Cudgel stories. They were fine at the beginning but I felt they became too long drawn later.

Anyway the book is a Classic, in my opinion.

Worth a read just to get a different feel and perspectives to plots and writing styles.

It’s a thick book.

I brought this along to a Double-Bass recital and PY mistook it for a dictionary!

NLB Call No.: STE
ISBN: 344245302X

The book that predated actual virtual world environments like Second Life. It’s one of those books that has achieved true cult-status among geeks especially.

Cryptic plot summary:

The brain is a computer and for any computer, if there’s a way to hack into it, it will be done. And snow crash is that hack.

OK, how about this version of a plot summary?

Metaverse gets hacked. Real people die. Quest to discover the mastermind and plot in hacking the Metaverse.

It’s a lot more than that of course.

And way more interesting than what I’ve summarised.

Part of the story gets a bit metaphysical even, speculating on the origin of the Tower of Babel story in the Bible. I thought it’s quite clever to use the Bable story as an analogy.

Because Language is programming!

It’s not just Science (come to think of it, there’s very little hard-science being discussed). What made the book interesting to me was the idea of discovering how someone could actually hack and brainwash people in Virtual environments. If you’ve explored Second life, you’d know that the worse that can happen to your avatar is to get booted out of the system. Or your computer crashes. But the physical body of the user isn’t harmed (unless they chose to stay rooted to the computer for hours on end).

With characters’ named as Hiro Protagonist (sword fighter and computer hacker and the main protagonist — duh), Y.T., Mr Lee’s Greater Hong Kong…

… and ideas like franchised nations and mafia operations, human Gargoyles, nuclear isotope-powered weaponry and cyborg rat things, Kouriers (who harphoon on speeding vehicles to reach their delivery destinations), a fight in the Metaverse that translates to actual repercussions to the users in real life — it’s interesting to say the least.

I finished the book while standing in a queue, waiting for a cab.

I thought, this book’s a hack (pun intended) of a read.

I thought, it’s only a matter of time someone makes this into a movie.

And I unconsciously hummed what I thought would be the perfect soundtrack to end the movie!

From having to write these notes, I learned how to spell miscellaneous in full properly!

Excellent job in explaining the multi-faceted issues surrounding the organisation of information.

NLB Call No.: 303.4833 WEI (General collection section)
ISBN: 0805080430

My main takeaways from this book:

• Libraries are in the business of making sense of the miscellaneous
• The traditional ways that we organise information is limiting, in light of digital and social media and the Internet media

One of my colleague said tongue-in-cheek: “Basically, what Weinberger is saying is that we librarians shouldn’t classify anything! And we’ll soon be out of jobs!”

Rough Notes:
p. 5 - “In physical space, some things are nearer to others… These limitations mean that no matter how well Meddil and his group do their jobs, most of Staples are just in our way” etc.

[Thinking aloud] So does that mean no matter how well librarians (cataloguers and space planners) do their jobs, most of what’s in the physical library is considered as obstacles? Suggests digital world can overcome limitations imposed by phy world. But digital world also has probs. I think it’s cos humans understand the world by touch and sight (if we could taste books we would). We want to know if an item is of the right shape and size (unless e’ve used it before). So why not combine the best of both worlds? What is the best of both worlds?

p.7 “information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous”

p.16 - cataloguing work at LC; 8000 new subject headings a year with as many being modified.
“The Library of Congress carefully engineered, highly evolved processes for ordering information simply won’t work in the new world of digital information.” i.e. 7000 books catalogued vs 7m webpages per day.

p.22 flickr works even though there’s no controlled vocab.

[Thinking aloud] We have controlled vocab to ensure consistency, to aid recall and precision. But flickr works without this bec
- users don’t really need recall & precision
- flickr’s sheer number of images make up for lack of stds, which means you’re likely to find something than nothing. See above point
- sharing images is primary feature of flickr. Searching is a bonus or natural spin off. Conversely, libraries are traditionally set up to have search & retrieval as primary, not the sharing.
- flickr satisfies the “i want it now” urges (’Bytes’ can be delivered instantly). Libraries, bec they deal more with physical items (’atoms’ have physical contraints), require additional effort to obtain the item.

p. 23 “The miscellaneous order is not transforming only business. It is changing how we think the world itself is organized and — perhaps more important — who we think has the authority to tell us so.”

[Thinking aloud] That made me think — libraries are seen to have “authority” over the physical items they acquire. Because we know how our books are classified.

chpt 2 - on “alphabetization”. seems to set the tone for classification systems. That they are ultimately artificial. But some have logical sequences or “joints”.

p48 - more on melvil dewey. Interesting details about him, which I’m sure will interest librarians.

par 4 -asks why librarians are not doing anything about the prob (will the answer be revealed? See 46)

p47 - why DDC has limitations & bias

p48 par 3 “these anomalies… 1876″

p50 - about how libraries have to change because of the surge in published books (50 years after the Gutenberg press was invented).
[Thinking aloud] So libraries have always been adapting with the times. But in this Digital Age, the crux is in the rate of change. More materials and more user-empowering services have emerged that it’s impossible for libraries to keep up with change. The more entrenched we are (with our standards and people and institutions that have a stake) the less easy it is for us to have impactful changes. We won’t have 50 years to adapt. We may have 5 years.

