Bonfire of the Niceties

The National Library Board (NLB) held their (annual?) book sale at the Singapore expo, last Friday thru Sunday. I wandered along with little purpose, although a couple of technical titles was in the back of my mind, and so I sauntered in around midday Friday past early birds already leaving with distinctive white carrier bags closed with cable ties and even stuffed shopping trolleys.

Inside the hall were 50 tables labeled above with simple descriptions such as Adult Fiction and Junior Fiction. Within these categories, the books were a complete jumble so you were left to just wander up and down looking for topics of interest. I grabbed a few, huge technical books, out of date for sure as most titles seemed to be published around 2000, but good enough for S$2 (70p) each.

Far more interesting was the behavior of the patrons. Keeners filled the provided shopping baskets, leaving them at the edge of the hall to return for more books. After amassing anything up to 200 books, they then sat down against the wall and slowly went through their hoard, tossing discards onto a rough pile at their feet, putting keepers in a fresh basket. At the tables, the neat rows of books quickly deteriorated into unkempt mass as selected books were tossed aside.

People behave this way when faced with free or cheap sales; first land-grabbing as much as possible, later to discard what, on reflection, they decide is not for them. I've organised a few jumble sales and there are definite types. The professionals (local gypsies in our case) looking for silver plates or valuable China going for 20p and leave within 10 minutes. Then there's the bag ladies, roughly sorting through clothes and just stuffing anything decent into the bag under their arm, sometimes leaving without payment. Then there's the charitable types, there to support the cause carefully thumbing a Foders guide to Portugal.

The organisation of the book fair was thought through; bags and baskets, helpers wandering around, a DJ at the back playing musak, the exit channels which divided buyers from visitors and guided the former down to packing tables staffed by schoolchildren who packed and counted the items. Then on to the ridiculously over-sized and dreaded Tensa-barrier maze ahead of the cashiers. I hate being in such processes and given the modest turnout, the formality was excessive.

The result was 7 books weighing 8kgs for S$14 (£5) and a disgust for the people who turned a generous opportunity into a greedy, selfish, ugly, rude stampede.

Book Museums

Libraries have been called the last vestiges of free public space and indeed the dictionary definition of a library as a repository of books ignores their other important social roles; respite, association, teaching, literacy and so on.

It's going to be interesting to see how libraries operate when the age of the book is at an end. I love books and have collected, in an undirected fashion, sufficient kilos of them to realise their limitations for convenient data delivery. In the digital age, books become art works, and sooner than you expect.

Perhaps provocatively, the Extinction Timeline places libraries at 2019. If you think online books, magazines, newspapers all delivered on large, touch-screen table displays that's not so far fetched. The newly built public library in Seattle doesn't have book shelves in anticipation of the demise of paper and instead has a multi-purpose space with casual piles of books to encourage browsing and discovery much like surfing the web.

In the meantime, Singapore has a wonderful set of main and community libraries designed along traditional lines. And when I say traditional, I'm thinking King Ashurbanipal would instantly recognise a Singapore library as a version of his library of clay tablets in the 7th century BC. There's refinement of the model, though I would argue, little innovation.

Books have RFID tags so checkout is at a computer station; insert your id with barcode, then place each item on the reader. Returning items may be done at any branch via an external (hence 24x7) book drop; a letterbox hole with a slide that scans the books as they drop into a bin. To discourage dropping other things, there's an enormous TV camera lens above the slot, pointing at your head. It's why I always stand to one side when returning books (petty defiance in the face of petty surveillance is always justified).

Their computer systems are so-so. With some effort to navigate the frankly haphazard website, you can create an account and receive e-mail notifications of events and, most usefully, a 7 day count down of items due allowing you to renew online (50c / item) when you realise you won't make it in time. A new trick is an e-mail confirming return:

Dear [redacted]

Thank you for using NLB's e-notification service through email, a free service available to all library members. This daily-based notification confirms the number of items you have returned at the library bookdrop.

You have returned 1 NLB item(s) on 14 Jun 2008.

The details of item(s) returned are as follows:

[redacted]
Returned At: Ang Mo Kio Community Library At 12:10 PM

The above information is correct as at 14 Jun 2008 11:46 PM.If you have returned more items after this, they will be reflected in the next day's notification email. Please also note that the absence of a notification is not a valid reason for waiver of library fines.

You may also check your updated account status at www.nlb.gov.sg or call our Hotline at 6332-3255

If you have any outstanding library fines, please pay them promptly at your nearest library today and be fines-free!

