Sight, Sound, Senses Visualized - Creative Innovations in Touch and Tell Spheres

[NB. Rest in the Waiting: smell, taste, touch]

Web site helps name that tune in your head [Sify.com]
Singapore: You know that annoying tune that you can't place or get out of your head? A US company has recently launched a Web site, www.midomi.com, that names most tunes that you can hum, sing or whistle a tune into your computer microphone. [Image source and more details: Website Lets Users Search For Unknown Tunes That Get Stuck In Their Head, Thursday February 1, 2007]

Librarians will see Margaret Atwood's Long Pen for the first time at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference's THE 2007 EXPOSITION, Feb 1 -2, 2007

Margaret Atwood's telepresence book-signing robot Clive Thompson, March 01, 2006
Wow: Margaret Atwood has become the first author to sign books in remote locations -- via a telepresence robot!



Last fall, she hooked up with a Toronto company called Unotchit (which sounds roughly like "you no touch it") that developed a device that works like this: Unotchit sets up its robot in a remote bookstore. Atwood logs in from home, and using a webcam, talks to people who are attending the far-off book-signing. She chats with 'em, asks what they want inscribed on their book, and they lay it in front of the Unotchit robot. Atwood writes on a screen, and the robot replicates her pen-strokes precisely, in real-time, on the book.

Previous posts in the same row and isle:

Guided Imagery / Visualization - Uses with the Cancer Patron

Infomedia Revolution Revisited

Visual Communication Vistas Revisited

Scientists and Artists: Who should design learning?

The Technique of Song and Sound Visualization

Graphic novels being challenged by parents

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/21/06
BY DAVID TWIDDY
THE CIATED PRESS

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Amy Crump took over as director of the Marshall Public Library in central Missouri two years ago, she decided to build up the library's offerings for young adults by buying the literary world's hot new thing …graphic novels.

"The bulk of our graphic novels are for young adults and they're very popular,'' Crump said, estimating the library's collection has gone from only a handful to around 75.

Among the new acquisitions was "Blankets'' by Craig Thompson and "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic'' by Alison Bechdel, two semi-autobiographical accounts of the respective authors' turbulent childhoods that include ruminations on strict
religious upbringing and homosexuality.

The two novels touched off what Crump said was the first challenge of library materials in Marshall's 16-year history, as parents complained that the books, which include pictures of a naked couple, could be read by children, attracted by the comic book-like drawings. Continue reading the full story

Previous post:

Scientists study Christie success - Quantification to see true color of words

Get a free book - Courtesy: [Geeks are Sexy] technology news

Wish to get a free book? Read the following -- (incidentally, this Geeky blog is among the top ten Blogs Of Note, today Aug 1st 2006):

Contest: Get a FREE book from [GAS]

A few days ago, newfound buddy Chip from Chip’s Quips decided to run a "get a free book" contest on his blog. He asked people to give him a few reading suggestions, and the person who suggested the book he would pick as his next read would end up winning the contest. The Prize? One book of a value of less than $20.

I thought that this was a great idea, so I'm going to run the exact same contest. Click here to join the contest

Every Book Its Reader - Ranganathan's Law Visualized

Here is a book. It borrows its title from Dr. S R Ranganathan's third (of the Five) Laws of Library Science. The details of the book are:

Nicholas Basbanes. Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World (HarperCollins, 2005). Reviews

What makes the book interesting for me as a librarian and a student of history?
Simply stated, it is my curiosity to find out how relevant is my Guru's Five Laws of Library Science and how his mantra is still floating in a world that is now flat (as per the history of the world by Thomas Friedman).
OK. What are these Five Laws? To read click here
Going by the title one may ask:

• Is this book about outsourcing?
  
• Is this book about extranets
  
• Is this book about offshoring
  
• Is this book about open-sourcing?
  
