Rameses II, who ascended the throne in 1300 B.C.E., assembled a library that contained official documents, literature, historical treatises, and works of moral philosophy and proverbial wisdom, science, and medicine. Rameses’ library bears the inscription “the dispensary of the soul” (or “the house of healing for the soul”). Continue reading
“Clearly, if the explosion in information continues, it cannot be handled by present means. If by 1985 the volume of information is four (low estimate) or seven times (high estimate) that of 1970, then some other way must be found to organize this onslaught of babel. Continue reading
“They can’t build a machine to do our job; there are too many cross-references in this place”—The head librarian (Katharine Hepburn) to her anxious colleagues in the research department when a “methods engineer” (Spencer Tracy) is hired to “improve workman-hour relationship” in a large corporation; by the end of the film, Desk Set (released in 1957), she proves her point by winning, not only the engineer’s heart, but also a contest with the ominous looking “Electronic Brain” (aka Computer).
“American libraries operate in a societal environment where there is almost morbid fascination with the latest form of technology. At one extreme is its recreational manifestation – witness the phenomena of the hula-hoop and the yo-yo. At the other is industry, where the very most recent gadget is swiftly adopted by ‘progressive’ management, not infrequently before any evidence has been accumulated about the relative effectiveness, utility, or applicability of such equipment to the specific requirements of the organization”–Paul Wasserman, The Library and the Machine, 1965
Today in 1892, George Blickensderfer received a patent for the first portable typewriter.
8 million books were published prior to the 19th century, while 1 million books were published in 2008 alone. Sine the invention of the movable type, an estimated 100 million books have been printed. The graph below shows the number of books indexed per publication year as reported by different indexing services and the number of books digitized by The Million Book Project, and Project Gutenberg.
Source: Places and Spaces
LIBRARY: From Fr. libre, meaning free, and proper name ANDY. Something free from Andy Carnegie–Gideon Wurdz, The Foolish Dictionary, 1904.
Today in 1953, the horror film House of Wax premiered, the first 3D film with stereophonic sound. From Wikipedia: “Due to growing popularity of 3D and an increase in 3D screens, an increasing amount of newly released films have been screened in 3D. However, film industry observers have noted that 2011 has shown a considerable decline in audience interest in 3D presentation…. In view of this trend, there has been box office analysis concluding the implementation of 3D presentation is apparently backfiring by discouraging people from going to movie theatres at all. As Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo notes, ‘In each case, 3D’s more-money-from-fewer-people approach has simply led to less money from even fewer people.'”
Advertising Age: “A recent study found that consumers in their 20s (“digital natives”) switch media venues about 27 times per nonworking hour… “digital immigrants” (consumers who grew up with old-school technologies, such as TV, radio and print, and adapted to newer ones)… switched media venues just 17 times per nonworking hour. Put another way, natives switch about 35% more than immigrants.”
“What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”—Herbert Simon Continue reading
Today in 1833, the Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire was established by the Peterborough Town Meeting. It was the first public library in the world supported by taxation. In 1849, New Hampshire was the first state to pass a law permitting towns to appropriate money for the purchase of books and the maintenance of a building for the use of the public. Continue reading
The Story of Information 