June Book a Month Challenge: Knowledge

Yeah. I'm late. Get over it.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Tuchman covers only the first thirty days of the Great War in this five hundred page book: that time when all the players were moving into the positions that they would then hold for the next five years. Mining archives in Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany, she is able to go behind the scenes of all four governments and show not just what happened on the ground, but how important the personalities of the various players were in setting up foundation for a static war.

The first chapter, "A Funeral," shows us how different the world was during the first decade of the Twentieth Century from that of the 1950s and beyond. At the funeral of Edward VII we are introduced to Kaiser William II who, more than anybody else, is responsible for war. Tuchman portrays William as neurotic, desperate for the respect of others, paranoid about how King Edward was "encircling" Germany as he visited all the countries of the continent.

The main action begins in chapter two, on August 1, runs through various diplomatic and military alliances to lay the groundwork, and then on to war, which begins with Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality as it marches through that newly created country on its way to France. Tuchman very clearly shows that at any instant during that first thirty days, if things had gone even the slightest bit differently, the outcome could have been very different. Anything from a swift German victory, if the different parts of the army had followed through on the original plan, or taken advantage of opportunities that they were unaware were available; to the French and British throwing back the German forces and ending the war, if only they had been more willing to cooperate and coordinate their forces, might have been possible.

This book clearly shows the effect of the "fog of war" on the plans of men. That fog is not just problems of terrain and the difficulty of communication, though. It is also the internal politics of the armies, and the clash of personalities throughout the chain of command and between commanders of different units. If the aristocratic German generals had been able to suppress their historic design for blood and glory, they might have been better able to retreat in front of the French, leading them deeper into a trap, for example.

Tuchman goes into exquisite, and to some extent necessary, detail about the movement of the various units, and the relationships between them on the ground, but it can be very difficult to keep track of who's who and where they all all at any given time. There are a few maps, but with modern printing processes, more maps, and perhaps some colour to ease the reading of them, would make following the action easier. She also shows how a war can seem "inevitable," and how everybody can see that it is only a matter of time before the combat begins (of course, that that is possible should be clear to anybody reading today's headlines).

Anthony Hope and the Triumph of the Public Domain

While in a local independent bookstore last weekend, I discovered that Penguin has reprinted The Prisoner of Zenda as part of their Red Classics series. While it looks like not everything in the Red Classics series looks like it's in the public domain much of it is.

But reprinting classic adventure novels isn't the triumph of the public domain. Everybody knows that Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story are reworked Shakespeare, and that when Disney's not fighting to eliminate the public domain, it's raiding it for plots and marketing opportunities. Of course, there's also Alan Moore's Justice League of Public Domain Victorian Characters, which was made into an execrable movie. That reuse and recycling of older material is the triumph of the public domain.

So how does Anthony Hope, the author of The Prisoner of Zenda, fit into this triumph of the public domain? Well, even if you'd never heard of it before today, you've probably seen one of the movies based on it: two of the most faithful adaptations of Zenda starred Richard Dreyfus and Kevin Klein. I also seem to recall the same plot being used for episodes of sitcoms over the years as well. And of course, the fictional European country of Ruritania is almost as famous as the British university of Oxbridge.

May Book a Month Challenge: Mother

Jackson, Shirley. Life Among the Savages. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young, 1953.

Shirley Jackson is best known today for her sophisticated horror novels, such as The Haunting of Hill House, but in the late '40s and early '50s she was writing light domestic comedy for the likes of Good Housekeeping, Harper's, and Mademoiselle. These columns were gathered together and published as Life Among the Savages, which tells of an urban pair of writers with two children who move from a New York apartment to a house in suburban Vermont. In 1997, a review in Library Journal described it as "good fun of the Erma Bombeck kind," which, while useful for identifying the genre and most likely readers, does not do it justice. Jackon's work in the antecedent of the rest of the American domestic comedies: Bombeck is good fun of Jackson kind.

While Life is well written and entertaining, it has two flaws that made it difficult for me to read at times. The first, and larger, problem for me is the tone of voice with which Jackson tells her stories. She frequently invokes a "cutesy ironic" tone, which might have been amusing in the '50s for her target readership of homemakers, but often grated for me. For example, while I can understand the humour inherent in a mother of three suddenly having to learn to drive, the naivete exhibited while the characters are car shopping is far broader than necessary ("We lacked only a car. This was adjusted by a gentleman who, saying he acted only from pure friendship, sold us one of his cars.").

