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January 31, 2006
Information Summit in New York
This trip to New York for the SIIA Information Industry Summit 2006 has been a massive disappointment. Mostly because of me: I've got an awful cold and am not in prime form for all the networking I usually enjoy.
But the fact is that most of the sessions today were just plain dull. I guess that's what happens at an event where the CEOs of big corporations are given their moment in the sun. They pitch their company or their position on free trade or Google Print, and there's no response, no controversy. Harold "Terry" McGraw was this morning's keynote speaker and not a single person asked a question when he was finished.
Even after a much more interesting presentation, an interview with the founder of Audible, the audience had nothing much to ask or add. Although the theme of the conference is "Users Taking Control" and the SIIA organizers said that we attendees were users, too, I have never been to a less interactive event.
I imagine I'd feel more comfortable at one of the conferences not composed of "C-level" people, with younger entrepreneurs and jean-clad techies. Not because I'm 20-something or jean-clad, but because their energy and alertness to the world that's hurtling at us would be a more interesting, inspiring atmosphere than today's meeting of the suits.
There was one serious question asked that deserves mention, addressed to the chief scientist of Akamai, a major online business systems provider. Someone asked what he thought of growing activism by people and companies around the world, and especially in Asia, aimed at changing the American and western dominance of the Internet. Unfortunately, his response was purely technical: he said that no one dominates the Internet and the proof is that there are so many security holes.
Considering that Mr McGraw opened the conference with the announcement that New York is the greatest city on earth, I guess it's a good thing that there weren't too many attendees from from other countries. I can't imagine someone in London or Beijing welcoming people in that way--it's a bizarre American trait that goes against all traditions of hospitality I know of.
The best presentation by far was by David Worlock, the UK head of Electronic Publishing Services. He gave a clear, crisp, detailed overview of opportunities and risks in publishing in Russia. I'm
hoping for better things tomorrow!
(No, there was not a mention of anyone's blogging the conference, though Esther Dyson was there and I hope there are other star bloggers in the crowd.)
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:04 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
Small town doings
After the SIIA Content Summit in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm looking forward to having most of February at home in Great Barrington. I had flu last time I attended an SIIA event and remember chatting to people in a feverish haze, so it's frustrating to be nursing a mega-cold this weekend as I prepare for two days that ought to be very helpful in moving our online publishing plans forward. The virus has been making the rounds here, and when I look back at how much everyone got done this week I'm amazed. (Here's a preview of one new projectnow in beta: Love US or Hate US? What the World Thinks about America.)
There's some bustle on the home front: a growing interest in W.E.B. Du Bois, who grew up in Great Barrington, with the inevitable efforts of some to make commercial hay. Ignoble but predictable behavior, I know, but the sad part is that it's the outsiders, the white and wealthy newcomers, who are trying to benefit personally from the legacy of an African American while ignoring the local African Americans who have worked since the '60s to keep Du Bois's memory alive here, and who continue to be disadvantaged in this increasingly affluent, second-home-owner region. I'm encouraging David to write an article about this, because it is a story of several social divides: black and white, rich and poor, local and newcomer.
Rachel and I went to Town Hall on Friday to apply for her new US passport. This required, because she's 17 and doesn't yet have a drivers licence, a copy of her birth certificate, which came from London and is for a "US Citizen Born Abroad." I've been something of a mystery as a newcomer from London 14 years ago, though I became well-known and controversial during my years on the School Committee. Now, thanks to that detailed birth certificate, the ladies at Town Hall have a lot of information about my antecedents. When we left work the lights in Town Hall were on. "They're still photocopying it," David quipped.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
Bright lights
Small town Great Barrington doesn't offer a lot in the way of sparkling events, so I was glad to receive an invitation to an eco fashion party in New York Wednesday night. It was serendipitious to get the invite from Remy Chevalier, one of the hosts, because I'd just been writing about eco-fashion for a new book we're putting together.
Sustainability is on our minds. I'm not sure it was on the minds of too many people at the ICI-nyc party, but certainly the organic wine and vodka was a draw. Take a look at the pix: not uptown like "Sex and the City" but a New York scene that was a fun boost in the middle of winter. Good connections, too, for our new publishing projects.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 5:15 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Goodies for Good People
Before Berkshire Publishing began exhibiting at the American Library Association (ALA) conference last year, Berkshire folks attended a conference as visitors to get "the lay of the land." We were all astounded by the shopping bags laden with free goodies that our librarian colleagues were hauling around. It was infectious, and I came home with pens, pins, mousepads, and bound galleys of young adult books for my daughter.
