Walt at Random

The Man on the Eiffel Tower, 1949, color. Burgess Meredith (dir.), Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Burgess Meredith, Robert Hutton, Jean Wallace, Patricia Roc. 1:37 [1:27].

Charles Laughton as Inspector Maigret, with a young Burgess Meredith as a would-be robber…in a movie directed by the young Burgess Meredith (taking over for producer Irving Allen). His character’s a near-blind (without his glasses) knife-sharpener who needs some real money. Enter a married playboy, dependent on his wealthy aunt, who wants to leave his wife for his American girlfriend—but his wife, who knows all about it, will only go with a substantial settlement. He’d give a million francs if someone would off the aunt (he’s the heir)—and a nearby psychopath (Tone) hears about this.

Next thing we know, the aunt (and her maid) are murdered, Meredith’s character’s busily being frames, Maigret’s in trouble for letting him escape from prison while awaiting trial, and the psycopath’s actively taunting Maigret. He’s fond of lunch on the restaurant on the Eiffel’s observation platform, and notes that diving from the tower would be a great way to end things.

Lots of plot, lots of psychological strangeness, one more death…and, all in all, an interesting flick. It’s sort-of in color (as with many other early color flicks, there’s fading, whole scenes where some colors are missing or everything’s red-shifted), there are missing frames (and apparently more than just frames), it’s a little damaged. It’s also not as well directed as it might be. All that combines to $1.50.

Topper Returns, 1941, b&w. Roy Del Ruth (dir.), Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis, Billie Burke, Dennis O’Keefe, Patsy Kelly, H.B. Warner, Eddie ‘Rochester” Anderson. 1:28.

An absolute charmer, with Cosmo Topper (Young), the slightly-henpecked banker, once again involved with ghosts—this time quite unwillingly, and it is a mystery. Two women in a taxi; a hooded figure aims with a rifle, shoots out a tire, and almost causes the taxi to go off the road and into the ocean—but not quite. As the cabbie (O’Keefe) goes for help, the women flag down Topper (and his chauffeur, the inimitable Eddie “Rochester” Anderson of Jack Benny fame) to take them to Carrington Hall. On the way, one woman (Blondell) is sitting on Topper’s lap—and since the Toppers are the Carrington’s next-door neighbor (but it’s a long drive to that next door), Topper’s wife (Burke, a fine comedienne) sees them on the way.

That’s just the start. The other woman (Ann Carrington, played by Carole Landis) has arrived to finally meet her father; she’s heir to the entire Carrington estate and he seems to be in bad health. The servants are, well, strange—as is the family doctor. The two women switch bedrooms for the night—which results in the wrong woman being killed. Her ghost emerges—a remarkably corporeal ghost, capable of leaving footprints, opening doors, and getting drunk, but visible only when she chooses to be—and the chase is on.

It’s a combination mystery and slapstick comedy. There’s little more to be said about the plot, but the movie just keeps moving along—with hidden passages and lots more. The print’s very good and this movie is certainly worth rewatching. Slight but first-rate. $2.00.

The Green Glove, 1952, b&w. Rudolph Maté (dir.), Glenn Ford, Geraldine Brooks, Cedrick Hardwicke, George Macready, Jany Holt, Roger Treville. 1:29.

The film begins at the end—when a jewel-encrusted saint’s gauntlet, one that brought miracle-seekers to the little town honoring the saint until it disappeared—turns up once again, signaled by the church bells ringing (which they would never do while the gauntlet was missing).

Then we go back to World War II, an airman bailing out behind German lines, and the actual plot begins. Yank airman (Ford) discovers “journalist”/double agent, carrying a bag with some drawings and the gauntlet; for various reasons, he winds up with the bag but leaves it for safekeeping in a chateau as he makes his way back to the front lines.

Years later, the airman’s doing badly—and comes back to France, presumably to find the gauntlet (the green glove) and make a small fortune selling it. The rest of the film—most of it—deals with this adventure, as the double agent (an antique dealer in peacetime) is watching him, murders get the police involved, there’s a beautiful woman who gets caught up in it all…

Nicely done all around, with a tense final 15 minutes or so—and the movie moves along nicely throughout. Good performances, good directing. The print’s a little soft and not great b&w, the main thing bringing this down to a still-respectable $1.50.

The Second Woman, 1950, b&w. James V. Kern (dir.), Robert Young, Betsy Drake, John Sutton, Florence Bates, Morris Carnovsky, Henry O’Neill, Jason Robards Sr. 1:31.

Robert Young is an architect who, a year previously, lost his fiancée in an auto accident the night before the wedding—in a crash he’s supposedly responsible for. He lives in a striking modern home, which he designed, on the coast—right next to a more traditional home, where a young woman visiting her aunt runs into him and strikes up an acquaintance, almost immediately falling in love with him.

