The Devil in the White City

Readers, I am very happy to report to you that my graduate school toilings in library school at the distinguished University of Kentucky are now at an end. I sat for my nerve-shattering comprehensive exam in November and just last week received word that I passed ("with distinction," said the letter) the final examination for the Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. Hurrah!

So what does this mean for you, the loyal readership of the Missiles of Mercy? Well, it means I now have much more time to devote to pleasure reading: an activity that has shamefully been pushed to the wayside since the beginning of the Fall semester to make way for the dry, dense foliage that is LIS literature. And of course, in the spirit of our semi-regular summer reading 2009 rap sessions, I will be reporting on the various singularities and curios that I find especially reminiscent of our mission statement here at MM.

Case in point: I began reading Erik Larson's the Devil in the White City this weekend, and am currently 150 pages in. It's one of those non-fiction-written-as-fiction types of books that have began cropping up in the last decade or so (see also: Swanson's novelized narrative Manhunt, about the search for John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln assassination conspirators. It is excellent), and I have to say i'ts a trend I can certainly get behind. They are generally fun to read, packaging historically accurate information into a guess-what-happens-next kind of layout--this lends a kind of tension to the narrative that is lacking in your everyday biography or history book.

The story is, like so many about America at the end of the 19 century, pretty incredible. It concerns the conception, construction and operation of the Chicago World's Fair--including the architects who designed Chicago's "White City" (Daniel Hudson Burnham! Frederick Law Olmstead! Louis Sullivan!) and a handsome young sociopath who became America's first serial killer. Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Edison and Archduke Ferdinand also make appearances in the story(!) and you get to hear all about the grit & shit that accompanied the Gilded Age. Oh, Boy!

I am speeding through The Devil so I can start my next awesome non-fic pleasure cruise: Candace Miller's The River of Doubt, which is all about Theodore Roosevelt's crazy adventures exploring an unmapped tributary of the Amazon! You heard it here first! (Maybe!)

Latest Innovation in Products for Creeps Who Look at Porn in Public Libraries

Readers, I work in a public library so I'm used to dealing with issues of privacy when it comes to what our patrons want to look at. The American Library Association instructs us to protect the privacy and first amendment rights of our users at all costs--so we don't disclose the reading history of our members unless the FBI goes and gets a subpoena (and even then, librarians tend to cause angry scenes worthy of the evening news when this happens), nor do we try to censor what information or content our patrons have access to. Intellectual freedom is the core value of librarianship, and it gets my heart all filled with anti-authoritarian don't-tread-on-me pride to think about librarians busting through a Harry Potter picket line.

That's why I was really, um, excited to hear about a product developed by designer Joe Malia: the Techno Privacy Scarf! (pictured above) Now our especially wacked-out, pervy horn-dog, or otherwise generally creepy patrons can surf those illicit sites in public without worrying about disturbing others. I mean, check out the Unabomber up there on the far right--wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with that one, right?

Claude Elwood Shannon 1916-2001

That handsome fella there has a lot to do with my mood this week. In fact, I'd say he'll have quite the influence on me for the rest of 2009, maybe even the rest of my life! Claude E. Shannon was the mathematician responsible for information theory; he was also a great utilizer of Boolean logic in experiments with electromechanical relays, which became the foundation of practical digital circuit design, the basic concept underlying all modern electronic digital computers (blah, blah, blah: it's a concept I only sort-of understand--I think it had something to do with old timey phone circuitry and using algebra to get electronic relays to perform logic...or something...) The guy hung out with Albert Einstein and did the first experiments with artificial intelligence so...yeah, total smartypants. I guess you can thank him for that fancy computer you're using right now.

Anyway, I'm all set to take my big, make-or-break comprehensive exam for my library science masters degree (November 20th!), and I'm in the process of going back over 3 years worth of Li-Sci-related notes. My favorite brain-scrambler from this degree program came courtesy of Claude Shannon, on the day in my second semester when I found out that I had no real idea of what "Information" really is. It's one of those ambiguous terms that people do seem to use interchangeably: is it data? knowledge? truth? wisdom?? is it a physical thing, ethereal, an electrical impulse that exists only in your brain?? Can information be created? Think about it too long and hard and you'll find yourself questioning everything. Information-with-a-capitol-"I" is an ever present theme in the program, and it's a concept ready-made for the brand of OCD over-thinkers who tend to gravitate towards the field.

There are about 5 major scholars who are ubiquitous in the Li-Sci literature, and they all disagree with what information really "is". I guess the debate is librarianship's own special brand of self-indulgent, professional navel-gazing. I'm not totally sure it even matters what "it" "is" (and even worse: I'm not sure if that thought is going to make me a lousy librarian!). So I'll be thinking a lot about Claude Shannon in the next couple of months, and I imagine he'll surface again sometime in the future--he's a spectre that looms over all library school students: a spooky, transcendental math nerd who makes you wonder if you've been callously missing the point your entire life.