In the three ALA conferences we've attended as exhibitors, we've had a winning combination of clever buttons and raffles to draw people to our booth. The beautiful button created for the San Antonio ALA conference (by our talented designer, Joe DiStefano) read "Libraries Make the World a Better Place"--promoting our upcoming title, Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love. And hundreds of librarians stopped by to enter an opening night raffle for our "Around the World in a Berkshire Basket" and then for our subsequent raffle of The Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.
Faedra Wills--a collection development & acquisitions specialist at the University of Texas-Arlington Library--was the delighted winner of the Berkshire basket of goodies (pictured below), which included an international music CD, chopsticks and placemats, tea, and origami.
This morning we gave the good news to Christine Findlay, district library media services coordinator for the Centerville (OH) City Schools, that she'd won The Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. She e-mailed back, "What fun news to receive on a cold day in Ohio!"
Christine herself is an active blogger, using the Centerville website (www.centerville.k12.oh.us) to keep teachers, parents, and students updated on library resources. Today, for example, her entry is titled: "There's a Library in Your Computer!"
Christine is also the immediate past president of her state school library association, the Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA). Of course, we didn't know any of this when we picked her name at random. But we met so many great folks at our booth, we felt pretty sure we'd pick a winning librarian ... in more ways than one.
Posted by Marcy Ross at 4:08 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
Accolades to guide us
Publishing is a quiet business. We labor to create books and databases that people will use in libraries and at their desks at home or in a dorm room. We have lots of contact with our editors and authors, but not (yet) as much as we would like with the people who buy and use our works. Conferences like the one we've just attending in San Antonio, Texas, the American Library Association's Midwinter meeting, is a wonderful chance to get feedback, hear questions, and take the pulse of the reference publishing and library community.
We heard that the transition from print to electronic publishing continues and quickens. No one seems to think they've seen the right model for the long haul, but the introduction of various options, at different price points, seems to provide some comfort--for now. Publishers still aren't grappling with the issue of quality the way we ought to, or discussing how free and collaborative content might happily coexist with the kind of integrated and vetted content we pride ourselves on. Reference publishers aren't yet talking about the real weakness of some print reference content--weakness that is becoming more obvious because of the rising standard of free online content. And we haven't begun to talk about advertising supported content at all, even though the various Google publsihing programs are, and will be, financed through online advertising.
In addition to awards from both Booklist and Choice magazines, announced at ALA, we were thrilled by praise from librarians who stopped to chat. We were told to keep up the good work as independent publishers, and to continue our innovative marketing with the Berkshire Savant newsletter and our e-newsletters, too. Rachel does all the technical and design work on our newsletters--Berkshire Publishing News, Berkshire Bytes, World History To Go, and others--and was overjoyed to be told that they were very attractive and much better than materials from other publishers because they have content. We don't have the big marketing budget of other reference publishers, but we do have lots of terrific content and a passion for knowledge--and that's what we try to convey in everything we send out.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:57 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2006
ALA San Antonio photos
Here are Berkshire editors and library fans Cassie Lynch and Marcy Ross with the beautiful "Round the World in a Berkshire Basket" they created as one of our raffle prizes:
And young Berkshire helpers, Karyn and Rachel, who enjoyed passing out our new buttons--"Libraries make the world a better place."--and were especially skilled at operating the badge scanner:
Posted by Karen Christensen at 2:43 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2006
Prison libraries
We're at ALA in San Antonio, handing out buttons that say, "Libraries make the world a better place." These go with our book project, The Libraries We Love (and nominations are still open, till Valentine's Day). At the opening reception a couple of Texan librarians came by and said they worked in the penal system. "We should be nominated--our patrons love us!" they said. We're happy to take nominations from prisons or anywhere else. Libraries are for everyone.
