Beyond the seas of thought, beyond the realm of what

[austin_dern]

In the curious things which pass for free time around me I've been trying to put together a new textbook. This is a project which gives the impression of being useful, in that it means I'm actually doing something relevant to my nominal life as a mathematician, but which doesn't have any direct, tangible benefit to my sorry career. I suppose the publication would make me look somewhat better to potential employers, but since I'm not sure employers see me as anything better than a large empty space the benefit is hard to quantify.

Textbook two shouldn't be hard as I've got a basis of a half-dozen or so papers to use as a starting point, and actually the first task has been essentially doing a bit better than transcribing, taking what was already written and compiling it anew, with the symbols and terminology straightened out (we need more letters in the alphabet) and redundancies eliminated in favor of introductory sections of universal appeal. This, it turns out, is more work than you might figure: it ended up giving me hours to explore typing in the coffee room of the local library, where I could get to typing without my father suggesting I help him out in his tasks of applying tools to wood or having to listen to him watching the Hollering Idiots News.

My father had wondered where I'd been disappearing to all these hours. When I told him I was working on the textbook from the coffee room at the local library branch he asked me to verify that I meant the coffee room, and at the local library branch. Apparently, although he's been going there around once a week for the past six years (since the current building opened), he'd never before noticed that there's a coffee room there. It's not a particularly hidden room: it's just to the left of the circulation desk, and if you just keep walking forward from the main door you -- well, you don't want directly into it. You have to step about three feet to the left to enter the coffee room. I can't get quite clear what he did think the room was.

Trivia: From 1746 the Rhode Island Legislature rotated its sessions among the capitol buildings it had in Newport, South Kingston, East Greenwich, Providence, and Bristol. Source: Rhode Island: A History, William G McLoughlin.

Currently Reading: Herman Hollerith, Forgotten Giant of Information Processing, Geoffrey D Austrian.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Why, that sounds positively civilised!

Sadly, the locall branch is rather more traditional - which is to say, chronically underfunded. So they do their best in a squat box some 15' wide, 70' deep, and tall enough that few patrons remember to complain. So it's a tight mitochondrian folding of shelves, lined with charcoal desktop PCs and X-ray devices - no place for outsiders to suckle power, less still sweet data.

Still, when I enquired about WiFi (which apparently does exist at a few other branches nearby), they gave me a comment card, which prompted an official form in the mail a little while later, declaring that a named individual was looking into the matter.

Now, assuming an infinite budget, should I just beam megabits directly at them? (Answer: no, as my power would still run out in 2-4 hours anyway, and then where would I be?)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I missed, from one thing or another, about six years of library evolution in the United States so I'm regularly stunned to discover how loose things are these days. I mean, providing wireless Internet service is nice but not all that surprising. The coffee room is more startling what with the general preference against having fluids that can fall over books when they can help it.

What I can't fathom is that they let you have drinks in the library now. Oh, it has to be bottled water in the county libraries, and it has to be in a mug that's covered in the university library I rely on, but they let you have drinks in the library now. That goes against everything I ever knew about libraries when I was growing up, when it was clearly established that you can not have drinks in the library.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I think the coffee room is the sort of 'combatting against Borders / Barnes&Noble" notion, but it is odd. I should check to see if my local library's done any such of late.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It probably is a reaction to the Borders and Barnes & Noble developments, which makes it no less disturbing and wrong that they let you have drinks in bookstores now too.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

It's simple math: the drinks sold in the coffee shops in B&N/B make vastly more profit than the amount of books ruined from drinks. This sea change is because Borders sells the drinks now.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That doesn't change the fact that it's horrifying and contrary to all rules I know about handling books that aren't yours, like not having stuff that spills on them.

My alma mater has the rule that if your drink container is covered then you can have it in the stacks. That's still terrifying, but at least nobody goes back into the stacks anymore because they're all playing video games at the card-catalogue computers.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

"Coffee room" and "library" -- two great tastes that I've never seen together before. I bow to your library's urbanity.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I'll pass along the compliment if I'm not lost in a fit of shyness at the prospect.