Dave Thomas writes about self organising bookstores:
“Say you had a store where you encouraged people to reshelve things. You’d have broad sections (Computers, Photography, and so one), and some cardboard labels you could put on the shelves themselves. People could write their own labels, create their own sections, and move books as they saw fit. If someone really likes a book, they could turn it face out to show others they approve. They could even move the books onto display tables. Not sure if a Photoshop title belongs in Photography or Computers? Put a copy in both sections.
Would such a store work, or would it just be chaos? I frankly don’t know. But I suspect that people felt that user-organized sites such as wikis wouldn’t work, and Wikipedia and friends have proven that wrong. Flickr and del.icio.us have shown that tagging is a great tool for organizing content. And all these sites have an additional, emergent, property that would be wonderful to see in a bricks and mortar storeâ€â€they allow serendipitous discoveries. You come across things that delight you that you wouldn’t have thought to look for.
Wouldn’t that make it worth going to a real store again?”
There are at least two places I would love to see this put into practice:
- The University of Mauritius library where there are a lot of (old) books but extremely badly shelved according to me,
- Editions Le Printemps where there are a lot of recent (and cheap) computer science books except that many of them are easy to miss because they are shelved horizontally instead of vertically (if you understand what I mean)
you can moderate wikipedia as easily as moderating a bookshelf?
I mean, you can apply tags on virtual items on the internet. but on real physical items, how would that work?
then again, Amazon.com manages both a virtual items and physical ones in tandem.
so maybe it could be possible.
The key idea is to let people reshelve books. In my opinion, 95% people won’t bother except born librarians and born computer scientists (like us) who always like things to be at their proper place.
My point is that the UoM people and the Editions Le Printemps people don’t necessarily know how to classify books. So they could let us do it :-)
{a bit out of subject}
I just came across something that I thought could be of use to you since I’ve visited your about page and saw lots of info on experience etc.etc.
See the article here
do you think such thing really deserves trying them out?
Do we actually have any books in the UOM library? Books that r still relevant to CSE students?? thought they only had old fossils dating from the past century! haha!
erm.. first line on fist comment, right hand side is evaluated first.
If we sorted the books for the UoM library, would it mean that the scandalously high library fee would go down?
To Hans:
I’m already on LinkedIn (this is my profile) but for the time being I’ve not really used it to the full. LinkedIn describes itself as MySpace for Professionals…
To Val:
The library has some gems (believe it or not). For example, you’ll find Knuth’s “The Art of Computer Programming” as well as Goldberg’s “Smalltalk-80” and some others. Pity the books are so badly organised and that the library as a whole so unfriendly.
To Yaasir:
How much do you pay? What do you think we can do to improve the library?
By the way, I don’t know if you know but we, as lecturers, can propose books to the library but it takes ages and when the books are here finally (that’s what I’ve been told), another edition is already available. But still, having some books which are 1-2 years old is better than having only 10 years old books. I’ll have a talk with my HoD. I’ll let you know.
Library fees are about Rs 2,000
but that was before. I think it went up again.
At this price per student. It’s kinda strange that there are that few books in mint condition.
The thing with the UoM library is that once you get used to it, you can find your way around.
It’s like a bazar. If you are looking for something, you will find it. Inevitably. If fact, you might find other things of interest while you are browsing.
That kind of searching for things may suit some(i’ll admit i enjoyed just walking between the shelves a few times, randomly picking books that seemed interesting), but there is a lot of time wasted just looking around.
There are bloody dozens of signs telling you not to work in groups and not to use cellphones but you’ll be damned if you can find even one to tell you HOW to use the library.
You need a book on programming algorithms. you would think of looking in the computer science section.
now where is the computer science section..?
… wait.. there are sections..?
later i discovered that they were rickety plywood signs affixed to the narrow sides of a few shelves by means of strings that informed the user(me, you and the average freshman) which set of shelves were part of which section. It is at that moment that you raise your head in awe and are struck down by the revelation that the bookshelves are actually labelled… No seriously. they are labeled. Albeit by strange alphanumeric codes. but labelled all the same.
I think there is also a cupboard with small drawers containing cards which tell you which book is in which section/shelf label. But i could be confusing with another library.
there are 3(?) floors to the UoM library. What each contain is a mystery to anyone entering the library for the first time.
Basically it boils down to knowing where things are and how to get there. Another thing to know is who has access to what?
But for the first, one really totally cool solution would be to have colored strips painted or stuck on the floor to guide library patrons to where they want to go.
If you played Half life I, you should remember the colored guidelines on the wall. The only way to find the locker room was to follow them..
@Val I’d be totally estatic if i found old fossils dating from the past century in the UoM library…
If only I could find my library card :-(
same here
@ yassir : pity there aint any mirrors in the library! i fancy u’d find ur old fossil pretty quickly then!! haha
(chai pas pkoi j’ai 1 filin ke this post wnt really make it…lol)
why? Is it in your experience a frequent occurrence to find fossils within the proximity or in clear sight of mirrors?