:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 ::

Warehousing

bldgblog on The future warehouse of unwanted books

Coincidentally I've been thinking about libraries recently. I was back up in Manchester over the weekend. As well as taking some time to do some Christmas shopping I made a point to take the time to wander around and take in the sights again, too see what has changed in the six years since I lived there. In places quite a lot had, in others it was reassuringly familiar. I loved wandering around Vinyl Exchange and Piccadilly Records and Afflecks Palace* again.

* Why is it full of 13 year olds? With their parents. Buying them pink studied off the hip belts. And that's just the boys.

After enjoying the refurbished Art Gallery and some bratwurst from the obligatory German market I found myself wandering into the central library for a look around (and to abuse the toilet facilities). I spent hours here as a student - the library, not the toilets - and love the building. An online student guide tells me it is "the largest local library in Britain, created in 1934 as a circular building based on Rome's Pantheon." So there you go. I'd love to spend a few hours in there with my camera. I'm fascinated by the odd little stairways all over the place, roped around the top as they descend into the floor, ending in a dark oak door marked "staff only" at the bottom.

John Rylands library is even more impressive in its Gothic splendour.

[more on architecture in Manchester]

With this fresh in mind I read the first link above and the related Guardian article - Inside the tomb of tomes

"This warehouse is being built to house the books and journals that no one wants. With the British Library's UK collection growing at a rate of 12.5km of shelf space a year, is the notion of the copyright library really sustainable?" [guardian]

"In other words, a relatively random piece of 100-year old legislation [the 1911 Copyright Act] has begun to exhibit architectural effects. These architectural effects include the production of huge warehouses in the damp commuter belts of outer London. These aren't libraries, of course; they're stockpiles. Text bunkers." [bldg blog]

It's a shame that this is what we have come to. At the exponential rate the data we produce is growing, how are we going to continue to store it? Digital storage seems the obvious answer but brings further problems with it.

"It's been estimated that €3bn are lost across Europe [over an unspecified time period] entirely due to bad management of digital files in libraries ... Would we have enough confidence to throw everything away? Would you?"
Rory McLeod, digital preservation manager at the British Library quoted in The Guardian

The Internet Archive sets about trying to solve the same problem for digital data.
"The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress."

Google Books is trying to get searchable versions of books from many great libraries online.

We are warned that Data growth outruns ability to manage it [Computer Technology Review, Feb, 2002]

Wikipedia: Modelling Wikipedia's growth

And then how do we decide what data to store? Said copyright act states that everything printed should be stored. Do we need to do the same online? Right down to the live journals and the cat photos and the porn? Maybe so.

"The Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is, for the first time, opening its extensive collection of pornographic materials to the public. Part of the contents of the forbidden section, officially known as "l'Enfer" (Hell) and consisting of pornography and erotica from the 17th to 19th centuries."
[via null device]

"Only bona fide academic researchers have been allowed access to the "L'Enfer" collection until now. The omnipresence of erotic or pornographic images in the modern world has persuaded the French national library that it is permissible, finally, to open the doors of Hell.

"The exhibition reveals some interesting, historical differences in erotic tastes. The earliest, 17th and 18th century, material dwells on the straightforward pleasures of the flesh. The celebration of the pleasures of pain – imposed or submitted – begins with the Marquis of Sade in the late 18th century. Pornography from the French Revolutionary period is mostly political, especially scurrilous allegations about the sexual appetite and imagination of Marie Antoinette. The 19th century concentrates on the blazing sexuality lying below the stern conservative or domestic exterior of life."
[via the independent]

If this too needs to be saved, then this all has knock on effects on the amount of server space required, which I thought about writing about until bldgblog saved me the effort with this follow-up post - Server Rooms and the Future of Humanism - which likens the environmental impact of server farm to the carbon footprint of an SUV.

"Is this the long-term historical irony of humanism – with its museums and libraries, its institutionalized nostalgia – that all these air conditioned warehouses and rural server farms don't represent the indefinite continuation of the humanist project but, rather, that project's future ecological demise?"

This brings me to further musing on the subject of data organisation. I've noticed that the job title Information Architect seems to be growing in popularity. Architects love to describe their discipline as "the most public of all art forms" (I believe this quote is attributable but I can’t remember to whom). It seems obvious that someone involved in designing computer networks would hope some of that glamour would rub off through use of the word.

One day this may not seem as jarring a comparison to the layman as it seems now. I'm sure if I stopped someone on the street outside now and asked them what an architect does the response would be something like, "they designs buildings and stuff, dun 'em?" [can you tell I'm in Bristol as I write?] Yet if I asked what an Information Architect does the responses will probably range from "someone who designs computers?" to "something to do with the internet?" to stunned silence.

As we move towards a future where our virtual existence is increasingly blurred with meat space will we increasingly see the people behind these systems as creating a form of public art? "That GUI is very modernist in style don't you think." "I like the gothic phone system they have in that building." "I though I'd add some Art Deco influences to this database." And so on. I've just re-appropriated existing stylistic names, when logically on new names created from no on will be appropriated in that way, but I hope you see where I'm coming from. This could be a two way flow, ideas from IT could be integrated in architecture too, creating skinable buildings, hyperlinking lifts, rss feeds of the people passing through reception, but I'm sure things like that are being tried already.

Labels: architecture, Literature

:: Dan 4.12.07 [Arc] [0 comments] ::
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