Entre le land art et la bibliothèque pop-up, on trouvecette installation de Massimo Bartolini réalisée dans un vignoble à l’occasion du festival d’art gantois Track. Les visiteurs pouvaient emporter les livres en échange d’une petite donation. Une jolie manière pour une bibliothèque de se débarrasser des livres retirés des collections.
(Merci Colin)

Readlists est un projet développé par les gens derrière readability. Le site permet de composer des listes de lecture sur base de pages web et d’envoyer leur contenu sur kindle (ou d’autres plateformes). Il y a également moyen de naviguer dans les listes de lectures rédigées par d’autres utilisateurs.

Le site de vente de café Sweet Maria a une très bonne section “bibliothèque” qui couvre de manière très complète la préparation d’espresso. C’est par exemple le seul que j’ai trouvé qui analyse visuellement le résultat de mauvaises extractions. A conserver à portée de main pour les après-midis d’expérimentations caféinesque…

Le nouveau film de Cronenberg est une adaptation du Cosmopolis de Don DeLillo, voici le trailer.

L’auteur John Scalzi a collationé les liens vers le texte des nouvelles nominées pour les Hugo 2012. Le plus facile pour les utilisateurs de tablettes est de toutes les combiner (avec un peu de mise en page) dans un document et de convertir le tout en epub ou mobi.

J’adore les concepts de micro bibliothèques pop-up qui s’installent au sein du tissu urbain. Voici la version de l’artiste américain John Locke qui détourne les cabines téléphoniques.

Sur Flavorwire, 20 magnifiques bibliothèques privées. Des images de pas mal d’entre elles circulent depuis longtemps, mais c’est toujours agréable de les revoir.

Une série d’articles un coup de projecteur bienvenu sur les conflits entre les bibliothèques et les sociétés de droits d’auteurs en Belgique. Pour ceux qui n’ont pas vu passer les articles, De Morgen a publié un article (ici et ici) sur une bibliothèque de Dilbeek à laquelle la SABAM réclame des droits pour les lectures de contes aux enfants. L’article a été repris dans la presse belge francophone (Le Soir ici et ici et la Dernière Heure), puis en France et enfin l’info est même arrivée sur The Next Web et sur Boing Boing !
Coup de projecteur bienvenu car cette histoire de Sabam est l’arbre qui cache la forêt, le gros contentieux entre les bibliothèques et les sociétés de droits d’auteurs se situe au niveau du conflit avec Reprobel qui réclame des millions d’Euros aux bibliothèques, à leurs lecteurs et à leur pouvoirs organisateurs. Je prépare un article sur le sujet mais cet article de La Libre Belgique résume la situation actuelle et cet article du Soir (ainsi que les articles liés) rappelle les débuts du conflit.

Un magnifique commentaire d’un étudiant bibliothécaire dans une discussion sur Metafilter sur la décision de l’état de Californie de couper les subventions de ses bibliothèques publiques.
Entre rage, abattement et volonté de changer les choses, il rappelle l’immense mission sociale des bibliothèques aux Etats-Unis (elle est encore plus marquée que chez nous) et son rôle essentiel dans la lutte pour l’égalité et la liberté, surtout à l’ère numérique.
Il voit surtout les bibliothèques en train de mourir à petit feu, étranglées par des coupes budgétaires et n’ayant pas assez de réactivité et de cohésion pour se défendre.
Ici, même si les coupes budgétaires ne sont pas (encore) d’actualité, les attaques des sociétés de droit d’auteurs sur le principe même des bibliothèques et le manque de visibilité des associations professionnelles (si on les compare à l’ALA) font craindre que ce type de situation puisse voir le jour.
Les solutions qu’il préconise (comme moi-même et beaucoup de bibliothécaires de ce côté ci de l’Atlantique) telles qu’ancrer toujours plus les bibliothèque comme un carrefour incontournable du tissu social, sont d’autant plus d’actualité.

Sur son blog, Clément Laberge explique la genèse et la mise en place de pretnumerique.ca, la plateforme de prêt d’ebooks destinée aux bibliothèques québécoises. Ici, le service de la lecture publique réfléchi justement au sujet pour le moment et c’est peut être un exemple à suivre.