p59 - on what amazon.com did re classification. More interesting to me was this:
“”Customer reviews were deemed very, very controversial when we launched them, ” Hart remarks. “Publishers said you’re allowing users to say that they hate a book.” The response from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, as Hart recalls it, was: “It will sell more books… just not ones customers don’t like.”

p71 - on how we see the world being organised; “all along, though, our knowledge of the world has assumed the shape of a tree [hierarchies] because that knowledge has been shackled to the physical. Now that the digitization of information is allowing us to go beyond the physical in ways Aristotle could not have dreamed, the shape of our knowledge is changing.”

p.78 - faceted classification system; ranganathan; Five Laws of Library Science (a librarian with an orderly mind and spiritual desire to help people)

p 85 - strategy of dumping - but u need (or computer) to be able to Describe it first, right?

p92 - on delicious.com - how it got developed, the thinking behind it.

p97 - about wikipedia. Excellent summary. The architecture behind it (new to me — a Wikipedia article isn’t a single object. The text, graphics, formatting rules are all stored on different servers and pulled together only when a user requests a page.)

p101 - four properties of knowledge & Filter on the Way Out, not In.
*Thought - maybe in organising my sgsocial mediadir wiki, i was trying to keep things as misc as possible.

p102 - “experts can be helpful, but in the age of the miscellaneousthey and their institutions are no longer in charge of our ideas.”
“while the economics of publishing ensures that most blogs indeed wouldn’t be let through the gates, the aggregate value of all the blogs in the “long tail” (to use the term Chris Anderson made popular in his book of that name)–each perhaps of interest to only a few people–is incalculable.”

p102 - suggests publishing via blog is inversing the publishing model (then: filter then publish, because of cost is what i think. Now publish then filter out what you think is relevant; cost of publishing & distribution is not an issue other than time)

p 102 to 105 - four strategic principles in how ideas and physical objects can be organised:
- Filter on the way out, not on the way in
- Put each leaf on as many branches as possible
- Everything is metadata and everything can be a label
- Give up control

p107 - how UPC/ barcodes started: 1948 (grad work), 1966 (call for autocheckouts by National Association of Food Chains), 1972 (RCA system installed), 1974 (first working system identifed a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum that is now housed in the Smithsonian — gum or machine?), 1981 (U.S. Department of Defence required bar codes on all products it purchased).

p131 - Gorman on blogs (statement in 2005): “A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communuicate their thoughts via the web…”

p134 - 136 - on wikipedia authors and editors:
135: “At Wikipedia, credibility isn’t about an author’s credentials; it’s about an author’s contributions.” (i.e. you are evaluated on what you contribute in Wikipedia and not your real-life occupation or status).

p148 - dumb labels that are famous
“On Sears hair dryer: “Do not use while sleeping.”
“On Sainsbury’s peanuts: “Warning: Contains nuts.”

p165 - 168 on taggings (preceding that, about labels and implied, or what’s left out). how it works, also issues and potential problems

p181 - on the importance of communicatins across informal lines of authority; that innovation happens at the intersection of those lines. I know it to be true. And now i realise it’s because at those informal intersections, it’s trust that gets people talking and working and not formal authority. I share with you because i want to, not because i have to.

p188 - “any business that forces it’s product into categories is performing an unnatural act” — libraries too, and its true i guess.

P. 189 - “a business that forces its products — or employees — into a predefined set of categories is performing an unnatural act”. (Well, artificial. Is there a natural act?)

P189 - the web being permission-free: alas some try to impose otherwise.
[Thinking aloud] See deeplinking issues. I don’t get it. Why sue google for the failings of its own web design? Shouldn’t you build your site such that there’s no way to deeplink? Failing which you should rethink your business model. Or just put in bold, and not fine print or hidden in T&C, that no deeplinking is allowed. Then we won’t direct users to your site. Cos if you have such a mindset, i won’t want to direct users to your information anyway.

P193 - on the concept behind the schmantic web.
[Thinking aloud] what i like abt this book is that it summarises so neatly all the issues, tpics and workings of tools that ought to interest all information professionals.

P 195 - mentions neurocommons.org; example of the use of the semantic web.
Mentions microformats

p216 - argues that anonymous peer reviews makes articles better
[Thinking aloud] i say it depends on who is attracted to review, but generally it seems to be true — if we consider the comments left at youtube videos, most do not add value to te video content, but some do, e.g. Debunking the material in the video

p 223 - that the web disintermediates by removing the middleperson; removing a layer of inefficiency (which is true for routine tasks that customers can do & know for themselves.

[Thinking aloud] Where does that leave libraries? What aspects of the job cannot be done or customer recognises that they know enough about? Note the diff bet “customer not knowing but don’t recognise or acknowledge this” vs “recognising that they don’t know”. Recommended reads? But i can ask my friends. Trusted source? I trust my friend bec i know him. So librarian to become everyone’s friend? Well there will still be jobs that customer don’t want to do for themselves. So what then is the solution? Or maybe all this is just academic. There are expectations for the job to remain? Or is there? Will libraries be closed in singapore? Now it’s unthinkable. But who’s to say in future?

p235 - 257 - chapter references and sources (interesting stuff).
[Thinking aloud] Guess what? They are organised by chapter numbers. Bec this is print. And it’s constrained by… Ah, go read chapter 1 again