Apparently in prisons the most popular subjects are self-help and religion.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2006
A place to call home
Back to the theme of homelessness. There was a time when I, a young single mother, worried about becoming homeless. Now, I find myself in the odd position of not only having a home—-that physical shelter-—but of having different places on earth that feel like home. This week I’ve been in Santa Barbara, where I went to college, and today I’ve been in Palo Alto, where I lived as a teenager. And I’m blogging from Cupertino, from a Starbucks on a corner facing a huge apartment complex where I remember there being a grain elevator and orchards when I first came to California from Minnesota at age 10. There's definitely some Californian in me--one reason, I think, Carrie and I connect! (She moved from California to Minnesota at 10; I tell her I got the better exchange.) Shelter comes first, of course. But a sense of home, of connection and community, is also a vital human need. We’ll be exploring this in some of our future publications, as we did in the Encyclopedia of Community.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
Homeless in paradise
Homelessness isn't evident at home in Great Barrington the way it is here in southern California. We're in Santa Barbara, where homeless people are everywhere--or so it seems to us, much attuned to this problem--and where our recent publishing on the subject got going a couple of years ago. David's first ethnographic research was done on the Bowery in New York, and it's been terrific to make this part of our global publishing efforts. Marcy Ross has been finishing up the latest publication, the Homelessness Handbook, which focuses on what is known about solving homelessness around the world.
We had a glimpse of people living in the concreted basin of the Tijuana River on Sunday--the river is a trickle now, but no doubt fills from time to time. Isn't that the essence of homelessness, though, and its tragedy, that people everywhere try to make themselves a home. The difference is its stability, security, and comfort.
Here in Santa Barbara, luxury and poverty nestle together. David says he saw a well-attended softball game going on this evening, under lights, at a park where there are a dozen homeless men camped out. I'm sure that many people watching the game wonder, as we have, what they can do to make homelessness go away. We're hoping the Homelessness Handbook will help.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Bad day for the homeless
Homeless people are on my mind a lot as we finish up work on our Homeless Handbook. There are plenty of bad days for all of America's 3.5 million homeless folks, but last Friday brought two stories that make clear that sunny Florida isn't the best place to be homeless these days. I had to rewrite our sidebar on the "meanest cities" toward the homeless because the National Coalition for the Homeless released its 2005 ranking of cities that criminalize homelessness -- that is, cities that seem to pay more attention to creating anti-homeless laws than to solving their homelessness problems. Sarasota, FL, heads the list -- a lovely place to live...if you're not homeless. Here's a summary of the report here: www.nationalhomeless.org/civilrights/crimpress2006.
And Ft. Lauderdale made the news with a tragic story of brutal attacks on three homeless men, one of whom was killed. (Surveillance video from Florida Atlantic University showed two young men beating one of the victims with what looked like bats.) This morning's Miami Herald reported that the young men, ages 17 and 18, turned themselves in to police on Sunday after police received more than 100 tips from local residents who recognized the teens on the video.
No "motive" has been determined (and what motive could there be?), but I admit I'll be watching with a sad curiosity as the case progresses to see how the defense attorneys explain these kids' brutality.
Posted by Marcy Ross at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
World history parachutists
What a treat, to be in southern California, looking out at palm trees and sunshine and reading email about all the snow back home. Last week was hectic for everyone in the office, so I suspect they’ll all enjoy having a little calm and quiet this week, with preparations made for ALA—which starts Friday night--and time to focus on new projects. I had a perfect start to this week’s travel: a yoga class in La Mesa at the studio where Ross Dunn, one of our world history colleagues, goes. After class, Ross and our dear friend David Christian, author of Maps of Time, who coedited the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History and wrote our forthcoming teacher’s guide The Fleeting World, took us to brunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. We spent three hours talking about everything from bodily fluids to world cultures; I love the chance to be with wide-ranging scholars, and it’s fun to get world historians together to an anthropologist, Berkshire's David Levinson, who has always specialized in the whole wide world.
David Christian said how much he liked the kind of intellectual ambition that inspires people like Bill McNeill, and we all laughed when David Levinson told them the title of his dissertation, Towards Explaining Human Culture. A good kind of arrogance, we agreed. David said he’d wanted to call it simply Explaining Human Culture! (It's still in print, after 25 years.)