But he seems cursed: Over the course of a few days, a prized sculpture breaks, a prized painting fades away, his horse suffers a destroyed ankle and has to be destroyed, his rose bush dies, his dog is poisoned, he loses a prize commission because the package of drawings omits all the interiors…and his house burns down.

He thinks it’s bad luck. The woman (an actuary at home) thinks that’s impossible, and sets out to investigate (against his wishes). The family doctor thinks he’s paranoiac (the way they said it then) and actually doing all these things to himself. There are two other characters: The wealthy head of the firm Young works for (and father of the dead fiancée), and a cad who’s also part of the firm and pretty clearly evil in almost every way.

Right up to the last ten minutes or so, it’s not clear at all whether he’s doing it to himself or whether someone else is responsible—and, for that matter, who the “someone else” might be. It all comes together in a great climax.

Well played and compelling. My only real problem is a grotesque logic gap having to do with timing, but to mention what that gap is would be a spoiler. Even so, the print’s good, it’s well directed, it truly is a mystery and it’s worth $1.75.

What’s new and improved on the Library Leadership Network (LLN)?

Articles in Read & Learn

We’re this close to completing the long process of moving material from the old, wiki-based LLN to the new, Drupal-based LLN–a process that’s taken a while because we’ve been improving, updating and combining articles as we go. As of now, fewer than 50 of the roughly 330 articles that were on the old LLN are left to go. We should reach completion within two weeks, after which there will be a steadier stream of brand-new and newly-improved articles.

Last week saw many combined and improved articles on the new LLN, including the following:

• Libraries and Innovation combines several commentaries.
• Innovation Lessons brings together several library commentaries and relevant notes from the management literature.
• All Innovation articles are now iin the new LLN.
• Strategic Planning: An Introduction brings together a series of introductory essays into a single, albeit still incomplete, whole.
• Strategic Planning Commentaries offers a variety of insights on key aspects of library strategic planning.
• Disaster Planning combines commentaries on coping with natural disasters.
• Telling Your Community’s Stories offers two perspectives on libraries as micropublishers.
• Traditional Services: Still Important? provides a range of commentaries on the remaining significance of traditional services and physical libraries.
• Open Access Resources has been updated to reflect changes in the Open Access News and the emergence of a new crowdsourced project to track open access information.
• What Every Leader Should Know about Information Management is now a much shorter set of excerpts from the original manuscript.

Leader’s Digest

Log in to your LLN account (or create one if you don’t already have one on the new LLN) to read a variety of updates from the management literature and elsewhere, including these from last week:

• Design thinking: What is its value? – Notes on a special report from Bloomberg/Business Week
• Balancing team workload – Coping with tensions when employees work on multiple teams that may be competing for time and resources.
• Wikipedia’s book sources – A quick note about a “book sources” page in Wikipedia–used for all book references that are built properly and include ISBNs–that can result in searches to one of several sources (in a two-step process).
• “Innovator’s DNA”–Five discovery skills claimed to be essential to innovators.

If you recall EPub, First Attempt (three whole days ago), I had tried two free options for creating an ePub ebook file from a fully-formatted book in Word form–that is, either saving it as PDF and converting it via Calibre, or saving it as Word’s “filtered HTML” and converting it via Calibre.

I wasn’t thrilled with either method.

• The ePub-from-PDF version had great-looking type, but the page headers and footers were included within the stream and there were a number of other oddities, including a useless Contents band.
• The ePub-from-HTML version (surprisingly, much larger than the ePub-from-PDF version) had a working Contents band and no extraneous page headers and footers, but the onscreen type, while clearly a rendition of the actual type used in the book, was pretty awful.

I can see that a fair number of people have looked at or downloaded the two versions. So far, I’ve had no actual feedback on how they do or don’t work either on ereaders or on ereader simulations.

Meanwhile, I realized that there was a third option: RTF.

• Here’s an ePub-from-RTF version. It’s halfway in length between the other two–bigger than the from-PDF, smaller than the from-HTML. It clearly makes no attempt at all to provide the original typeface(s). The content panel is essentially unpopulated and useless. The contents within the book itself are odd.
• On the other hand: It looks pretty good…no extraneous footers or headers and the type looks good (depending on the typeface you choose, since it’s entirely your choice.)

Whadda you think?

You know about code switching, right?

• How college students can use all sorts of strange abbreviations when texting and write grammatical, fully-spelled-out paragraphs for school.
• How you probably speak differently to your 2-year-old child than you do to your 60-year-old boss…
• Lots of other cases…

This trivial post will add nothing useful to that discussion. I’m just noting that code switching can be accidental and take you by surprise.

To wit, I was reading a quick weather-related FriendFeed note, addressed to the east coast people getting buried in snow, saying Vancouver sure could use some of that, a week before the Olympics, since it was “50″ and sunny…

And I immediately thought: “Geez, how could it possibly be 50 in Vancouver in February? Maybe in Phoenix in July, but…”

Because my mind had automatically, given “Vancouver,” done the Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion, given that Canada usually uses Celsius for temperatures. (9/5 + 32, one of the easiest formulas around–and yields 122Fahrenheit, essentially impossible for Vancouver in February unless the sun’s going nova.)

