Caffeinated Books?

I've just been reading about a fantastic piece of technology called the Espresso Book Machine. Manufactured by On Demand Books, these machines are able to print library-quality paperback books on demand, quickly, and for a low cost. The digital library available for printing by the EBM includes over a million books provided through the Open Content Alliance, and they also have a partnership with Lightning Source Inc, which provides access to nearly a million titles that are currently in copyright. It usually takes about 4-7 minutes to print, trim, and bind a single book, and the cost is around ten dollars per book. There is a lot if interesting information at On Demand Books' FAQ, including the fact that "a single machine operating 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, can produce over 60,000 books per year with minimum supervision." They claim that the books produced by the machine are indistiguishable from any paperback on a bookstore shelf. Check out their brochure for a ten-step outline of how the machine works, and for a list of current locations. Among the first to get these machines were the University of Alberta bookstore, the University of Michigan library, and in 2007 there was one on exhibit at the New York Public Library. Check out the University of Michigan's video about the machine and what it means for their library. Out-of-print, rare, or hard-to-find books become accessible to anyone, and they can take home their own copy for relatively cheap. Truly amazing. And espresso means fast, not coffee.

Pimp My Bookcart

Unshelved.com hosts a contest every year for libraries to create the most pimped-out bookcart. Check out some of the pictures of the winners here! My favorites are the covered wagon, the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, and the "support glitteracy" hippie bus. It looks like a lot of kids have had fun decorating the bookcarts at their school libraries. This could be a great program to get kids excited about the public library as well!

One Space or Two?

Lately the battle of the spaces has been brought to my attention. Since high school, I have been a faithful member of the school of two spaces; I put two spaces between a period and the start of a new sentence. I have noticed that whenever I post on my discussion boards for class or create a new post on my blog, my writing is automatically altered so there is only one space instead of two. This automatic altering, I would guess, is the source of my troubles when I was attempting to incorporate ascii art into my blog post-- Blogger automatically undid the "art" part and slid my beautiful butterfly into oblivion.
So what's the deal? I did a little bit of research and discovered what this is all about. And it has to do with technology! Back in high school when I was using a mechanical typewriter (and printing presses were this way, too), the letters in the typeface were all the same width. Because there were so many resulting gaps within the text, a double space was used to aid the reader's eye in detecting the beginning of a new sentence. With the advent of modern technology, computers and such, the fonts we use today are proportional; an "o" and an "i" no longer take up the same amount of space. So the end of a sentence is easily recognized with only one space, and putting an extra space in there can create "rivers" in the text that can be unattractive and distracting. The MLA officially uses a single space after all punctuation marks, but they do say that there is nothing wrong with using two unless you are specifically asked not to. This is a useful thing for a librarian to know! I would imagine that grammar and format questions are not uncommon at a reference desk, especially an academic one.
Until further notice, I think I will stick with my current habit, especially since these things are sometimes automatically adjusted for me.

Sand in Technology at the Beach

I tried to use my digital camera the other day, for the first time since Spring Break.... and something is wrong. It won't focus, I think because it's having a problem moving the lens in and out (also it is making a really weird noise, it sounds like a grating noise, NOT good).
So my theory is: I got sand in my camera. Despite my careful care for it, I did take it to the beach one day, and it was in my beach bag for a short while, so it's possible there may be some sand in there. I'll take it to be repaired, and we'll see what the diagnosis is. I'm guessing death by beach. Nature is stronger than electronics.