Une version hypnotique de Control par Spoek Mathambo et un clip réalisé par le photographe Pieter Hugo et Michael Cleary. Un incroyable résultat digne d’un Anton Corbijn qui se serait mis au voudou. (Le tout à voir en grand format)
(Via)

J’ai revu il y a quelques jours l’excellent les indestructibles de chez Pixar. J’avais oublié le fantastique travail sur l’architecture et le design intérieur moderniste des décors du film. De l’intérieur de la famille Parr à la villa de la styliste Edna, nous avons un magnifique éventail du style moderniste américain des années cinquante. Splendide.
Les images viennent d’un article de The Mid-Century Modernist sur le sujet.

The SCP Foundation. Entre X Files et les atrocity archives de Charles Stross, the SCP foundation est un travail collaboratif sous forme de wiki qui rassemble des dossiers sur l’enfermement et la conservation d’artefacts et créatures dangereuses. Le meilleur point d’entrée est la page reprenant les histoires/dossiers les mieux cotées par les membres.

Des boîtes, des boîtes et encore des boîtes : voilà ce à quoi ressemble Amazon vu de l’intérieur.

Sur MetaFilter, un post reprenant les meilleurs articles en ligne de l’année, compilés par le site The browser. Un bon paquet de bonnes lectures.

Quelques références pour des recherches personnelles : une version en ligne du manuscrit Voynich , (informations sur Wikipedia et discussions sur Metafilter) et un article accompagné d’images sur le Codex Seraphinianus de Luigi Serafini (Wikipedia et Metafilter).

Quelques extraits du livre Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, où des auteurs parlent de leurs rapports aux livres de leur bibliothèque. Je découvre quand même que parmi les livres préférés de Philip Pullman se trouve les bijoux de la Castafiore.

Je viens de découvrir que “They Live“, le film le plus subversif de Carpenter (et qui n’a jamais été autant d’actualité) était tiré d’une nouvelle de 1963 de Ray Nelson nommée “Eight O’Clock in the Morning”. La voici :