Then I looked at the message again and thought, “Oh, either written by a U.S. person or written for a U.S. audience–they’re using Fahrenheit.” 50F in Vancouver in February doesn’t seem at all unlikely. (It was apparently around 45F in Juneau at that point.)

Unconscious code-switching…I suspect lots of us do it in various areas. Usually, it works just great.

Silly me.

I subscribe to four reasonably active library-related lists (one that I should probably drop), and probably a few others that are so inactive I’ve forgotten I’m subscribed.

Two of those lists–Web4Lib and PUBLIB–are on a little Gmail group to which I send email copies of announcements for new issues of Cites & Insights. (I prepare the announcement in this blog, copy the HTML to the C&I Alert blog and to my “blog” in LISNews, then copy-and-paste the “visible version” to the email. The group currently has three members–these two lists and one individual.)

In recent days, there’s been some kerfuffle on Web4Lib about excessive announcements on that list, primarily those from one punctuation-happy multiblogger who mails to several lists–but I’ve had the sense of some unease about announcements-as-spam in general.

I’m also aware that “deathspotters” wrote off lists as dead years ago–and are now busily writing off email as dead. (OK, so some of them have written off blogs and RSS as dead as well, but at least those two are still recent fatalities. If you don’t have a clear sense of how I feel about the whole “death of…” thing, read the December 2009 EContent or pages 12-16 of the February 2010 Cites & Insights. Better yet, read the whole issue–it’s a good one.)

So, just to be helpful and “lively”…

So I sent a quick note to Web4Lib and PUBLIB saying I’d be helpful–I’d remove Web4Lib from the Gmail announcement group and probably remove PUBLIB as well. After all, there were three other ways people could be informed–and this blog alone has more than 800 subscriptions. (LISNews reaches everybody. Doesn’t it?)

Honestly, I was just trying to be helpful–to eliminate one minor source of “spam” at the possible cost of a few readers.

Not so fast…

I got feedback–some directly on the two lists, some via email. The feedback was consistent: Actually, so far, 100% unanimous: “Don’t.”

That is, don’t stop announcing issues on the lists. Lots of people don’t use RSS but do use lists, and may want to read C&I.

Admittedly, this is a biased sample. Those who are relieved to be rid of that one post a month (more or less) probably wouldn’t bother to say so, and those who aren’t aware of C&I or regard it as worthless trash probably wouldn’t take the time to respond.

I haven’t counted the number of responses. It’s definitely two digits, and that suggests that there may well be three digits worth of readers who benefit from the list announcements.

So I’ll keep them. That decision was made the same day–as I said, the response was quick.

(Will I keep doing C&I indefinitely? Who knows? A new sponsor sure wouldn’t hurt…nor would others joining the triad who’ve already given PayPal contributions for C&I. But that’s a different barrel of monkeys.)

So…being a sometimes-advocate of open and all that, and since Lulu now supports ePub, The Standard Ebook Format…

I thought I’d see whether using it makes any sense for the huge (513pp. 6×9, 191K words) collection of OA articles that may or may not emerge as Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009.

The project itself is on the back burner for a few weeks while I see whether one possible way of getting an index pans out. Meanwhile, I could see what generating an ePub version was like.

The tools

Checking online and asking around, the only software I could find that matches the probable income from the ePub version–that is, $0–was Calibre, which is really an ebook organization (and viewing) program but also includes routines to convert to ePub from various input formats, including PDF and HTML.

The conversion routine is interesting, because it wants to know what reader the output will be used on. (There’s “default,” which may or may not be Kindle, but also a bunch of individual choices.)

• I had this silly idea that ePub is a device-independent standard. If that’s true, then I don’t get the question.
• More specifically, if I do an ePub version, it will most certainly be intended to be device-independent.

The trials

I decided to try this two ways, in both cases starting with a Word document that’s designed as a 6×9 book with good margins, using Berkeley Oldstyle Book for body text and Friz Quadrata for major headings, with “typical” page headers and footers (centered page # on first page of chapter, page # and book name in italics on other even-numbered pages, chapter name in italics and page # on other odd-numbered pages).

The PDF used for input was prepared using “Save as PDF,” which yields bookmarks and is really great for use on a PDF-supporting viewer. (Unfortunately, it appears to carry a phantom “Arial” that’s not embedded, which means it may not be possible to upload it to Lulu–which requires that all typefaces be embedded. If I “print to PDF” instead, I can set the PDF properties to embed everything, even Arial, but you don’t get bookmarks in that case. Irrelevant for a printed book, relevant for a PDF-download version.)

The HTML was prepared using Word “Save as filtered HTML,” which is the advice given by another service that does ePub conversion (but only to make the ePubs available through that service…not what I need).