The scholars we work most closely with like to take on the grand questions of the social sciences. Ross calls them “parachutists,” not “trufflehunters.” Tom (20) joined into the conversation happily and amused us by describing how one of his professors had recoiled when he said he was interested in the bigger picture. Rachel (just turned 17) was quiet but afterwards said that she’d had a great time listening.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2006
Berkshire Savant, Winter 2006 issue
I've just signed off on the proofs, and we'll have copies at ALA next week, but you can read it first here: Berkshire Savant, Winter 2006, leading with "The End of Cyberspace."
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:01 PM | Comments (0)
A Pattern Language
Yesterday Karen and I discovered we share a passion for Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. What's your favorite?, she asked me, and I immediately thought of the teenager's separate living space, which allows for increasing independence. Karen's favorite pattern is different sized dining chairs for different sized people--of course, why should they all be one size when a family consists of many sizes of people?
A Pattern Language is one of my most-cherished books and I was happy to find that someone I work with and admire also loves the book. This is something that happens here quite often and one of the reasons I love coming to work at Berkshire Publishing.
Pattern Language.com seeks "to help people design things, create things, to make them useful and beautiful, in whatever we are doing, so that we may all take part in the daily work of building a living earth." Does this include creating books? I think so.
Posted by Carrie Owens at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The end of cyberspace
We have a remarkable board of advisors. The one whose opening line still makes me smile is Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. "We've obviously been living in parallel universes," he said. He is Research Director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and wrote our cover story, "The End of Cyberspace," for the new Berkshire Savant. He was managing editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica for a while, a job that Bill McNeill also recommended me for (from some of what Alex says, my lack of interest in moving to Chicago was a fortunate thing). We'll be posting the digital version of the Savant later today, Friday EST, and in the meantime you can also check out his new blog (did I mention that Alex is Blogger in Chief?): www.endofcyberspace.com.
Some people don't know cyberspace ever started. I have a (print) newsletter here from the newsletter association, dated January 2006, and it actually has a heading, "The Internet--Friend or Foe?" That's the equivalent of asking whether the ocean is friend or foe. It really depends on what you're doing. And it's not going away. That's where old-time publishers are vulnerable: they aren't even thinking about riding the wave.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
Berkshire bloggers
I love the chance to write about things that catch my eye, without worrying about how they fit into a book, but the point of this blog is really to give our friends, colleagues (many of whom are friends, too), and customers (ditto) a look at what's going on at 314 Main Street, Great Barrington. Those goings-on produce a range of publications that is going to expand a great deal in 2006, and are the work of an on- and off-site team of people who are clever, creative, and remarkably varied--people I'd like you to meet.
With an introduction to them and their work at Berkshire as our goal, the Berkshire Blog is about to become a group effort. You'll be hearing from David Levinson, Marcy Ross, Carrie Owens, and others--and within a few days I'm even hoping to have a group photo to post. The potential for dialogue is important to us and as part of this change we're working on some new ways to engage more with the people who visit our site--without, we hope, the annoyance of pointless posts and spammer-comments.
I'll be shifting most of my blogging to a site where I can share ideas from my current book projects (one on community building and the other on global warming).
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2006
Library drill team
I didn't see it, but apparently a drill team competition is quite the draw at ALA. Marcy just found these photos from the Marin County Free Library Drill Team--these librarians are certainly on the move!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:27 PM | Comments (0)
January 5, 2006
Jury service questionnaire
As I mentioned, we were treated well at the Pittsfield, MA, court today. The judge even came down to thank us before we were dismissed at 3pm ("I could have done without the thank you," said a few people near me, but we were all surprisingly chummy at the end and no one minded waited a few more minutes). He told us that the defendant in the trial we'd been held for had "looked more closely at his options" over lunch because we were there waiting, willing to deliberate on his case.
He pleaded guilty, and we got to go home.
Courts are making an effort to make us feel good about serving (and, think about it, don't you want the assurance that you would have a sincere and willing jury if you were ever in court?). But this effort, Community Outreach Survey, strikes me as odd: anyone can answer the question. Courts need a little more IT security!
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:24 PM | Comments (0)
Civic duty
Sounds good, doesn't it, "civic duty"? Almost the only time one ever hears the word duty in modern discourse, or so it seems to me, is when we talk about jury duty. And you'd think I would be glad to serve society in this way, with all my talk about community. I'm sorry to report that I am a horrendously impatient jury prospect: I feel like a caged tiger, waiting in a basement room all morning and finally being released for lunch without having done a thing. (Well, actually, I did do a lot of work.)
