Walt at Random

This Catalogablog post–the second paragraph–convinces me to complete a process that began with this conversation.

Here’s the key paragraph (I do love block quotes in WordPress!):

Part of me says I should drop the sections entirely, or at least the “Library Folk” section; it’s not as though it’s difficult to find librarian weblogs. Part of me says I should stick with making a few changes every couple of months, just offering a sampling of “interesting weblogs I pay attention to.” None of me wants to put all 120+ of my Bloglines subscriptions in a Blogroll. After all, there are some blogs that I track but really don’t agree with or particularly support…although I’ve given up on some of the most extreme.

The conversation that ensued was enlightening, as several conversations here have been. (It and some of the others will probably turn into C&I essays in the future.)

I never did get around to “reshuffling” the limited set of Library Folk and Other Folk (the shuffling each time you call up W.a.R. is a WordPress feature). Given how lax I am in creating entries, and how slow I am in starting the new personal website that I need to start (since I’m now spending $20/month for an AT&T dialup account that serves no other purpose), it’s clear that I’m not going to get around to a well-thought-out, coherent strategy for a somewhat-irrelevant set of links.

So they’re gone. You all know how to find library-related weblogs, and you certainly don’t need my endorsement as to which ones are particularly worthwhile.

(OK, there’s one other factor: I did a “Walt at Random” egosearch on Google, and find that blogrolls are making it almost impossible to find actual citations–to the extent that the result size for the blog is actually larger than for “Walt Crawford,” which is just silly. So I now see a positive downside to blogrolls.)

This is a true story with an unknown moral.

I was flying to Chicago for ALA (that is, this happened just under two weeks ago)–nonstop on American from San Jose, in coach, the 6;22 a.m. flight.

As the flight progressed, I noticed that the person one row ahead of me and to the left was watching a movie on their notebook computer (big, bright screen: impossible not to notice).

And that the movie was Star Wars Episode III

Which won’t be available on DVD for a while yet.

Infringement? Unclear.

What made it even more unclear is that there was a big white timing strip running over the picture about a third of the way down, obscuring part of the picture, with constantly changing information. That suggests that this was studio material.

So either it was “deep infringement”–but odd, since the overlay precludes offering it as anything but bootlegged material–or a legitimate screening copy being watched by someone connected with the studio.

The latter is certainly plausible: LucasFilms is, after all, a Bay Area operation.

My best guess is that it wasn’t bootlegged, but what do I know. (No, I didn’t watch enough of it to say anything about the movie; I wouldn’t have noticed it at all except that the notebook was at an angle that made it impossible to ignore. After musing about it for a minute or so, I went back to Asimov’s Science Fiction–I usually catch up with the three semi-major SF magazines when I’m traveling.)

No real moral; just an anecdote.

I haven’t ignored the MGM v. Grokster decision.

But this here weblog is, among other things, about stuff “not quite ready for Cites & Insights“–which admittedly includes several conversations that will sooner or later turn into C&I essays.

The Grokster case is, in fact, “ready.” The essay’s written, and will appear–probably with ongoing refinements–in the July/August C&I, coming later this month.

If you want a hint at my own take, I’ll note that while I’ve been covering Grokster in what I call (C)4, Locking Down Technology, this perspective is flagged as (C)3, Balancing Rights. That’s a strong clue, and it’s fair to say that I was generally pleasantly surprised by the decision.

Several thousand words more (from me and others) in C&I, coming soon to a PDF near you.

That’s the title on this post at Joy Weese Moll’s “Wanderings of a Student Librarian.”

Which begins,

As Walt Crawford likes to imply, metablogging can be a path to a boring navel-gazing blog. But in the last few days, I have benefited from other people’s thoughts about blogging and work.

Which naturally calls for this entry (an entry that also shows I haven’t entirely disappeared yet, although family, health and work issues continue to preclude active posting).

I’d refine that implication: continuous metablogging can be a path to a boring navel-gazing blog and is at the heart of the Great Blogosphere Echo Chamber. But selective metablogging is a wonderful thing!

I’m always honored to be noted by people like Joy, and Dorothea and Meredith (mentioned in Joy’s post). And I’m sure Joy will find a way to continue her weblog after her student days are over.

Music? I’ve thought about posting something on one of the greatest spoken-verse sections I can remember in a song–and the song is named “Joy” (by Harry Nilsson). You can find the lyrics if you want; I won’t quote the spoken section in full (because it exceeds fair use) and I won’t link to the site I found (because it starts loading popups and probably spyware immediately), but it ends with the classic line “And if everyone was happy, there wouldn’t be any love songs” (probably misquoted). Sorry, Joy: I won’t do it again.