• PDF-to-ePub results (as opened in Calibre’s ebook viewer): The type looks great. There’s an optional contents band, but it doesn’t really work. Ebook page breaks are peculiar, and text breaks even more so. The page headers and footers show up in the stream (which becomes something like 1,200 pages from the original 519 including prefatory material).
• HTML-to-ePub results (as opened in Calibre’s ebook viewer): Uggh… The type looks awful, very nearly unreadable, for reasons that escape me. There are no margins. (I think that’s true with the PDF-to-ePub as well.)  On the other hand, the table of contents pane (optional) works just fine–even if there’s an odd pagebreak before the first level-2 heading in each chapter. No extraneous running page headers or footers, and the Friz Quadrata headings are absolutely crisp. The 513-page book turns into 1,800-odd pages (or whatever).

Conclusions?

At this point, I’d be a good deal more embarrassed to offer either variety of ePub than I already am by the semi-clunky HTML versions of Cites & Insights essays…which have odd margins but at least have clean typography and proper flow.

Maybe I’m missing something.

If there are readers who want to try out the (draft, temporary, not final) ePub versions on their own ebook readers, be my guest–and please send me your notes. Note that neither of these is final, by any means.

• The ePub-from-HTML version (oaldrafthtml.epub), 900K
• The ePub-from-PDF version (oaldraftpdf.epub), 556K.

Suggestions that I use some higher-end ePub conversion system will be cheerfully considered as long as they’re accompanied by pointers to legal, free Windows downloads for the system. Suggestions that I spend a few hundred dollars for a higher-end publishing system will be cheerfully ignored.

…but I’ve learned that, almost always, when someone begins a message (blog post, FriendFeed post, tweet, op-ed column, conversation, whatever) with that phrase, they’re about to say something offensive and disrespectful.

[Just a thought.]

When last I discussed the possibility of a book combining all 33 of the Open Access-related essays in Cites & Insights from 2001 through 2009 (plus one “disContent” column from EContent Magazine), the issue was whether it was worth doing an ePub version: Whether anybody would want it.

Now there’s a slightly different issue, one that may derail the effort entirely–and you’ll see what it is if you revisit the original post.

To wit:

• It appears that I can’t really use Word2007’s built-in indexing feature, at least not with “Mark All.” I figured I could generate an index in 5-10 hours through that method–and, indeed, it takes about an hour to go through 50-60 pages.
• Unfortunately, when I save the results after 50-60 pages and reopen the file, it’s unusable: The 519-page book has become 1200+ pages, with the bottom half of each page made up of a multiline, uneditable, page footer that seems to comprise several different page headers. (Hey, at least the first time this happened, it gave me another chance to see that my weekly incremental backups actually work–I could restore last week’s pre-indexed version neatly enough. Call that lemonade.)
• As far as I can tell, it would take at least 50-60 hours for me to do an index separately. I can’t justify that “for the good of the community,” so that’s not going to happen.
• So here’s where it stands: Depending on feedback between now and February 7, I’ll either:

1. Make Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights 2001-2009 available as a free PDF and probably free ePub (unless that conversion turns out to be a hassle), and as a 6×9 paperback for $5 more than the cost of production (yielding $4 a copy for me)–but without an index.
2. Scrap the whole project because it’s so awful to produce a nonfiction book without an index.

Just skimming through the vastness of the book (really: 191,000 words–it’s big), I find the chronological arrangement interesting and slightly useful. And, what the heck, if anybody out there cared, preparing an index would be a great project–I’d certainly mount it on my website if somebody did it.

Do it or dump it?

That’s what it boils down to. The Word version’s in place. All I need is a cover (not difficult) and to do the ePub conversion (and redo the PDF conversion) and upload to Lulu.

Thoughts?

---

Status Update, February 2, 2009:

Two developments:

1. An acquaintance with some indexing experience offered to try to index the thing–which requires working from a 2.8MB PDF (to retain pagination). Not sure that will work out: It’s a BIG effort for a wholly unpaid gig that may not be read by that many people… But I’m going to give him a few weeks and see what happens. I have no doubt whatsoever that he’s capable of doing a good job…
2. I think I have a clue what’s causing Word to go berserk (but am not sure): Namely, I was using “Mark All” for terms that appear in one chapter’s running page head, and that may confuse Word beyond redemption. If #1 doesn’t work out, I might try again, avoiding that particular situation. Or I might not. As noted in the comments, there’s also the possibility of post-pub “crowdsourcing” an index.

In sum: The book isn’t going to appear in the next week or two, and probably not until March. I probably will make it available in ePub form (if Calibre does a good conversion), at the same $0 price if Lulu supports that. Meanwhile, off to other stuff!

What’s new at the Library Leadership Network (LLN)?

Primarily technology trends (noting that, in many cases, “Trends” means “What looks to be important this year,” not necessarily “Fads and shiny new things”).