Thank you.
Regards,
NLB Administrator

The main reference library has a 6 month trial of Intelligent Bookshelves with RFID readers on each shelf so the system can determine location, and hence presence or absence, of any item. It also supports stock-taking and browsing statistics (books removed briefly count towards their recorded popularity).

It's good stuff in principle although the real challenge is getting the cost down sufficiently for mass deployment. But I can't help feeling it's tackling the wrong problem. I want an all digital library accessible from home & my mobile phone. The vestigial library building becomes an air-conditioned public space for association, art and Internet access.

I have no doubt the technology is well within our reach, but I fear my online idyll is doomed by Mickey Mouse. Disney, Microsoft and the big film studios have successfully lobbied for ever extended copyright protection and defence. Singapore has acceded to these policies and extended protection of copyrighted works to 70 years. The rigourous protection of intellectual property (IP) is a key plank of Singapore's promise to big business; the manifest benefits to society of the creative re-mixing and adapting of ideas into new forms doesn't have the same lobbying power.

So Singaporean libraries are unlikely to turn digital any faster than US mega-corporations permit. Despite possessing vision, ambition and capital resources, they cannot show leadership here.

Marketing Libraries

I avoid marketing surveys, especially since being conned into doing a personality audit by Scientologists back in 1979 ("it'll only take 5 minutes" - there must have been 500 questions). Nevertheless, I was clipboarded in the library by a nice lady doing market research; I'm allowed to break my own rules and she said only 5mins and no personal questions.

First question: "Name"? That's sounds personal to me. Okay, just put anything. Then "E-mail address"? Uh oh. Then the classic "Where are you from"? (the form said "Race"). As long-term readers know this is one issue I have explored deeply so when she started writing "British" I interjected. British is not a race, it's a nationality, but she wasn't bothered and moved on.

The chirpy clipboard lady finished up with a smile. Not because I gave interesting answers but rather my completed questionnaire achieved her quota so she could now go home. She insisted on giving me a plastic pen stenciled with "Media Research Consultants Pte Ltd (www.mrconsultants.sg)". It's a nice web address but if MrConsultants is listening, I have to report that the pen is now in the bin. I don't keep cheap pens; they are unpleasant to write with, feel awkward in the hand, fail unpredictably and seem to multiply when you turn your back. Plus, you didn't pay me enough to endorse your company.

Pentel fibre tip, ultra fine in black. Now that's a pen worth writing with. I'm also rather partial to the Japanese ultra fine pens like the Muji Gel Ink Pens (0.38mm) or Pilot G-2 Gel Pen (0.38 mm). For aficionados, there's been huge R&D yen thrown at sub millimeter pens but 0.38mm is good enough for me.

So what did I say about the library? The book collections are very good (some libraries have better collections for certain topics) and the computer search system is Okay but it badly needs a usability re-design to reduce the number of steps for typical actions. The main problem with all the libraries is the lack of fitness for modern purpose. I want tables with power outlets so I can read books and use the wireless Internet. I don't need S$2.90 coffees or armchairs where I have to balance the laptop on my knee. I don't want to have to bring a sweater to sit for more than half an hour in the chilly air-con. I don't really want to tote the heavy books home either. I'd rather borrow books 'virtually', using some kind of book reader software on my home computer. Frankly, I'm surprised libraries have lasted this long into the Internet age.

Social Libraries

Singapore's district libraries, termed Community Libraries, are more like Community Drop-in centres. With books. People do go there to read but also just to cool off in the air-con (which is set a couple of degrees too low for long-term comfort), feed babies, read newspapers, do homework with school mates before splitting up to go home, use the wireless Internet access and to borrow books. I go there for the books and sometimes to work, purposes that place me in a minority.

Bishan library is a funky building with a really good collection of books. There are glass protrusions from the front elevation which you can sit in, but it's all hard walls and floor so they're not that great to use. The other odd design decision was to dispense with stairs up to the 2nd floor and use a long ramp. You have to walk further and it's more tiring than stairs. I'm all for accessible buildings but is this a glimpse of the future where all stairs are converted to long, switchback ramps? Maybe they were planning for when we will all own Segways.

Eating, drinking, smoking and using mobile phones are all banned in libraries but Bishan has a decent cafe on the ground floor which annoyingly has the monopoly on the nice tables and chairs. Its round company logo is such a direct rip of Starbucks in a brown color scheme I half expected the place to be called StarBooks. So if you want a nice table and chair you have to stump up for a coffee, espresso or smoothie. It's relatively expensive. Most of the school kids buy a coke and make it last a whole homework session.