Horrors of Spider Island, 1960, b&w, Fritz Böttger (dir.), Harald Maresch, Helga Franck, others you’ve never heard of. Original title Ein Toter hing im Netz (“A corpse hangs in the web”); also released in the U.S. as Body in the Web, Girls of Spider Island, It’s Hot in Paradise, The Spider’s Web. 1:29 (or 1:21 or 1:17). [1:14]

The IMDB trivia notes reveal a lot: This was originally released in the U.S. as an “Adults-only” movie, then trimmed of the nude scenes for this odd version. It would make more sense with full nudity. Maybe. (This one was used by MST3K.) The plot, such as it is: A bunch of women are interviewed (which mostly involves showing off their legs) to join a dance troupe headed for Singapore. The plane crashes. After a few raft scenes, the women (and one man) make it to an island where they find a cabin with, gasp, a man suspended in the middle of a huge spider’s net. The man gets bitten by a radioactive spider and turns into a furry-headed claw-handed monster of some sort—while the women run around in what’s left of their clothes. Two men arrive to help the uranium prospector (the dead guy), radio their ship to come back for the women, a couple of people die, and there’s lots of dancing. All accompanied by mild jazz/pop, much of it with a substantial lag between sight and sound. A mess, but a mildly amusing mess. $0.50.

The Wasp Woman, 1960, b&w, Roger Corman (dir.), Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley. 1:13.

Not bad at all. An eccentric scientist who’s supposed to be extracting royal jelly from bees thinks he can do better by extracting wasp jelly. The woman who founded a cosmetics company and always used her face on the products laments lower sales because she’s getting older. The scientist believes that he can reverse the aging process with the wasp jelly. And so he does—but she takes a little too much of it (without the mad scientist’s knowledge) and, after losing half her apparent age, starts turning into “wasp woman” every so often, killing and eating some of her staff. You can see how Corman managed to do this on the cheap: The wasp-woman makeup is quite effective, but all her appearances on screen probably add up to two or three minutes and were probably all filmed in one day. Not a masterpiece, but a coherent story and a typically competent Corman flick. Decent print and sound. $1.50

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, 1965, color, Curtis Harrington (dir.), Basil Rathbone, Faith Domergue. 1:18 [1:13]

A surprisingly good B sci-fi flick for its time, particularly given that much (most?) of the footage is Russian (obvious from a couple of brand names, but the odd lack of coherence between the spoken dialogue and lip movements in most scenes makes one suspicious). Turns out that this movie and the other one on Side B of Disc 2 are Roger Corman productions consisting of new American footage (probably the scenes with Basil Rathbone and, separately, Faith Domergue, almost always alone or with one other actor in a “space station” or “space ship” set) intercut with footage from a well-made Russian SF movie, Planeta Bur. (I’d guess all of the Venus exploration was from the Russian flick.) Generally good print, decent sound. In a way, this is sad: The movie’s set in 2020, by which time we’d explored and colonized the moon and were ready to explore Venus with manned spacecraft. Or maybe not. $1.50

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, 1968, color, Peter Bogdanovich (dir.), Mamie Van Doren. 1:18 [1:19]

Another Russian-American hybrid: New scenes of Mamie Van Doren and a bunch of others filmed by Bogdanovich blended with footage from the Russian Planeta Bur (provided by Roger Corman). Do not watch this picture within a week of watching Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet—unless you want to thrill at Roger Corman’s sheer gall. Not only is most of the movie the same Russian footage as in the other flick, the dubbed dialog is the same—which leads to a bizarro note that the command center for the Venus voyage was “Marsha,” to cover for the earlier movie’s dialog between landed astronauts and Faith Domergue (Marsha) still out in space. Bogdanovich provides voice-over narration for this reconfigured version. The nine women in the new scenes, all in seashell tops and full-length pants, never speak: all their dialog is “telepathic” voice-overs. They don’t act much either, mostly just providing a few minutes’ footage to make this a different movie. (They don’t really provide much in the way of eye candy either, to tell the truth. They’re just there.) The color generally seems washed out; otherwise, the print varies from very good to damaged. There’s a little more of the original footage this time, including grand shots of the space ships taking off (with a very obvious single red star on the rocket fins) and refueling at a space station (where, wondrously, the Cyrillic lettering on the ships in moving shots turns into unlikely English-language names such as “Typhoon,” just what you’d call an exploration ship). Good enough if you haven’t seen the 1965 version; otherwise, I’d pass. $1.

Corman scores: Even with the single movie recut and padded into two different releases, this is an enjoyable foursome. I wonder if Planeta Bur would be worth watching on its own (with subtitles?).