• Technology Trends: Recent History now includes trends through mid-2009. Trends affecting libraries, through 2008, appear in summary form grouped by category–e.g., trends in library systems and methods, trends in resources, publishing and services. Library-related trends for 2009 still appear as individual essays from half a dozen people–followed by seven brief lists of other trends and predictions, and a few commentaries on individual trends.
• Technology Trends is entirely new (except for Roy Tennant’s “Ten things you should know about technology”), covering library-related and other technology trends asserted since June 2009. We include summary coverage of LITA Top Tech Trends at ALA Midwinter 2010 (along with eight links to longer coverage)–but you’ll also find ten (remarkably sensible) predictions for the e-reader/ebook market, a few notes on 2009 and 2010 from a medical librarian, notes on the 2010 Horizon Report and, going beyond libraries, media and education, half a dozen sets of technology trends from other sources.
• Entrepreneurialism now incorporates notes from outside the library field relevant to librarians as entrepreneurs.

When you sign in, you’ll have access to Leader’s Digest, including recent posts on the iPad, book-finding iPhone apps and transforming your organization.

The Man from Nowhere (aka Arizona Colt, orig. Il pistolero de Arizona), 1966, color. Michele Lupo (dir.), Giuliano Gemma, Fernando Sancho, Roberto Camardiel. 1:58 [1:53].

We open on an adobe prison (or “prision”), with a handful of guards and a drunken old coot riding up with a wooden whiskey flask around his neck. The guards engage him in idle chatter while he lights a fuse on the flask, tosses it at them and—well, boom. Then this huge band of gun-crazy outlaws rides up, shoots all the guards (and loses a few of their own) and busts all the prisoners out (except that one cool dude, Arizona Colt breaks out on his own).

The catch: The prisoners have been broken out to build the ranks of the bandit gang—and your choice is to join them (with a brand on your arm) or get shot down immediately. (We learn this via a grumpy guy who was in jail for drunkenness and due to be released the next day. Bye, grumpy old guy.) Colt says he needs time to think about it—and he’s as good a shot as the maniacal, sadistic, superhuman-shooting gang leader, so he manages to ride away.

That’s just the start. There’s bank robbery in Blackston Hill (yes, spelled that way), killing a young woman because she recognizes the brand, lots of killing for the fun of it, not just to get a job done, the drunk seeking redemption…and a long, slow scene near the end between Colt and the maniac that should be more exciting than it is.

I dunno. On one hand, this is not only widescreen, it’s in stereo (or at least the awful theme song at the start and finish is in stereo), although the picture’s also soft, presumably from overcompression. And it’s a long’un, almost two hours (but missing five minutes). On the other, the maniac and his gang are so evil that they go beyond stereotypical to repulsive in an annoying way. We never do learn why Colt (who’s a bounty hunter) was in jail; neither did I much care. In the end, while it’s not incoherent, I found it pointless and dispiriting. Maybe $0.75.

Minnesota Clay (orig. L’homme du Minnesota, or “The Man of Minnesota”), 1965, color. Sergio Corbucci (dir.), Cameron Mitchell, Georges Riviere, Ethel Rojo, Diana Martin, Antonio Roso, Fernando Sancho. 1:30 [1:25].

The setup: A prison labor camp in the old West. Thanks to a brawl of sorts, Minnesota Clay (Mitchell) escapes (using a doctor—who’s already informed him that his eyes are bad and one good blow would blind him—as a hostage). Goes back home, where one gang (run by the bad guy whose testimony should have acquitted Clay) has taken over the town from another Mexican gang, now holed up nearby (the new gang was invited into town, and the bad guy’s the sheriff).

Clay is the Best Shot in the World. He also has family secrets nearby. And, by the time we get to the long, slow-moving climax, he’s essentially blind. But still the Best Shot in the World with superhuman reflexes.

I’m not sure what to make of this. The print’s unusually good, widescreen and high quality with great scenery, but with just enough missing frames to mess up the soundtrack (never the visuals) at times. As these things go, the innocent body count is on the low side. The last 20 minutes are slow and somewhat suspenseful, but the ending’s—well, it’s not happy. Balancing good and bad, I come up with $1.25.

White Comanche, 1968, color (original title Comanche blanco). José Briz Méndez (dir.), Joseph Cotton, William Shatner (dual role), Rosanna Yanni. 1:33.

Twin brothers, half-Comanche, half-white, shunned by both—but one of them has convinced a bunch of Comanche he’s their savior, takes too much peyote, and goes around slaughtering white devils. His twin (Johnny Moon), trying to live as a white, keeps getting in trouble (e.g., nearly hanged) because you can only distinguish him from White Comanche (Notah) by the color of their eyes. Not that Johnny’s not pretty good at killing people also (he’s a crack shot, and this isn’t one of those westerns where everything’s settled with fistfights) but he always seems to have a reason.

