Preview: The advent of summer

Our climate appears to be a little indecisive. Last week, things were chilly for a few days, and this week, we've been living with some truly misbegotten humidity coupled with temperatures in the 80s. I am pretty sure we were supposed to have a spring; possibly it came and went at some point in the wee hours one night last month. And now it's time to sweat ...

Fortunately, there's one nice, low-impact activity one can undertake in the out-of-doors, under the shade of a tree, on a chaise lounge by the pool, or on your beach towel as you slowly sizzle: reading!

People say winter's the best time for undertaking the pursuit of a Good Book -- all those hours spent indoors away from the cold and snow naturally lend themselves to a comfortable chair, some hot chocolate, and the latest bestseller -- but I'm a summer guy myself. The National Arboretum, for instance, close to campus, offers tons of spots to relax in when you're in the mood to get close to nature and all the attendant insects; the hill leading up to the western facade of the Capitol, on the other hand, lets you people-watch at the same time. Or even on the green in the middle of campus, which allows for some quiet time and the chance to socialize with passersby.

During my weird weekend last week, I managed to grab some time to slip through Cory Doctorow's Makers. You might remember my review -- written, not-so-coincidentally, last summer -- of his Little Brother. In this case, though, the rebellion isn't against the government, but against Disney. Doctorow has a thing for Disney; it plays a part in most of his novels. He seems to be pretty conflicted: on the one hand, he's captivated by the magic Disney accomplishes through metric tons of papier-mache, but on the other hand, he hates its corporate soullessness and cutthroat protection of intellectual property.

Anyway, in Makers, we follow the careers of Perry and Lester, two renegade engineers who stumble into some major funding from a business genius and accidentally spawn a movement based on the reuse of junk to create weird contraptions; one item you see consistently throughout the novel is a little humanoid robot made of seashells that makes toast. There's also Lester's obsession with creating difference engines out of various materials, like a basic computer built out of hundreds of used soda cans that can perform arithmetic using brown M&Ms. The emergence of 3D printers that can build almost anything quickly and cheaply really gooses the trend and gets a huge percentage of the American population involved.

There's a whole do-it-yourself aesthetic that creates viable economic communities out of squatter camps full of homeless people, and which leads naturally to a theme-park-style ride built in an abandoned Wal-Mart that collects all the fantastically weird stuff that comes out of this movement and lets people vote different things in or out of each segment of the ride. As the ride phenomenon spreads, its various franchises become networked, so that any changes effected by the participants in one part of the country gets propagated throughout the whole system, and a strangely coherent narrative emerges from this collective subconsciousness.

Of course, Disney hates this; the ride, in all its incarnations across the country, directly competes with Disney World, and even the company's own employees are slowly becoming addicted. As Disney scrambles to compete, revamping Fantasyland into a dark, twisted, Goth theme park, things come to a head when disappointed employees start contributing Disney-trademarked stuff to Perry and Lester's ride and Disney immediately takes the opportunity to file an injunction to shut them down. This leads to a fifteen-year lawsuit, the legal process of which, in a burst of financial innovation, is immediately parceled out and sold off to investors looking for a long-term return.

The book is classic Doctorow. Although the main focus is the do-it-yourself lifestyle and its relationship with innovation, it pulls in a lot of ancillary weirdness that makes the world seem a little more fleshed out. For instance, Lester, morbidly obese at the beginning of the book, suddenly pioneers a new procedure that allows overweight people to slim down and muscle up in a matter of weeks -- as long as they consume 10,000 calories per day. This results in the "fatkins," a class of people who are ridiculously good-looking, constantly consume food, and are incredibly lazy. However, as the book continues along its forty-year arc, tragic physiological consequences begin to emerge, eventually impacting Lester himself and lending the end of the book extra emotional weight (which doesn't have anything to do with whether or not he dies, so I'm certainly not giving anything away here).

In general, three thumbs up!

Now that I'm done gushing -- I'm an avid Doctorow fanboy -- what's going on this summer? In the words of each librarian:

Diana Gates
I will be working on the Deaf LibGuides and pathfinders. We will be identifying videos for a video preservation project. I plan to continue with the Deaf Subject file. As usual, I will wrap up and close my "file" on this year's deaf orders and prepare orders for next year.

Laura Jacobi
Just like Bing Crosby in White Christmas, I'm taking the train to Vermont with my pals for several days of hiking -- a great time to catch up on gossip and reading (alas, not singing like Bing). At the Library, I'll be working on a project to reduce costs by cutting subscriptions to little-used items; training staff and student assistants; and writing LibGuides for Fall courses.

Jim McCarthy
Weeding, weeding, and weeding. I also have a backlog of donated items that will be cleared out this summer. I'll also be working on a slight redesign of library.gallaudet.edu, creating tutorials for some of our resources, and, as always, reading a lot and blogging about it. I also plan to attend the American Library Association conference for the very first time! And maybe get a tan ...

Patrick Oberholtzer
I'll be developing and updating LibGuides for my courses, Weeding, weeding, weeding books and journals, working on the Deaf FAQ Web pages, and attending ALA. I also plan to update and expand my technology and software skills by enrolling in courses in Arlington County Education courses as time permits.

Jane Rutherford
Weeding OLD education books that have not been used in 10 years or more. Cleaning up the general periodical shelves and making sure those records in our ALADIN system are correct and understandable. Preparing to retire the end of August by trashing, redistributing, or taking home the things in my office.

The upshot of what you can expect: Cleaner and more up-to-date shelves, more LibGuides and other online resources, a somewhat redesigned Web page, and one less long-time librarian. We're sorry to see Jane go, but very excited on her behalf -- she's earned her retirement many times over, as you can see from all of our plans for this summer; we don't stop when graduation ends.

Next week, you get to look forward to another list of new books!

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Question of the Week
Does the Library have any videophones?
This is a question that's come up a few times in the past few weeks. I'm not sure why; I could have sworn this was general knowledge. Since it doesn't seem to be, here goes: We have four videophones available for public use, all of which are on the first floor. Three of them are in booths next to the men's room, while there's one in a cubicle in the Deaf Library Study Center near the women's bathroom; the cubicle is tucked away in the corner immediately to the right of the entrance to the room and is easy to miss, so look carefully. It's also usually occupied.