A Tale of Two—No, Three—Libraries

Last Tuesday I found myself in New York City, with a few hours in the afternoon to spend. I’d arranged to meet my Vergil, Jon Bruner, at the New York Public Library. Awaiting Jon on the steps, I felt I’d stepped into a W.H. Whyte map: 

The place demands interaction, and lo! a fellow sitting behind a tray table, with a sign on on the front proclaiming, “MEET THE AUTHOR.” Well, why not? The gent turned out to be Garrett Buhl Robinson, and he read from his books, with a pitch-perfect southern accent and pace. As an editor, I caught some quibblable phrases, but on the whole, the imagery, the connection of the personal and the historical and, the rhyme between structure and sentence were impressive.

The Library is, of course, an astounding achievement, not just a monument to the democratization of knowledge, but an ongoing project of the same. The openness of the reading rooms and the easy access to the collections are obvious. And my god, is it astoundingly beautiful.

But wait, as they say; there’s more! The NYPL does its exhibits well, too (we went to The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter), as any good late-20th-century research library does. The building renovation, subject of debate is one indicator of their thinking about the future—I’ve got no dog in that fight but it’s easy to see that they’re focused on their users and trying to continue providing what their users need.

But let me back up a week and mention the last time I came across the NYPL. A few years ago, it would have been in the course of acquiring images from their collection; this time it was much more exciting.* The NYPL map vectorizer is a really cool tool to extract data from paper maps and encode it as geographical information that can be layered with hundreds of other layers and kinds of information.

What’s more, it’s a totally open-source project on GitHub, so you can tweak it to your purposes or contribute to improving the original project. This is democratization of research at its highest. Given the range of what NYPL has put on GitHub, they are taking ‘public’ very seriously.

Changing gears

The next stop after the NYPL was the (Morgan Library and Museum)[http://www.themorgan.org/home.asp]. An utterly flabbergasting place, it was J.P. Morgan’s personal study and library, since converted into a research library and museum, with an appendix by Renzo Piano. The presence of so many historically mindblowing and phenomenally valuable things (three Gutenberg Bibles! manuscripts from Percy Bysse Shelley to Blowin’ in the Wind! I could go on, but I’d break down in tears) in such a setting was almost too much.

(As an aside: if you go, be sure to ask the security guards—they are very well-informed—about the staircase. I won’t spoil the surprise.) 

It’s good to be the richest man in America (and to have Belle da Costa Greene managing your collection and acquisitions).

Between the NYPL and the Morgan, we have two wonderful and very different libraries, mappable onto (let’s be honest—ancient Athenian) notions of democracy and oligarchy. But they called to mind a third library, George Washington’s library at Mount Vernon.

Washington was, according to the Atlantic, America’s wealthiest president. Yet his library had a mere 1,300 volumes (1,287 + maps, charts, etc, to be specific). Mine has about 700 (probably a few more; I haven’t updated my catalogue in a systematic way in a while). Mount Vernon is about 7,000 square feet; my house is about 3,200. You see where I’m going with this: One of the wealthiest men in America, and our first president, had a standard of living (hey, can you think of a better measure than library and living space?) broadly comparable with mine; the multiplication and spread of wealth and knowledge brought about by the Industrial Revolution is embodied in these three buildings.

*Your excitement level may vary.

Weekend plans

We're (along with 15 of our closest friends) going camping this weekend. Just a quick little jaunt to the dunes, more than an S24O (that's "sub-24 hour overnight"), less than an expedition. It's fun to exercise the camping skills and knowledge--left maturing for some years. True, we've had two- and three-person trips, even a two-family campout in Michigan last summer. But nothing so, well, Boy-Scoutly: a mix of experienced and inexperienced campers, all very eager (and honestly I've very little confidence in my ideas of what they're eager for).

It will be fun. And we will so our best to prepare and then forget that we are in charge; that is, to release the responsibility for each person's having a good time to the campers themselves.

In other news, our camera tells us that we are about to shoot its ten thousandth picture. A sunset on the beach, perhaps?