• Is this book about In-forming

Incidentally, such questions are bound to be asked, if one has just finished reading, India versus Indiana: Who is Exploiting Whom? - a chapter from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. see my comments on Friedman's book
A single answer to the above questions would be, simply said, the book has none of the above.
A last question one may have, because as a student of Library Science, I succinctly recall that there is one significnat implication of this third law. This implication is all-a-do-about OUTREACH. That is, reach everyone of those who cannot reach the library.
Then, does this book deal with libary services and innovations in outreach and reaching out?
The answer, again, is in negative.
WHEREAS, the book is about how the printed word--or how the love of books--makes history (i.e.,Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow of the printed books). As a student of library history, I see this book is of great value for the posterity.
On the Law, per se, I have a word to mention.
The author writes an interesting note about Ranganathan and his Five Laws:

In time he wrote fifty monographs in his field, most notably Five Laws of Library Science (1931), which outlined a set of principles that ha become a guiding code among professinals.

Three of these laws--Books Are For Use, A Reader's Time is Precious, and Libraries are Growing Organisms--were directed primarily at his colleagues. The other two--Every Reader His Book and Every Book Its Reader---have meaning for anyone with an abiding respect for the written word. They also form the guiding premise, and suggested the title, for this book.(p. 15-16)

Furthermore, regarding the appropriateness of the Third Law for this type of library history (meta book, book about books, and bibliomania), I had my own doubts. And this doubt is clarified, to me, by a close assoicate of Dr. Ranganathan, viz., Prof. A Neelameghan, in the following words:

In general, the set of Five Laws constitute the guiding principles / the fundamentals of library and information service in the changing info environment. LIS professionals would do well to provide service that complies with these laws.
End-users (readers) may also use the first three laws to ‘evaluate’ the service they are getting from the library, again in the changing info environment. (personal communication, dated May 16, 2006)

‘Every Reader His/Her Book’ can, as I mentioned earlier, viewed from the library professionals point of view and also that of the ‘Reader’. A reader may search first an online catalogue / union catalogue (in a library or from home), then (or straight away) go to the library for his book, or to a book shop, and to a friend’s book collection, etc. depending on when his need gets satisfied. When he visits the library the latter is expected to have organized the collection, etc and provide services that ensure the reader gets his book from its own collection, or through inter-library loan, or reader given advice where and how else he / she may get his / her need satisfied; sometime it may be another book that satisfies his / her need better than the one he / she may be looking for. The interpretation of the Laws can comprehend different viewpoints. (further clarified in a second personal communication, dated 17 May 2006).

The Bottom Line: Thank you Nick (ie., Prof. Nicholas Basbanes) for this learning opportunity. And Wish You Good Luck to Write More Books. But, do not forget the mantra. I mean, remember there are four more LAWS of my Guru. I wish and pray that God give you a long life to write at least four more books.

Books and senses - visualization conceptualized again

[The following article is an excellent voice and simply promotes the conceptual framework of my blogsphere. Thank you Jacek]

Books and senses by Jacek Czarnik
Some time ago, I was glancing through the manuscripts written by Ignacy Krasicki. They contained fragments of poems, first drafts of fairy tales, and other notes. I new most of them, therefore I concentrated on the quality of handwriting of this ancient poet. It was an experience, interesting, even emotional. However, the strongest experience came from the touch. I could grasp with my fingers the same pages that he touched. Only this surrogate contact - in spite of two hundred years separating us - evoked in me an emotional shudder.

Touch is a sense of fulfilment, without it, belief is difficult, love is handicapped, and knowledge is incomplete. Books have to be touched. They are meant for the hand as well as eyes and mind. Complete contact with them occurs only when one feels their weight, smoothness or roughness of the binding, elasticity or softness of paper. It is difficult to content oneself with just looking at them through the window of a bookshop or contemplate, enclosed in a bookcase, however masterfully conceived, title printed on the back of a book.

There are not many forms of art in which an artist can consider the effect of his creation on the sense of touch. Writers are fortunate to have at their disposal many possibilities. A book stimulates almost all senses. The eye can behold the beauty of illustrations and decorations. The nose is enticed by the aroma of printers ink. The rustle of foil covering graphic reproductions intrigues the ear, and the whisper of turning pages calms the mind. The experiences connected with taste can, in truth, be only accessed through one's imagination, stimulated by the content of the book. At times, the world conjured by text replaces reality. The forces of imagination cannot be underestimated.

