Netflix Debacle

I would be remiss for not nodding to the current state of universal anxiety rippling through the cyberworld. It is pinging with anger, frustration, and complaints: why would you do this to us, Reed Hastings?

If you managed to miss this one, Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix, sent out a mass email blast followed by a blog posting on the changes to Netflix. Namely, streaming and DVDs are now separate entities with separate fees. The new pricing was announced about a month ago, basically doubling the monthly fee for almost all (hating absolutes) Netflix users. Smacks of monopolistic behavior in economically pressed times. And yet the price is still cheaper than a family of 3 going to the movies once a month. It is cheaper than one person, for that matter.

What will all of this mean? Innovation. Others will need to fill this void that Netflix is opening.

Amazon is considered one hopeful, but not by this blogger. I don’t want to pay per movie we stream. With a child that watches the same film over-and-over-and-over again, sometimes within the same day. Yikes! I don’t want to see that bill. Besides, I have other issues with Amazon. For another day. Some lament the ouster of Blockbuster by Netflix. Again, not this blogger. I will not forget how they used to censor materials. So who will it be? I certainly hope it isn’t Apple – more monopoly and censorship issues involved with that happy-shiny-people-entity. Blah! Who knows, maybe it will be Netflix, themselves, as they realize the outrage is far greater than they imagined. The noise in the cloud is deafening. They must hear.

My greatest hope is that more material will become available through streaming. Will classics migrate into the world of packets? I hope so. We cannot let the Marx Bros., Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Tracey and Hepburn, The Thin Man, and the list continues, fade into oblivion with the movement away from DVDs to streaming. I fear that old will be forgotten for the newest movies, that old-must-be-bad mentality.

Ultimately, this odd news pushed through email and blogs signals a new direction for all. Streaming is the future. Reed Hastings is correct. However, is Netflix really at a point to split the company? And how will this move affect our pocket books and our filmic history?

What does the CIA have to do with Cataloguing?

Wow – where does the time go? It is time I wrap up this little story on the naming of the blog.

But first, I digress. What does the CIA have to do with cataloguing? This is wild! Another little gem of useless information. Or is it?

Back during World War II, for those of you old enough or interested in history you will remember we had the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) which later became the CIA. The OSS was feverishly working to create the bomb first. All kinds of scientific research was being conducted and it needed to be organized with bibliographic control. And it needed to be mechanized to keep up with the pace and to allow for greater access. Then, when we started winning the war, we began collecting German intel which then needed to be organized quickly so that we could use the information we gathered. Enter one Frederick Kilgour. He headed the distribution of this information for the OSS.

What became of Mr. Kilgour? He later went on to create the catalog of all catalogs – OCLC or less commonly known as the Online Computer Library Center. Need to find a book anywhere in the world? OCLC is your answer. The user interface is called WorldCat. Heard of that one? No? Go check it out. It is a lot of fun. And it is free! Find the book in a local library or where to buy.

www.worldcat.org

Okay – I’m going to make you wait on the 91rules reason. Not quite as interesting as the CIA. But what is?

I leave you with this thought:
Perhaps the organization of information – CIA and catalogs – are not all that dissimilar. Scary thought: national security and libraries.

Source of this priceless little gem? Taylor and Joudrey. (2009). The Organization of Information, 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Today we say good-bye

Two days ago, Michael S. Hart passed away. He is the creative genius that invented eBooks and Project Guttenberg. Back in 1971 Hart created the first eBook and was so inspired, he kept going. He had a vision that literature would be freely and widely available to all. Like the Guttenberg Bible, Hart changed our lives. People are reading everywhere from their iPads, Nooks, and Kindles, from their iPods and smart phones. We can travel with more books than we’ll ever read on that vacation, all contained within some little electronic device.  We tuck our literature into our pockets, sneaking reads like the maids in the 18th century who carried little 16mos in their aprons. Learn more about Hart and his world view. You will think about things differently.

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.  Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves.  All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” G.B. Shaw, and one of Hart’s favorite quotations.

91rules

So why 91rules?

I was reading scintillating material on the history of cataloging books. It was pretty dry until I got to the origins of the first card catalog. Any guesses? Go ahead try! But I know you’ll never figure this one out.

It has something to do with the French Revolution. Like tinned food? Hmmm.

Give up?

Okay – After the French Revolution, the new government decided it needed to figure out what was in the libraries, returning all of the materials that had been confiscated during the war back to their rightful homes.

But wait – there was a paper shortage.

So necessity and creativity came to the rescue. All of those decadent playing cards (which happened to be blank on the back) were converted into catalog records. One entry per card. They saved the Aces and deuces for books with longer titles. The government decided what information would be included on each card/record like author, size of the book, what it was made of, what it was about. Blah blah. And then they underlined the keyword that would be used for organizing/ alphabeticizing this big mess. When it was time to organize the cards, they sewed them together, threading through the lower left corner so that they would not become a mess again.

How cool is that?

But I still haven’t told you why this blog is called 91rules.

You’ll just have to wait for the next post.

Ah, man!

I learned this little gem in Arlene G. Taylor’s and Daniel N. Joudrey’s (2009) The Organization of Information, 3rd ed. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited. Amazon? B&N?

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