Sunday, September 23, 2007
Literary silliness

About once a year (or actually much more frequently) the London literary world shoots itself in the foot and confirms what the 'real world' believes, that it is composed of a bunch of snobby interbred reactionaries. This piece describing current events at a leading literary agency is a classic of its type. For those of you who can't be bothered to follow the link (and who can blame you?) here is a taster:

 “On the surface we all get on brilliantly, but on a personal level we all f***ing loathe each other,” as the editorial director of one of the country’s largest publishing houses cheerfully confided yesterday. “I’ll tell you everything but it’s career death if I go on record. In my view what’s happening in publishing in the past few days is a catastrophe. Everyone is horribly excited.”

And here is a glorious graphic.

And while all that backstabbing and gossip is going on there is a real literary issue. The British Government, not content with appearing to stand by while public libraries are allowed to wither (although perhaps that is about to change), is now threatening to undermine the forward-thinking digital programme at the British Library. Lynne Brindley, the Library's Chief Executive, has written courageously and forthrightly about the issue in today's Observer. The irony is that, while the Google Library Project absorbs a huge amount of attention and legal bills in order to be allowed to digitise books which the publishing industry is separately arranging to digitise without subsidy, one of the world's great libraries is being forced to beg to be able to digitise and thus protect and make available the very books which need to be digitised and need to be funded. It drives me to distraction.

#    |  Comments [4]  | 
9/23/2007 9:54:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It`s said to cost the taxpayer 64p a year or something to keep the Royal Family in the style to which.. makes the British Library seem expensive. Put the thing on its head.. how many people in the UK have any interest in going to, working in, the BL ? Now see how much it costs them per capita to keep it going. An awful lot more. They should start by getting rid of some of the miles of junk they`ve collected. They cannot possibly conceivably need a copy of every book and newspaper, not possibly. That's every Bunty Annual, every Ford Fiesta mechanics manual, every Mills and Boon, every ...no, it`s ludicrous. A waste of space, manpower, lighting and heating - God knows what the carbon footprint of the BL storage vaults is. They should scrap this keeping a copy of everything from tomorrow.
The really rare things would then assume their proper importance and people could live in the storage vaults, given a bit of architectural and engineering ingenuity.
P.S. The coffee shop`s good.
SUSAN HILL
9/24/2007 3:33:41 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I work as an educational consultant and the thing I find funny is that many of the public libraries I meet with consider the books consumable goods. If they get stolen or lost, oh well buy more. This is in the states, now in Britain I do not know what they do, but I can see both sides of it having worked with publishers and on the library side. In response to the first comment, how does one decide what is worth keeping and what is not? What is junk to one person is treasure to another, what is offensive is acceptable, so where do we draw the line or do we at all? Who has the answers???
Capt.
9/24/2007 6:51:34 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Susan Hill blathered
>The really rare things would then assume their proper importance and people could live in the storage vaults, given a bit of architectural and engineering ingenuity.<

What sort of elitist shite world does this author occupy : perhaps she has visions of writing another Tunnels, with a whole sub-culture living beneath ground.

The British Library should be permitted to continue working for the nation, much as it has done for centuries, without hindrance from state or demagogues.

The British Library catalogue database is of considerable importance to the booktrade : this opinionated bookseller stocks and also sells many of the excellent publications published and/or distributed in UK by BL.
Clive Keeble
9/25/2007 9:24:35 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
‘They should scrap this keeping a copy of everything from tomorrow.’

Which leads to the question: who will then arbitrate between 'junk' and 'really rare things'. Who can? And is that which (a portion of ) society rejects as detritus any less significant than that which it currently values?
A comprehensive legal deposit collection removes these decisions from a small and inevitably partial group of people and allows history to come to (often surprising, unpredictable) conclusions about 'proper importance'.
Jamie Andrews