The foremost impression associated with a book is visual. Multiplicity of elements forming the material entity of written and graphic media enforces the necessity of creating a unique "architecture" of printed text format and book, as a whole. This task demands a degree of talent, taste, courage, and thorough specialist knowledge.

Keep reading

Source: Contemporary book art - EBIB No.10/2002

Scientists study Christie success - Quantification to see true color of words

A bibliometric (quantitative) law, called as Zipf's law, deals with frequency of word occurrence:

Originally the term Zipf's law meant the observation of Harvard linguist George Kingsley Zipf (SAMPA: [zIf]) that the frequency of use of the nth-most-frequently-used word in any natural language is approximately inversely proportional to n

Interestingly, some who study 'word frequency' may know or may not know about the existence of Zipf's Law. And BBC NEWS feature (18 December 2005) as shown below, does not mention about any such statistical worldview:

Novelist Agatha Christie used words that invoked a chemical response in readers and made her books "literally unputdownable", scientists have said.
A neurolinguistic study of more than 80 of her novels concluded that her phrases triggered a pleasure response.
"Christie's language patterns stimulate higher than usual activity in the brain," Dr Roland Kapferer said.

... The Agatha Project study was carried out by scientists from universities in London, Birmingham and Warwick for an ITV1 documentary.
It involved loading Christie's novels onto a computer and analysing her words, sentences and phrases.
It aimed to explain the enduring popularity of the work of the late author, who created detectives Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and wrote novels such as Murder on the Orient Express.

...Christie was also found to have used a very limited vocabulary.
"It means that readers aren't distracted and so they concentrate more on the clues and the plots," said Dr Pernilla Danielsson of Birmingham University.
They also found that Christie frequently used dashes to create "a faster-paced, unreflective narrative".
Read more

Thanks to the blog by Brenda Schmidt, and her description which brought me to this news item: "If only I could figure out how to release"

~~~~See also: Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations, by Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg and Kushal Dave;
MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA,
P.S. You are not sure about this subject of visualizing frequency of word?
Click here to see a visual: word popularity colorizer.

Lulu Book Title Analyzer - Another perspective for the visualizers

The Lulu TitleScorer has been developed exclusively for Lulu by statisticians who studied the titles of 50 years’ worth of top bestsellers and identified which title attributes separated the bestsellers from the rest.

    Given below is the extract of a news story in National Post, Dec 16, 2005, appeared with a headline: Yes, You Can Judge a Book by its Title -- Program 70% Accurate," by Misty Harris. Also, published as "Anyone who says you can't judge a book by its cover isn't trying hard enough" in Windsor Star:

A British statistician has developed a complex computer model able to calculate a book's likelihood of being a bestseller based solely on its title.
In a study released Thursday, Atai Winkler reports his new program is able to accurately forecast the strength of a book's sales nearly 70 per cent of the time -- about 40 per cent better than random guesswork.
After analysing 11 variables, from the number of words in the title to the entomology of the words used, three key "differentiators" were found between bestsellers and non-bestsellers.
"It usually becomes a gut-instinct kind of thing where the title rolls off the tongue well or sounds good to the ear," says Sellers. "I'd say that's as scientific as it gets."

Related research on this area includes:
..Language Log: Judging a Book by Its Cover
..More at Google
..SEE ALSO Quantification Titles @ Amazon from my Listmania (Informetrics, quantitative, bibliometric, webometric, etc.)
-----
About Misty Harris
Additional Reference:

Zipf, Power-law, Pareto - a ranking tutorial, by Lada A. Adamic
Many man made and naturally occurring phenomena, including city sizes, incomes, word frequencies, and earthquake magnitudes, are distributed according to a power-law distribution. A power-law implies that small occurrences are extremely common, whereas large instances are extremely rare. This regularity or 'law' is sometimes also referred to as Zipf and sometimes Pareto. continued ...

More about Zipf's law