[FRIAM] Bibliophiliacs (was:Curmudgeons) Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Jon -

What a familiar story when dealing with nearly decomposeable
bureaucratic hierarchies (left/right hand mutual ignorance)!   When I
came to LANL, the library allowed books (after a short period of limited
circulation upon acquisition) to be shelved as long as you wanted in
your own office bookshelf as long as you agreed to allow another staff
member to "borrow" it from your shelf (mediated/tracked by the library)
for the nominal designated week or two.   At some point, the library
decided to eliminate this by A) calling all of the books in;  B)
allowing a free-for-all giveaway to staff of said books; C) allowing a
more generous personal purchase allowance for books; D) capping the size
of the permanent collection.   Fortunately when they called the books
"home", one of the possible responses on the list of books en holdin,
was "unable to return book" implying damage or loss, but leaving room
for "I don't want to".   The list of "unable to return" books was
remitted to our group leaders (middle managers) who might consider some
kind of censure, but I never heard of any group leader even checking
one's bookshelves for any such "witheld" books or complaining to
anyone.   In principle, a staff member could have turned in a book and
then gone to the free-for-all and retrieved it.   I gave up my Knuth
collection from that era to someone else who coveted them even MORE.

Your anecdote makes me think that I must invite you (someday) to the
"grand unpacking" of my 6x6x12 box-trailer of books (fondly known as my
"two cords of books"... if packed tight, closer to 3.5 cords @ 432cf?)
where I would invite any number of people to:

 1. Remove a box (without tumbling the rest down)
 2. Open the box and go through the books
 3. Pile questionable empty boxes aside
 4. Stack re-useable books
 5. Pause for drinks, snacks, share book-anecdotes, blow your nose from
    all the dusty jackets...
 6. Shelve/Stack on temporary shelving by an ad-hoc (somewhere between
    Babel and Dewey Decimal) indexing concept
 7. Pause for drinks, snacks, book-anecdote exchange
 8. Maintain a bookshelf-range as "coveted by Jon"
 9. Watch other participant's stacks for possible trades
10. Pause for drinks, snacks, book-anecdote exchange
11. Throw tarp over ad-hoc bookshelves
12. Look skeptically at the teetering pile of book-boxes left in trailer
13. Look skeptically as *I* bring yet-more-boxes from various hiding
    places in my sheds and house to trailer
14. Estimate how many more days it will take to have triaged the whole mess
15. Consider whether you want to return tomorrow.
16. Bring your own selection of 1 (minimum) books to my outdoor firepit
17. Select a higher-strength alcoholic libation
18. Participate in ritual burning of 1 (or more) books (requires some
    effort/technique)
19. Roast corn/smores/veggie kebobs over flaming books
20. see 15
21. lather
22. rinse
23. repeat

- Steve

PS.  My greatest score ever during my rabid-collection (ending ca 2014)
phase was a *full color* faithful reproduction of Michelson's notebook
(published by Bell Labs in the late 60s?) covering the famous
Michelson-Morely experiment at the St. Johns annual $5/bag-of-books sale
(2003?).   I saw a stack of perhaps 20 of them and happily took a copy,
coveting the other 19.   Meanwhile  my partner Suzanne tripped over them
as well and took 2 copies (I was surprised she didn't take all of them)
as her father was a Physics professor and the diagrams at least, were
familiar...   a few minutes later, I saw another patron take the
remaining stack and drop them in his sack.   I was really torn by this
act of greed, even though I had contemplated grabbing "a few more".   
Later, I found Suzanne cutting up one of them for a collage/book
project, planning to vivisect the second one (I had hidden my own copy
by that time)... and talked her into letting me make a color photocopy
of the pages from the second copy she intended to have her way with.   
I had a particular colleague/friend in mind to gift the second copy to,
but over the decade(s?) since then I have ached to have additional
copies to share.   I think I once did a search and found a copy for sale
online for some outrageous price (~$100) but did not find anything (just
now) with a half-hearted effort.   I'm not sure if my copy-in-reserve is
still in one of those boxes or in a hidden file-folder or if in fact I
gave over and gifted it to someone spontaneously.   If I still have a
copy, I would gift it to you Jon.  Stay tuned...

> Steve,
>
> MAKIF'AT writes:
> “Books are catnip – or porn, if you want to be vulgar about it - to me, and
> if they’re in plain sight, well, I’m going to be looking at them.  I’m also
> gonna hightail it out after the meeting and look up as many of the titles as
> I can remember to see if they should go on my wishlist.  I’m a bibliophile,
> and that’s what we do.”
>
> I relate deeply. Thank you, Signore Eco. In another life, I would have loved
> to be a librarian. When Margaret retired from her position as the SFI head
> librarian, I asked her if I could be considered for the post. She reminded
> me politely that I don't have a library science degree. The more unfortunate
> reason, as far as I am concerned, is that I simply don't have the
> temperament for it. I am hot-blooded through and through. A few years ago
> the downtown branch of the Santa Fe public library notified me to return a
> copy of Richard Hamming's 'Numerical Methods', a really nice hard-cover
> Springer copy. I did and then waited for a day to check it back out again,
> but alas it was gone, and not just checked out by another patron. The entire
> math section disappeared! I went to the desk and asked about the book. The
> math section was boxed up and sent to auction. They assured me that they
> were to get new books soon. I asked for another copy of the book and they
> were sad to inform me that it was too expensive for them to replace. One
> month later, I returned to find that the math books had been replaced by
> books about mathematicians. Surely they were just ignorant, us wizards read
> such esoteric tomes and they cannot be responsible for knowing what it is we
> want or need. I walked up to the checkout desk and asked if they were hiring
> for a curation position, and they again sadly informed me that they were
> not. I haven't returned since. Please, make no mistake, Alexandria is
> burning.
>
> As far as Go documentaries are concerned, have you checked out 'The
> Surrounding Game'🀀? A co-director of the film, Cole Pruitt, was finishing
> up a post-doc at LANL when he and Will completed the film. Cole would join
> us for the Saturday Santa Fe go club meetup at St. John's to play and he was
> a pleasure to learn from (~3 dan?).
>
> 🀀 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surrounding_Game
>
>
>
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