Blogging the future: Race to Mackinac

The sailboat race to Mackinac begins this Saturday (July 19, 2008). If you want to follow our progress, here's how:

	14-Jul-08 - 12:18pm Dear Sailors and Friends: For the first time in the history of the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, all boats in the fleet will carry position transponders, which will allow spectators around the world to follow the Race. This state-of-the-art tracking system allows anyone following the race receive hourly updates on individual boats, entire sections, or even the entire 439 boat fleet as the race moves up Lake Michigan. Race tracking services are being provided by iBoattrack, a division of Horizon Marine. There are two methods to access the tracking site maintained by iBoattrack. The first way is to go to the Race to Mackinac web site CLICK HERE) then click on multimedia and race tracking. You can also bookmark the site directly at http://charthorizon.com/races/2008_chicago_mackinac/htdocs/ (the site will become active shortly before the race begins). In order to familiarize yourself with how the tracking works, we urge you to take a moment to look at iBoattrack's last race tracked—the Newport Bermuda race—CLICK HERE . Though the race is now complete, you can see how the system worked. You can easily select individual sections to track (the 'class' drop down box). You can also use the movie mode to animate the race. Note that you can mouse over any boat’s current position (except when in movie mode) and get the vessel’s boat speed and other information. If you would like more detailed data on any boat, select either the 'Boat Mapper' or the 'Google Mapper' from the links at the top of the page. These will take you to a separate page that allows you to focus on an individual boat or boats. It allows you to animate the race too. In addition, there are a couple of extras for users of the site to explore. First, iBoattrack will maintain and monitor discussion boards. We encourage you to visit the boards and discuss the race with other friends, family and fans of the Race. Should you have questions about the tracking system, how to use it, or how it works, iBoatrack will do their best to answer you on the boards. Second, in order to learn about the weather than the sailors are experiencing on the Race course, you may visit AccuWeather.com, which will provide regularly updated weather information during the race. A link to the AccuWeather.com site will be available on the tracking home page. In case you encounter difficulties with the website, there is a 'help' button in the top right of each page of the tracker. Please forward this e-mail to anyone who may be interested in following the Race, and encourage them to track your progress as you race north. We hope that this project will make the Race more exciting for your family and friends. Regards, Greg J. Miarecki Chair 2008 ChicagoYacht Club Race to Mackinac Greg Freeman Vice-Chair 2008 Chicago Yacht ClubRace to Mackinac Winn Soldani Technology Chair 2008 ChicagoYacht Club Race to Mackinac

Small adventures

1.
Saturday Dr. Fledermaus and I took Bat Jr. to her first baseball game; she had a blast (Dingbat was disappointed in John Maine's third-inning performance, but that didn't dampen Jr.'s pleasure at the crowd, the pretzels (or shoul I say, the mustard; Jr.'s focus is the condiments at just about any meals).

But as with so much else (at least when Dr. F and I are involved), the adventure is in the journey. After the game, we strolled down Clark, Wells, and State streets from Wrigley to Quartino for dinner. Which was delightful--Bat Jr. got a mini-nap in, we got to window-shop with absolutely no danger of entering and purchasing--until... Rain. The rain made everything, well, wet. So I suppose that I'd have to say it was wet and delightful.

The reason we open ourselves up to these (mis)aventures is the payoffs--not just the goofy stories, but also things like meeting Griffin, the bassett hound, and his owners, who took shelter under the same awning we did during a moment of fairly intense rain. One of Griffin's owners, it turns out, works (once a week) around the block from where we're living now. This is one of the mild surprises of living in the city, especially one like Chicago where the neighborhoods are so strong, and you might see your neighbors (we did see one of them on the north side, too). We expect that our niehgbors go out, but it's a pleasant surprise that others come into our community, too!

2.
The weekend wouldn't be complete without a bike ride: this morning I biked up to Montrose through the rain: a steady, medium-intensity rain punctuated by bouts of thunderstorm-like intensity (during the actual thunder, I was in a tunnel under Lake Shore Drivee adjusting my cleats).

I relived my running days as a "mudder" for a while. Every time a storm cell passed overhead, the (tail)wind strengthened, so along with the rain came a boost in my speed, tearing through the puddles with the rain dripping off my helmet.