The second flaw is that the stories feel slightly dated. Tales of the problems of hiring and dealing with mothers' helpers, the challenges of getting together for a night of bridge, and running short of money because one forgot to cash the cheque from one's husband do not resonate with the modern reader. I found it particularly difficult to accept the idea that Jackson was so dependent upon her husband for household cash while at the same time being a successful writer with her own income. Another example is Jackson's description of packing to go to hospital to deliver their third child: the idea that one plans for a relaxing getaway of a week or so in hospital following a normal childbirth is, today, inconceivable.

Over all, Life Among the Savages is an amusing light read, but not up to the level her other writing.

Eric S. Raymond on Proprietary ILSs

There's been a discussion going on recently on the code4lib mailing list about Innovative Interfaces' plans to remove some functionality from the terminal-based interface to Innopac/Millennium, nominally due to a security hole in that interface. The problem is that many site have written specialized programs, which interact with the terminal interface, to automate certain common operations, and those programs will no longer work. Eric Raymond, a prominent open source advocate, wrote a paper entitled The Magic Cauldron (collected in The Cathedral and the Bazaar) that directly addresses the difficulties that we are starting to become more aware of and vocal about:

Suppose you go the conventional closed-source route. If you do, then you put your firm at the mercy of a supplier monopoly—because by definition, there is only one place you can go for support, bug fixes, and enhancements. If the supplier doesn't perform, you will have no effective recourse because you are effectively locked in by your initial investment and training costs. Your supplier knows this. Under these circumstances, do you suppose the software will change to meet your needs and your business plan...or your supplier's needs and your supplier's business plan?

[...]

Contrast this with the open-source choice. If you go that route, you have the source code, and no one can take it away from you. Instead of a supplier monopoly with a chokehold on your business, you now have multiple service companies bidding for your business—and you not only get to play them against each other, you have the option of building your own captive support organization if that looks less expensive than contracting out. The market works for you. (cite)

I do think that he was overly optimistic about the marketplace providing "multiple service companies bidding" for our support business, but that is beginning to happen. And we're also starting to see the creation of the "captive support organization[s]" that he predicted as larger library systems begin to recognize that it is cheaper to build a new, or adapt an existing, open source ILS than it is to pay for even one year of a license and support contract with the larger proprietary ILSs.

I can only wonder how long it will take the large ILS vendors to recognize that the only way they can compete is by opening up their systems and simplifying access to our data, which they are merely storing. Continuing to restrict access and block innovation will only drive more libraries to systems that let librarians, and their users, be creative.

One Big Library Unconference in Toronto

The Emerging Technology Interest Group at York University Libraries is hosting an Unconference (I think that's just the academically acceptable way to refer to a barcamp) looking at idea originally voiced by Dan Chudnov Wendy Newman (updated: thanks to William Denton for correcting my misattribution) that

"It seems like there are lot of different kinds of libraries: public libraries, school libraries, university libraries, college libraries, law libraries, medical libraries, corporate libraries, special libraries, private libraries. But really there's just One Big Library, with branches all over the world."

which is certainly the way that I wish things worked when I'm using the various libraries that I have access to.

Join us in Toronto and see how close we can get to One Big Library!

April Book A Month Challenge: Beauty

Fables: Legends in Exile. Bill Willingham, writer, et al. New York: Vertigo, 2002.
Fables: Animal Farm. Bill Willingham, writer, et al. New York: Vertigo, 2003.

Hundreds of years ago, the lands of fairy tales and fables were overrun by "The Adversary" and the characters of our favourite stories, forced into exile in the real world. The human fables live quietly in New York, ruled by King Cole, the Mayor of Fabletown, who is merely a figurehead. The true power behind the throne is Snow White, Director of Operations, who is supported by her Sheriff, Bigby (i.e. "Big B.") Wolf, transformed into human shape somehow. That is the premise of the Fables series of graphic novels, which are collections of the Vertigo comic books of the same title. Each title in the series is a complete story arc from the original books.

Legends in Exile, the first novel in the series, is a standards murder mystery, solved by the traditional means of the genre, with no dependency on the special skills of the characters (beyond the fact that Bigby can ID the crime-scene blood by smell). All the usual suspects are dragged out to solve the mystery of the murder of Snow White's estranged wild sister, Rose Red: her sometime boyfriend, Jack the Giant Killer; the wealthy and mysterious Blue Beard; Snow's ex-husband, Prince Charming; and there's even a cameo by the witch of the Black Forest, last seen dining on children in her gingerbread house. Legends is a light take on the noir hard-boiled detective genre, and Bigby doesn't disappoint, solving everything while managing to piss off everybody.

