An Ex Libris I found on a Facebook page of a new contact I added today… it comes from one of those de-contextualized ‘pinterest’ pages, “artist unknown” the caption says, but that is for the maker of the ex libris… so I did a little research and at least I can notify that Knud Schønberg lived from 1928 to 1999 in Denmark and was a well known and well appreciated theatre critic writing for a.o. Ekstra Bladet.
Of course what makes us sad, when seeing this ex-libris, is the fate of books and how they tend to survive their collectors, but then have to face the hordes of book-thrashers that clear the shelves and with it all the love of knowledge that had been stashed on them.
Now as a collector myself and a librarian for decades I have witnessed many acts of ‘bibliocide’ but I am well aware of the fact that a big part of my collection does not come directly from a bookstore or publisher but from other’s peoples collections. At home I tend a collection that is in the range of 10.000 volumes, many do come from the golden days of the Waterlooplein fleemarket which I can see from my window, also from hundreds of second hand bookshops I did find on my way while travelling, living abroad and of course in Amsterdam. [1]
What will happen with them afterward? Who will want to inherit such a mass? Even more what about the bookcases, the shelves, do they remember what they carried, on which shelves and in what order books were placed; if a book taken from a shelf would come back to the same place, or better said shelf-region, did these regions have a name, or only a hidden system of rubrics in the mind of the owner? Very few personal book collections do have readable classifiers attached to the shelves or cupboards, though in some cases bookshelves also carry objects that may function as content indicator. [2]
I am developing for many years now a database system which also takes care of this problem. It has modules that let you register and visualize a collection of books, or parts of it. One does not need to catalogue each title by entering the bibliographical data from a keyboard, with the input of only a few search terms it will find the ready made description on-line, linking a record in the local database to the greatest catalogue of all times, worldcat.org (a catalogue made up of catalogues of thousand libraries (national, academic, special collections from all over the world). If a collection can not be kept physically, then at least virtually (in effect not in fact). [3]
Thus a personal information landscape can be mapped and shared when – in the form of virtual bookshelves – it can be put on line…(either with restricted acces or open to the general public). All that passion, care, love for knowledge, as well as divertimento will thus not be thrashed, but can live on in another form.
This evening I started with an additional module for my database system that makes it possible to share, re-distribute, books with others, be it family, friends, booksellers or libraries… (best during life time, if fate makes that impossible, after death).
My system (in constant development since 1986, as each good bibliographical tool should be) is called Ars Memoria System (AMS) [4] and I named the module {AMSxlib} as all my database submodules have a 4 letter name extension). It will have a list of people who are invited to share, to be part of a ‘sharing ring’ whereby a book which belongs to a collection of specific person (Ex Libris) will be eXchanged from one LIBrary to another. Both physically and virtually.
Those who are made members of such a ring, will have access to a visualised inventory of items (not only books but also documentation of any kind and objects). These items can be tagged to show one’s potential interest…
Now I will have to do a lot of thinking how to program/visualize such a sharing which needs to go in steps (select, deselect, approval, disapproval). The question is – as with all change of possessions – how to avoid ‘greed’ and enable a convivial process of re-distribution. [5] As said before it will be not just for books, ‘bound knowledge’, but also for ‘objects, with as an important sub-category ‘personal memorabilia’. [6]
This re-distribution process will be a stand-alone or locally shared database system, totally off-line. It works both on a desk/lap-top computer and tablets or smart phone. At a later stage it could also function ‘on-line’ which is more complicated because of all the needed safety options of protected logins and passwords and proper updating.
There is a possibility – after a redistribution ring has finalized its work – that remaining parts of a collection will be opened up to wider circles… though with several precautions and restraints as on the ‘wild internet’ good ideas tend to be recuperated, twisted an killed. The wordlwide net is about sharing things in the ‘public domain’, let’s not forget that potential, but the exploitative commercialized capacities of the medium seem to have taken the overhand. So this project forms a tiny counterbalance.
My intend is to develop something that denies or at least disables such a negative development. It will be possible. When one thinks about something, someone else has done so before. So if anybody has suggestions, let me know.
SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUERE, ‘to give each his due’.
PS The {AMSxlib) module does have an extra-option built in: it can potentially check automatically (using a so called API protocol) which books in a personal collection, that has been entered into the AMS system, can be found in which library (libraries part of the worldcat.org. pool). Of course doing such a task is only meaningful when one limits the search to libraries in a certain country, province/state, town, or one specific library. Thus donations can be proposed or negotiated putting an end to the wasteful practice of packing whole collections in towering heaps of boxes, dragging them out of a house in and out of a van and dumping them on the marshalling yards big libraries and archival institutions tend to have.
~~~
Test version of the AMS system checking a booktitle and seeing which libraries in a specified country (or region of a country) hold a copy of a specific title. With one click this information can be added to a database of a personal book collection. [click image for full size view of the screen-shot]
[1] In 1984 Clara Hilen published “De boekhandels van Amsterdam : deze gids bevat een overzicht van alle algemene, buitenissige, antiquarische, specialistische en tweedehands boekhandels”, which described and classified in 216 pages 362 bookshops, of which 110 antiquarian or second hand (including also all book-stalls on Amsterdam markets). I did made an extensive series of indexes and maps for this book resulting in 40 pages of dense references. As a curator and acquisition librarian for the University Library of Amsterdam, second hand bookshops in the main cities of (Western) Europe would be part of my hunting fields, whereby on the side I would acquire some materials for my own collection. The internet has had a strong impact on this trade with less second hand shops as places to visit, and more on-line re-distribution of personal collections, which are now directlt searchable, which leaves us with the loss of wandering in between real bookshelves and loads of books, one can better search on line for specific books, but the browsing and perusing of a real book in hand has gone…
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/905419821
[2] Petroski, Henry. 2000. The book on the bookshelf. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House. Is one of the few academic monographs on this field of personal library history: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/442888137
[3] – WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories that participate in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) global cooperative. Some dazzling information about: https://www.oclc.org/en/worldcat.html
To try out the potential check some rare books in your collection and see if they appear in worldcat.org, via this catalogue search link: https://www.worldcat.org
[4] – A visual scroll lecture explaining the stage of the database system in the year 2002 can be found here: http://imaginarymuseum.org/AMS/
– Interview published in the magazine ‘Open! – platform for Art, Culture & the Public Domain’ in 2004 “Unbombing & Ars Memoria; an Interview with Tjebbe van Tijen by Geert Lovink”: https://www.onlineopen.org/unbombing-ars-memoria
– In 2005 a project that uses the AMS system was launched: “ART – ACTION – ACADEMIA – social and technical context of events and collaborations 1966-2006” This is the on-line archive version, as it will get an overhaul in the coming year, as it shows bith the technical limitations of the internet at that time and my more limited programming abilities a decade or so ago: http://imaginarymuseum.org/imp_archive/AAA/AAAintro.html
[5] In 2012 shortly after my good friend Auke Bijlsma died and his direct family had shown very little respect for the paper parts of his inheritance, there was a cellar of one of his friends full of books and documentation thrown in an unordered way in boxes, as he lived in a rented house which had to delivred back empty. We did some hard work sorting out that mess, parts went to the International Institute of Social History (as he had a history as a biologist, but also as urban activist and memeber of the Amsterdam city council). Main parts of his book collection were then laid out on several tables on sunday afternoon and all of his friends we could trace did get an invitation for an afternoon tea to converse about him and re-distrution of his books. Each book did get a memorial sticker with a simple text and his portrait… so when you would take such a book from your own bookshelf you would think about him and possibly about why he had that book and what he would have thought about it.
[6] – About memorabilia see my essay ‘The arts of oneself’ in “”Memoraphilia: a love of memory and things memorable, a disposition toward remembrance; Studio Parabolica; Tokyo; 2005; text in English and Japanese]
http://imaginarymuseum.org/TjBIB/TobuMemoraphilia.html
– The essay is also availbale in a slightly different from on the web site of the International Institute of Social History: https://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/arts-of-oneself.pdf
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