Johnny tells Notah this must be settled and to come to Rio Honda within four days. During that period, there’s a range war in Rio Honda between two factions, with Johnny helping the sheriff maintain some semblance of order. Eventually, of course, the showdown happens. In the meantime, there’s much thoughtful standing around and an odd love subplot (involving a woman who first thinks Johnny is the evil half-Comanche who raped her, but eventually sees the eye-color difference and falls for him).

Good color, acceptable production values, a good job by Joseph Cotton as the sheriff—but the real selling point here is William Shatner as an arrogant sexist tinhorn ruler who doesn’t happen to be on a starship (and is always half-dressed, and has the body for it). And, for good measure, his twin brother. It’s a curiosity, but a watchable curiosity thanks to Shatner. (Note: This review is from October 2008, when I saw the same movie—and, apparently, the same print—in the 50 Movie Western Classics set.) $1.25.

China 9, Liberty 37, color. Monte Hellman and Tony Brandt (dirs.), Warren Oates, Fabio Testi, Jenny Agutter, Sam Peckinpah. Original title Amore, piombo e furore. 1:38 [1:32].

Again, this movie was also in the 50 Movie Western Classics set—and, although the picture and timing are identical, there’s one difference. The original had good monophonic sound. This version has stereo sound—but it’s muffled and hard to understand. The review’s slightly modified from October 2008.

Good production values, good background music, a fair amount of moral ambiguity, some odd accents from some of the actors, and in this case an unhurried plot marked by two or three big gun battles. A condemned gunfighter Clayton Drumm (Testi), about to be hanged in China (a tiny little Western town, 46 miles from Liberty), is reprieved so that he can shoot down Matthew Sebanek (Oates), a rancher, on behalf of the railroad that wants Matthew’s land. Only Clayton doesn’t do it, meets Matthew’s whole clan (three brothers)—and when he leaves, Matthew’s wife Catherine (Agutter) (who knifes Matthew in self-defense and mistakenly thinks she killed him) catches up with him. This is all slow moving: lots of talk and essentially no action.

Matthew and brothers try to gun down Clayton (and fail), and Matthew takes back his wife—but later, the railroad stooges are trying to get rid of both Clayton and Matthew, resulting in a 2.5-way gun battle that’s interesting and a little above the usual gunplay. Not to provide spoilers, but Clayton and Matthew (and Matthew’s wife) all wind up alive, with a fair number of corpses around. In the middle, there are nice little side-plots, including Sam Peckinpah as a dime novelist trying to buy Clayton Drumm’s story—or, rather, lies—to sell to the folks back east, and a non-animal circus (acrobats, little people) whose head wants to hire Drumm as a sharpshooter/showman.

If you can get past Clayton’s accent (explained by dialogue about him coming over from Europe as a child) and the curious acting of the bride, it’s a decent flick if you like a slow, sometimes languid, fairly naturalistic style—which I do. A good flick, damaged by the muffled soundtrack, but still $1.25.

I’d had a note on my “maybe blog about this” pad for a while about absolutes and universalisms. Today, I was pushed into turning that note into a post–a brief and ill-thought-out post, but a post nonetheless.

I objected to Steve Jobs’ statement that everybody has a smart phone and a notebook (as part of his introduction of the iPad)–just as I’ve previously objected to his assertion that nobody reads books (which came, to be sure, before he introduced a device well-suited to ebook reading).

And a library person said I was setting up a straw man and that when this library person says equally absurd “everybody” things, he means something else–he’s just marketing. I thought about that for a while and reached a conclusion.

Bullshit.

Consider the following three absolutely false statements:

• Everybody uses Windows.
• Everybody has a cell phone.
• Everybody has a smartphone.

Guess what? If you used any of those statements in an advertisement, the FTC could (and probably would) be down on you like a hawk. I’m never quite sure what constitutes “marketing,” but ads and press releases are part of it–and you couldn’t get away with using any of those in either one, without drawing (at least) a lot of derision.

Now, did you recognize one thing about the three statements?

They’re in increasing order of falsehood. Around 94% of PCs in the U.S. run Windows (and most people own some PC of one sort or another). That’s not “everybody.” But it’s close. Let me run that statement by Apple and see how they feel about it…

Not everybody (in the U.S.) has a cell phone; last time I looked, it was around 80%.

As for smartphones: They’re a relatively small minority of cell phones, even in the U.S. I think it’s fair to suggest that fewer than half of Americans have smartphones, probably a lot fewer.

But it doesn’t really matter–they’re all false universalisms.

The strawman accusation

It’s really convenient to dismiss criticism by saying “You’re setting up a strawman.” When you can do that when somebody’s been quoted, you’re doing even better.

What you’re saying is, in essence: “You’re not allowed to criticize what this person’s saying–because you don’t know that they mean what they’re saying. And, you know, it’s OK to say any damn fool thing for marketing purposes, without being criticized for it.”