I happened upon this Slate commentary on the TV movie Boy in the Plastic Bubble. A key quote:

From the moment Travolta first appears onscreen, bedecked in a pink-and-black-checked knit hat with a huge pom-pom on top, he’s electrifying, and the scene in which he disco dances around his bubble wearing short shorts and a football jersey is worth three months of cable bills.

Well, maybe. Last October, I included an “off-topic perspective” commenting on a bunch of old movies in a “free” set of DVDs; that bunch included Boy in the Plastic Bubble. I was a bit less electrified. Here’s my brief comment in full:

This is an Aaron Spelling production: A TV movie with a very young John Travolta. I’m not sure where the 8 minutes went (or if the IMDB info is correct); it seems to be a good print, possibly supplied directly by Spelling. I’d have to say Robert Reed, Glynnis O’Connor, Diana Hyland, and Ralph Bellamy all out-act Travolta, who seems unformed as an actor at this point. As TV movies go, it’s mediocre but watchable.

(“8 minutes” refers to the difference between IMDB’s runtime for this TVflick–1:40–and the DVD’s actual runtime, 1:32. At this point, I’d guess it’s that the DVD omits a whole bunch of “movie of the week”-style overhead, which could easily add up to eight minutes on a two-hour TV slot.)

I dunno. It’s not that I don’t like John Travolta, but I didn’t think there was anything there at the time–basically a pretty-faced lump of clay. As always, your mileage may vary.

Yesterday, someone at LISNews and one of the thoughtful people at It’s All Good read a British Library press release a little too quickly (easy enough to do, particularly if you’re dealing with post-ALA stuff).

Here’s the It’s All Good post. The gist: the press release projects that 10% of UK research monographs will be print-only in 2020, with the remainder being e-only or print and electronic.

The unsupportable projection is that only 10% of published material would be print-only. While that might be true, that’s not what they said. I noted the distinction at LISNews and at It’s All Good.

And then thought a little about what might or might not happen, looking at U.S./worldwide publishing and making up some plausible numbers.

Note that these are all hypothetical numbers and are not claimed to be projections!

Consider the following hypotheticals:

• Trade books (an amorphous category but what most of us usually buy at bookstores and borrow at libraries): Let’s assume that 100,000 titles will be published this year, that the average trade book is 150 pages long, that the number of titles will grow at 1% a year, and that in 2020 a full 80% of trade books will be print only. In other words, in public library/bookstore terms, “most books will still be print only.” NOT A PREDICTION!
• Other books (reference, research monographs, etc.): Let’s say 50,000 titles in 2005, averaging 200 pages, growing at 2% a year, and that 20% will be print only in 2020. (I think these are all relatively fair projections, noting that many more reference and scholarly monographs are becoming available in both print and electronic form, and that these books are generally longer.)
• Refereed scholarly journals: Let’s say 30,000 such journals in 2005, averaging 1,000 pages per journal per year, growing at 5% annually–and, I believe a plausible projection, that only 10% (mostly humanities) will be print-only in 2020. Heck, I’d go with a 5% projection.
• Magazines and other periodicals: Let’s say 200,000 such periodicals in 2005, again averaging 1,000 pages per periodical per year, growing at 2% annually. Since full-text aggregators are now making many popular magazines available in e-form, although the bulk of circulation continues to be print (and, I believe, will still be print), let’s say that 25% will be print-only in 2020.

Add those all up–and while all of the growth factors and current page and title numbers are made up, they’re all within plausible realms based on what I understand about the publishing industry–and you get this situation in 2020: 25% of all publishing (where “all” excludes newspapers and the like, an unfortunate exclusion) would be print-only–but most “regular” books would still be print-only.

Change those assumptions just a little bit and see what happens:

• Let’s consider words rather than pages. An educated estimate is that the average trade-book page is around 300 words, the average specialty-book page around 400 words, the average refereed journal page around 700 words, the average magazine page around 600 words. If anything, those estimates are probably on the high side for trade books and on the low side for the others.
• Let’s assume different growth rates: 6% annual growth for refereed “journal equivalents,” many of them just overlays on article databases, and only 1% for other periodicals.
• And let’s assume that 95% of refereed journals are available in some electronic form by 2020 (probably a good assumption) and that 80% of other magazines have most or all of their content in some e-form as well as print.

That yields an overall print-only percentage of 18%. While still leaving most copies of most magazines and most trade books as print publications.

OK, I’ll end this overlength musing–noting that in this case I wouldn’t find the 18% estimate at all unlikely. Nor would it in any way signal “the death of print.”