The second volume in the series, Animal Farm, is, as suggested by the name, a tale of political upheaval and revolution. In Legends, we get glimpses of a talking pig, one of the "three little" tormented by the big bad wolf in the homelands, wandering through the scenery as a bit of porcine stage business. At the beginning of Animal Farm it is revealed that Colin has escaped from "The Farm," a sanctuary for the non-human fables in upstate New York. Snow White, and Rose Red leave the city for the Farm to return Colin and to check in with the manager of the Farm. While there, they discover that many of the animals are unsatisfied with they're lives for forced seclusion and dream of returning to the Homelands to fight off The Adversary. This dissatisfaction has risen to the level that many of the animals are considering armed revolt against the human government of Fabletown merely for the chance to try to recapture the Homelands. Because of the animosity of so many animals towards Wolf, he's banned from visiting the Farm, so White and Rose are on their own in the middle of the conflict.

These stories are well-told modern tales featuring the characters we remember from childhood (with a few obscure, or more modern references to pique our curiosity). Because of a small amount of sex and slightly larger amounts of blood and violence, the books are not suitable for younger children, but should be fine for young adults (if they're watching CSI, they can read these).

Oh, and Legends in Exile opens with Snow White trying to explain to a couple why she can't help them with marriage counseling: Beauty and the Beast.

Thinking About Dates on To-Do List Web Sites

The great thing about reading time management books and comparing task management websites is that it's not really procrastinating.

David Allen's book, Getting Things Done, is the current hot time management textbook (and has been for the past few years). Like many of these books, it's common sense distilled into a "system", and sold at management consulting rates, with much talk of "next actions", "workflows", "processes", and "models". But it all boils down to to-do lists and a process for reviewing them. While I wouldn't pay to attend a workshop on the method (nor would I send my staff to one), I do think that the book is definitely worth the $15 cover price and the day of time it would probably take to "implement" the system on one's own.

Because Allen is the current hot property in the time management sphere, task management web sites all claim to support the "GTD" system, and all claim that their competitors are lacking in some way, providing partial support for GTD, at best. I have a couple of pages of notes about two of the more prominent to-do list management sites (Remember the Milk and Toodledo), and will be posting my thoughts on them later.

But all this reflection on to-do management, and my experimenting with two different systems for accomplishing this fairly simple task, has got me thinking about the problem of dates. When I write out the simple sort of to-do lists that I use, I tend not to assign dates to the items on the list, for the simple fact that everything on the list needs to get done now. Of course, this can lead to things getting deferred indefinitely, since there's are no deadlines attached them. Some web systems don't display tasks on their default screen unless they're due "soon", and undated events are never due, according to those sites. So, I put dates on all my tasks on these systems. And that led to the problem: there are two ways to interpret the dates.

A Date is a Deadline. I think most of us think about dates on lists of tasks as deadlines: "My taxes are due on April 30," "I have to write a book review by the end of the month," and so on. Unfortunately, most automated task management systems that I've experimented with over the years (including Palm PDAs and various desktop calendar programs) don't work well with this model. Once you've associated a date with task, the task is tied to that date.

If a date is a deadline, then I have to be able to tell my task management system how long I think that the task will take, so that I can be reminded of the task in time to be able to finish it by the deadline (a task manager that tells me on Thursday morning that my taxes are due today is basically useless). Ideally, the system would also provide a way for me to track progress toward completion, so that tasks slide up and down the list relative to each other depending on their deadlines and how close I am to completing them, relatively speaking.

A Date is Almost an Appointment. Most of the time, the date associated with a task is a deadline, but sometimes it is the date on which we should, or must, perform the task. This is subtly different from an appointment, I think: "go to the optometrist next Wednesday" is an appointment, but "put the garbage out Tuesday evening" is a task to be done at a particular time.

While this sort of date is much less common, it is the type of date that most automated systems handle well. Online to-do management systems are, primarly, rich systems for managing the old-style "tickler" file.

Computer people like to talk a lot about the Sapir-Worf hypothesis that the language one speaks limits, or at least affects, the way that one thinks about the world. This is probably because in computer programming, that's true: if you're programming in Fortran, you won't be thinking about object-oriented control structures. It seems to me that the same thing can happen in task management. If your task manager associated dates with tasks in a very concrete, way, then those dates will stop being deadlines and become pseudo-appointments.

I recently ran across a quotation about computer usability:

Using a computer should be simpler than not using a computer.

For the kinds of things that I need to accomplish with my task management, I think that the computer's not quite ready to beat the pad of paper yet. But that won't stop me from trying to figure out how to make it work.