The librarian offering this theory actually said that, when he uses universalism, he doesn’t mean it–he’s “marketing.” But it’s OK for him to call me out for setting up “straw men,” where it would obviously not be OK for me to call him out on absurd universalisms–because, you know, he didn’t mean it. He just said it.

The death of discussion

At which point, there can no longer be any sort of reasonable criticism or discussion. If people can legitimately say “I didn’t mean that” when they’re correctly quoted, then the whole process breaks down.

From a personal perspective, I might find this interesting. Since I couldn’t really do Cites & Insights at all–after all, any commentary could be dismissed on the grounds of “X not really meaning what X said”–I’d give it up and catch up on reading. But I’m old. I’m not sure “what the hell, nobody really means what they say” works for younger folk.

Saying what you mean

If what you mean to say is “In another few years, anybody in a first-world nation who wants a smartphone can probably afford one”–well, you know, you could say that. (Which does not mean everybody will have a smartphone. Being able to afford something and choosing to have it are two very different things.)

If what you mean to say is “In another few years everybody will have a smartphone,” you’re just plain wrong, and should take a look at the demographics of the world.

In either case, turning that into “everybody has a smartphone” is nonsense–and justifying it by saying “it’s just marketing” or “it’s just hype” is, I think, worse than nonsense. It makes it impossible to carry on any serious discussion.

Oh, and saying “everybody” followed by much of anything other than “needs to eat,” “needs to breathe” or “will eventually die”? Almost certainly wrong.

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Written in haste, after dinner, with little or no editing. But, you know, if you want to criticize anything I say here, be my guest. You won’t see me saying “I didn’t really mean that–it was just marketing.”

Two semi-related brief topics:

The Question

I asked a similar question of Peter Suber and another person who shall remain nameless, and got a positive response from Suber, no response from the other. So I’ll broaden it a bit:

Do you think it would be worthwhile to have all the scholarly-access-related articles from Cites & Insights collected into a single document, in chronological order?

If I finish this process, the result would be a substantial book–right now (copyfitted but lacking indexing), it’s 511 6×9 pages containing 191,000 words in 34 essays.

The book would be available in (at least) two forms:

• As a free PDF download (from Lulu), carrying a Creative Commons BY-NC license, with no DRM or other disabling issues.
• As a (thick!) trade paperback, priced at $5 more than Lulu’s actual production cost, yielding $4 per copy to me (basically to provide a little payback for the indexing and putting the whole thing together).

Note the word free. While Lulu now charges $1.45 plus 20% of set price for PDF downloads, Lulu continues to waive that $1.45 if the set price is $0.

The book would not have updates or corrections (other than a few corrected typos). The index would probably be fairly minimal; there’s no way I’m going to spend the time to do proper indexing for 191,000 words, given that I suspect almost all “sales” will be of the PDF variety.

UPDATE, February 1, 2010: If this book appears at all, it will be without an index. I don’t know if it’s a Word2007 bug or just the complexity and sheer length of the book, but when I try to index using Word’s indexing tools, and do more than about 50 pages of the 519 (using “Mark All” as appropriate), the saved version of the file comes back as garbage–expanded to more than 1,200 pages thanks to very long, meaningless, unchangeable pagefooters. I can’t justify taking the time (I’d guess 60+ hours, minimum) to prepare an index manually–so, although I understand that it’s abhorrent to do an unindexed nonfiction book, that’s the only way this can happen.

NOTE: I am not asking for commitments–and in any case I’d have no way of knowing who downloads or buys the book. I’m only asking for expressions of support for the idea or, if you think it’s a terrible idea, expressions of non-support. Leave a comment or send me email (waltcrawford at gmail dot com). Say within the next week; the copyfitting’s done, and I’ll do indexing after writing the first essay for the March C&I, unless I decide to abandon it.

The Status Report

On January 1, I noted the first review of But Still They Blog and also noted that Lulu could now handle ePub, the apparent “universal standard” for ebooks. I looked for “indications from, say, three people that they would buy an ePub version” before going to the trouble of locating software to do the conversion, testing the conversion, and uploading an ePub version.

I received one response–from a colleague who’s already purchased the print version but offered to test the ePub version.

Based on that level of interest, it’s hard to generate any enthusiasm for going to the trouble of doing an ePub version of this possible new book–particularly since I’d probably give that one away.

So: Anybody out there who would be more interested in the OA-related book if it was available in ePub? Not asking for a commitment, just for legitimate interest.

After all, if a universal standard is met by universal ennui, there’s little point in adopting it.

What’s new at the Library Leadership Network (LLN)?

Right off the bat, there’s a new URL–http://libraryleadership.net. (Never fear: http://lln.lyrasis.org still works!)

There’s also a login, although you’ll still be able to read the essays whether you’re logged in or not.

Refreshing

While the login process was being created and tested on one copy of LLN, we were continuing to refresh and sometimes merge material from the old (MediaWiki-based) LLN to the current (Drupal-based) LLN.