It's time to report back, and we're supposedly going to go up to the superior court for selection at 2pm. The thing I'll give them credit for, at Pittsfield District Court, is superior customer relations. The superior court judge came down to thank us for our services and explain why we would be held till the afternoon. He was a short, round man, not my idea of a judge, but he was gracious and articulate and really quite nice. I'll probably feel better about this in retrospect than I do right now, when I wish I were at the office taking care of all the things that need to be done before we set off for California and San Antonio next week.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 1:16 PM | Comments (0)
January 4, 2006
We're really going to learn Chinese
Tom taught me a little Chinese today. This is a huge breakthrough, because when I came back from China in 2002 and said I needed to learn a little of the language, he told me I was too old. “You have to be a teenager or younger,” he said. But now we’re all talking about China. I learned to say that I am a business person (in fact, a “worker”), Wo shi gong ren.
A Chinese-speaking editorial assistant starts tomorrow so while Tom is home from school we have two Chinese speakers on staff. I was especially thrilled to have Cassie and Jenn, two of our EAs, say that they too want to learn Chinese. Not only will we have Beijing Olympics posters in the hallway to our offices, but it won’t be long till there are Chinese words (characters and pinyin) on cards stuck to our desks and printers and coffee cups.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:13 PM | Comments (0)
January 3, 2006
Bei Da comes to Main Street
People are talking about China, even in small town America. NPR aired a story last week about the number of Beijing University (Bei Da) graduates in the United States and within hours two different people in Great Barrington, astonished, had told me about it. There are 40,000 Bei Da graduates here, and apparently the university is planning to start fundraising among them. The College of Creative Studies at UCSB, which I attended, has been around for nearly 40 years and has less than 2,000 graduates.
This is one of the important things to know about China: there are just so many people. It's striking when you're there, on the streets, but the more important thing is that a huge population creates social and economic pressures, and influences how a country goes about its business. And business is on China's mind: not only are Chinese people attending western business schools, but they are creating their own, and fast. Here's a Business Week article about China's b-schools.
Japan, on the other hand, like much of Europe, has a declining population.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
The risk of a global perspective
One of Rachel's plans for 2006 is to learn to drive, and this reminded me of a favorite anecdote that shows what can happen in a household where "global perspective" has become a mantra. She came to me not long ago with a small book in her hand and said, "I'm not sure this is for the right country." The book was The Highway Code, the UK driving manual. I'd picked up a copy for Tom once upon a time, and he had handed it to her when she asked for the book she should study to get her permit. Now I'm wondering what Tom read to take his driving test three years ago.
We'll soon be launching a website where people can tell us what they think about many aspects of American life and culture, and I already know that we'll be getting comments on American driving. I learned to drive in England and still hear the driving instructor's voice, talking about how crucial it is to "make progress" (ie, stay out of other people's way). "Lane control" is also considered vital to harmonious driving: Americans take note.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)
January 1, 2006
Hooray Henry!
"Do you know who Henry Winkler is?" David asked a couple of weeks ago.
I was insulted. While my pop culture knowledge may be somewhat deficient (Carrie says I spent too much time in England drinking tea), I certainly recognize the Fonz, and even knew that Winkler, Yale Drama School alum, is a great fan of libraries.
Well, the final mail of 2005 brought a letter from Winkler, in response to our invitation to join the advisory board for the Libraries We Love project. He has written a charming library memory for the book, which concludes, "The library is a living place--you have to visit it,use it, enjoy it to keep it healthy." Then, by hand, "Read your heart out! Henry Winkler."
What we're finding is that people do love libraries, that libraries fill an role in our lives that nothing else can fill.
Speaking of popular culture, Tom got us to watch the new scifi show "Battlestar Galactica" this afternoon. Machines taking over and fighting the humans is an old theme in science fiction, but this show also has religious elements. The scene that startled me took place in the captain's quarters: there were old books stacked everywhere! I suppose they'll turn out to contain vital religious truths. There's lots of sex, too, and female warriors, so definitely a mixed bag.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:28 PM | Comments (0)