I popped into my old library in England a few months back and was struck by how much it had changed since I first used it when it opened 25 years ago. Half of the upstairs was converted into an Internet cafe and the lady handing out tickets casually stated the building was no longer fit for purpose but couldn't be replaced because it was protected. Singaporean libraries are also caught in this transition. Clientèle split roughly into thirds; some just want a cool building to sleep, read a paper or do homework, others want books and the rest just want Internet access. In Sembawang library, you have to watch your step as people plug laptops into power outlets at pillars and just sit on the floor.

All of which highlights the problem with modern libraries. Fifty years ago, they existed as valuable civic amenities when people couldn't necessarily afford books or homes with space for big study tables. Where else could you access a wide range of research and reference material? Librarians were knowledgeable researchers and libraries were impressive civic structures to store physical books. The Internet makes information weightless and volumeless. Library designers are slow to acknowledge they are going the way of high-street banks. Banks used to be impressive stone buildings intended to induce trust and to protect cash. Now there are often just a row of ATMs with most transactions occurring online.

Big Dummies' Guide to Singapore

Maybe I should write a book. It's said that everyone has at least one book in them, although after objective consideration of the slice of humanity I interact with, I lean towards the less ambitious observation by Seth Godin that everyone has at least one blog post in them.

This train of thought was triggered while in the library by a lady sat opposite lady reading one of those yellow and black How To books called "Baby Massage for Dummies". I remember the time when they were the "Big Dummies' Guide to xxx", but perhaps a marketing strategy which belittles your customer's knowledge has limits and the publishers toned it down a notch. The title re-arrangement also avoids the possessive and hence the need for an apostrophe which Lynne Truss made socially embarrassing, is mocked by typographers, has their mis-use cataloged and has a society for their protection.

At least "Big Dummies' Guide to ..." is clearer grammatically. "xxx for Dummies" leaves itself open to syntactically correct possibilities such as "Crash Testing for Dummies", "Standing Still for Dummies", "Modeling Clothes for Dummies". It looks like Wileys, the publisher, had the same thought as there is a "Breastfeeding for Dummies". While I mock the genre slightly, there are over 1,300 titles in the range including Kabbalah, Einstein, Parrots, Adoption, Prostate Cancer & Florida.

I saw the other day that thebookseller.com is holding its annual poll for the oddest book title of the year. At #2 was "How to Write a How to Write Book", that is "Writing Dummies' Guides for Dummies"? Note, they do have Technical Writing, Writing Copy, Writing Children's books, Writing A Romance Novel and Screenwriting but there's clearly an opportunity for someone.

Now I suppose you are wondering what the full list of bad book title contenders were? Okay, here they are:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
  
• How to Write a How to Write Book
  
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
  
• Cheese Problems Solved
  
• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs
  
• People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood
  

Tough call.

Man Picks Nose

This week's venerable Straits Times featured an expose of bad behavior in public libraries. The lurid piece of journalism, complete with pixelated photographs, described no-nos such as ear digging, nose picking and feet on chairs. Moving up the disgusting scale was beard plucking while reading a newspaper.

Which got me thinking about the behaviors that disturbed (tho' not necessarily disgusted) me on my last visit to the excellent Sembawang facility:

1. Mobile phones. Separating a Singaporean from their mobile would be classed as cruel and unusual punsihment, if you could achieve it. It just doesn't matter where people are, if the phone rings, it gets answered


2. Kids playing combat video game on the public computers. Actually, they were doing a very good job of keeping a boisterous activity pretty quiet, but still, video killing game in a library?


3. People sprawled on the floor between bookshelves as there aren't really enough chairs and very few tables. It's common for school children to use libraries as a cool (ie aircon'd) place to work. But it's hard to browse when you can't walk on the floor


4. Tannoy recorded annoucements exhorting quiet and peaceful use of the facility. D'oh.

Not exactly a Little Shop of Horrors. All libraries I have visited were cool, fairly quiet and exceedingly well run. Book checkout is self-serve using your library card and a chip reader. Returns are fully automatic; just slide the book down the chute at the entrance and the book's chip is read and marked as returned. Payments and fines are cashless using your EZ Link card (train & bus rfid card). Book searches and renewals are online and they stay open until late.

If you want social faux pas, it would be the old lady sat next to me on the MRT using nail clippers to methodically depilate the back of her hands, complete with squeaky sound effects.

The ST article was a lightweight poke at petty rudeness and an attempt to shame into extinction some social errors. It almost certainly missed the mark. The stunningly successful, free, Chinese-language My Paper has the mass readership and has, arguably, taken over as the people's paper.