For some of you who may have been browsing LLN over the last few days (or linking to articles from elsewhere), the last stage of that transition process may have yielded some surprises.

All the changes made during the testing period should now be reflected in the current LLN. In the process, five articles have new URLs:

• Holt on Libraries and Technology combines three of Dr. Glen Holt’s essays from 2006 and 2008.
• Ebooks and Readers–Recent History provides earlier notes on ebooks and dedicated readers, notes that may still be worthwhile as recent historical material.
• Holt on Other Library Issues combines several essays that originally appeared as Holt’s Perspectives between 2005 and 2007.
• Why Bandwidth is Important offers Jeff Scott’s perspective on an ongoing issue that may be critical for public (and other) libraries.
• Chalk Notes: A Library Success Story offers an inspirational story of spontaneity and serendipity from the director of a a SUNY library.

If you happen to follow a link within LLN that doesn’t take you where you expected, please let me know–when you’re dealing with more than 300 essays, most of which have at least four or five links, there’s bound to be a slip or two.

Expanding

You should still be able to read all the Read & Learn essays in LLN without creating an account or logging in–but we hope you’ll do both (and you shouldn’t need to log in each time you visit, if you’re using a private computer).

Why?

• It’s helpful to LYRASIS to know who’s using LLN.
• We’re expanding LLN beyond the essays into a growing array of new services for library leaders–and those services will require you to login.

One of those expanded services isn’t entirely new: Leader’s Digest, Leslie Dillon’s ongoing series of brief posts on the management literature (and beyond). When you log in, you can see new items on use of business jargon, increasing your community influence (a report on this year’s OCLC Midwinter Symposium) and a new book on technology training in libraries.

You’ll also find a series of Tech Notes by Tom Zillner of WiLS and can expect to see a broad range of new features in the future.

Joining

The process for joining LLN is quick and easy. Before or after you join, you might want to visit the FAQ page on membership.

Three key excerpts from that page:

• Who can join? Anyone searching for quality information on leadership in the library community can join LLN. Additionally, anyone can follow our updates on Twitter and become a fan of LLN on Facebook for up to the minute updates and additions to the site.
• What’s the benefit of joining? In addition to the rich editorial content available to non-members, registered members of LLN enjoy access to a strong community environment that includes premium content including the Leader’s Digest blog, valuable leadership resources, Tech Notes by Tom Zillner and a user forum with lively, thought-provoking discussions. As the site progresses, we will be adding new and exciting features behind the login to keep users excited about leadership in the library community.
• What’s it cost? We are happy to be able to offer access to premium LLN content free of charge.

I’d love to hear about blogs by people who work in community college or junior college libraries. You can either comment below or send me email (waltcrawford at gmail dot com).

There are probably a few among the 500 (or so) liblogs I subscribe to–but when I categorized libloggers for The Liblog Landscape, I didn’t distinguish them among the 170+ “academic librarian” blogs.

Why do I care?

• I was vividly reminded during at least one Midwinter session that academic libraries (and librarians) just aren’t the same as public libraries (and librarians). I always knew that, but it was driven home with some force.
• My sense is that many, if not most, community college/junior college libraries are hybrid institutions, with characteristics of both public and academic libraries.
• If that’s true, then I’d like to pay more attention to those librarians (and other library staff).

(If there are other equivalents for community college or junior college, the latter being what it’s called in my home town, I mean y’all as well–that is, publicly-funded institutions primarily offering 2-year degree programs with lots of continuing ed as well, usually with lower entry bars than state colleges and universities. City colleges? Whatever.)

Feel free to add your own blog or let me know about others you’re aware of. And thanks!

A minor post on a major offense.

I was browsing through various books during the ALA Midwinter exhibits–specifically (but not exclusively) books related to librarianship and my areas of interest.

At one booth, I ran into a book that I’d heard about when it was being written but hadn’t seen “in the binding.” It’s not new. The author and title aren’t terribly relevant; neither is the publisher.

I opened it to a discussion of a social topic that I do care about (involving the breadth of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in the U.S.). And there, at the beginning of a paragraph, was a sentence that begin (possibly paraphrased):

“No sane person could believe X”

where “X” is something I firmly believe.

I closed the book, offered the author–who I’ve been acquainted with, knowing our opinions don’t always match but thinking he (of course it was a he) had interesting perspectives–a one-fingered salute in absentia, and walked away.

I did read just enough context to be sure the author wasn’t quoting someone else or setting up a strawman. Nope–the author called me insane. Not to my face, not by name, but the author explicitly called me insane.

Call me irritable if you wish, but I don’t see any reason to continue reading something like that. If the author was actually trying to change any minds through reasoned argument, he lost his chance. I suspect that sort of thing happens a fair amount. I find it puzzling, but what do I know? (I know that I now consider this person a former acquaintance.)