At the end of the show the hypnotist told his subjects, “Awake.”
Something unusual happened.
One of the subjects awoke all the way. This had never happened before. His name was George Nada and he blinked out at the sea of faces in the theatre, at first unaware of anything out of the ordinary. Then he noticed, spotted here and there in the crowd, the non-human faces, the faces of the Fascinators. They had been there all along, of course, but only George was really awake, so only George recognized them for what they were. He understood everything in a flash, including the fact that if he were to give any outward sign, the Fascinators would instantly command him to return to his former state, and he would obey.
He left the theatre, pushing out into the neon night, carefully avoiding any indication that he saw the green, reptilian flesh or the multiple yellow eyes of the rulers of the earth. One of them asked him, “Got a light buddy?” George gave him a light, then moved on.
At intervals along the street George saw the posters hanging with photographs of the Fascinators’ multiple eyes and various commands printed under them, such as, “Work eight hours, play eight hours, sleep eight hours,” and “Marry and Reproduce.” A TV set in the window of a store caught George’s eye, but he looked away in the nick of time. When he didn’t look at the Fascinator in the screen, he could resist the command, “Stay tuned to this station.”
George lived alone in a little sleeping room, and as soon as he got home, the first thing he did was to disconnect the TV set. In other rooms he could hear the TV sets of his neighbors, though. Most of the time the voices were human, but now and then he heard the arrogant, strangely bird-like croaks of the aliens. “Obey the government,” said one croak. “We are the government,” said another. “We are your friends, you’d do anything for a friend, wouldn’t you?”
“Obey!”
“Work!”
Suddenly the phone rang.
George picked it up. It was one of the Fascinators.
“Hello,” it squawked. “This is your control, Chief of Police Robinson. You are an old man, George Nada. Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, your heart will stop. Please repeat.”
“I am an old man,” said George. “Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, my heart will stop.”
The control hung up.
“No, it wont,” whispered George. He wondered why they wanted him dead. Did they suspect that he was awake? Probably. Someone might have spotted him, noticed that he didn’t respond the way the others did. If George were alive at one minute after eight tomorrow morning, then they would be sure.
“No use waiting here for the end,” he thought.
He went out again. The posters, the TV, the occasional commands from passing aliens did not seem to have absolute power over him, though he still felt strongly tempted to obey, to see things the way his master wanted him to see them. He passed an alley and stopped. One of the aliens was alone there, leaning against the wall. George walked up to him.
“Move on,” grunted the thing, focusing his deadly eyes on George.
George felt his grasp on awareness waver. For a moment the reptilian head dissolved into the face of a lovable old drunk. Of course the drunk would be lovable. George picked up a brick and smashed it down on the old drunk’s head with all his strength. For a moment the image blurred, then the blue-green blood oozed out of the face and the lizard fell, twitching and writhing. After a moment it was dead.
George dragged the body into the shadows and searched it. There was a tiny radio in its pocket and a curiously shaped knife and fork in another. The tiny radio said something in an incomprehensible language. George put it down beside the body, but kept the eating utensils.
“I can’t possibly escape,” thought George. “Why fight them?”
But maybe he could.
What if he could awaken others? That might be worth a try.
He walked twelve blocks to the apartment of his girl friend, Lil, and knocked on her door. She came to the door in her bathrobe.
“I want you to wake up,” he said
“I’m awake,” she said. “Come on in.”
He went in. The TV was playing. He turned it off.
“No,” he said. “I mean really wake up.” She looked at him without comprehension, so he snapped his fingers and shouted, “Wake up! The masters command that you wake up!”
“Are you off your rocker, George?” she asked suspiciously. “You sure are acting funny.” He slapped her face. “Cut that out!” she cried, “What the hell are you up to anyway?”
“Nothing,” said George, defeated. “I was just kidding around.”
“Slapping my face wasn’t just kidding around!” she cried.
There was a knock at the door.
George opened it.
It was one of the aliens.
“Can’t you keep the noise down to a dull roar?” it said.
The eyes and reptilian flesh faded a little and George saw the flickering image of a fat middle-aged man in shirtsleeves. It was still a man when George slashed its throat with the eating knife, but it was an alien before it hit the floor. He dragged it into the apartment and kicked the door shut. “What do you see there?” he asked Lil, pointing to the many-eyed snake thing on the floor.
“Mister…Mister Coney,” she whispered, her eyes wide with horror. “You…just killed him, like it was nothing at all.”
“Don’t scream,” warned George, advancing on her.
“I won’t George. I swear I won’t, only please, for the love of God, put down that knife.” She backed away until she had her shoulder blades pressed to the wall.
George saw that it was no use.
“I’m going to tie you up,” said George. “First tell me which room Mister Coney lived in.”
“The first door on your left as you go toward the stairs,” she said. “Georgie…Georgie. Don’t torture me. If you’re going to kill me, do it clean. Please, Georgie, please.”
He tied her up with bed sheets and gagged her, then searched the body of the Fascinator. There was another one of the little radios that talked a foreign language, another set of eating utensils, and nothing else.
George went next door.
When he knocked, one of the snake-things answered, “Who is it?”
“Friend of Mister Coney. I wanna see him,” said George.
“He went out for a second, but he’ll be right back.” The door opened a crack, and four yellow eyes peeped out. “You wanna come in and wait?”
“Okay,” said George, not looking at the eyes.
“You alone here?” he asked as it closed the door, its back to George.
“Yeah, why?”
He slit its throat from behind, then searched the apartment.
He found human bones and skulls, a half-eaten hand.
He found tanks with huge fat slugs floating in them.
“The children,” he thought, and killed them all.
There were guns too, of a sort he had never seen before. He discharged one by accident, but fortunately it was noiseless. It seemed to fire little poisoned darts.
He pocketed the gun and as many boxes of darts he could and went back to Lil’s place. When she saw him she writhed in helpless terror.
“Relax, honey” he said, opening her purse, “I just want to borrow your car keys.
“He took the keys and went downstairs to the street.
Her car was still parked in the same general area in which she always parked it. He recognized it by the dent in the right fender. He got in, started it, and began driving aimlessly. He drove for hours, thinking–desperately searching for some way out. He turned on the car radio to see if he could get some music, but there was nothing but news and it was all about him, George Nada, the homicidal maniac. The announcer was one of the masters, but he sounded a little scared. Why should he be? What could one man do?
George wasn’t surprised when he saw the road block, and he turned off on a side street before he reached it. No little trip to the country for you, Georgie boy, he thought to himself.
They had just discovered what he had done back at Lil’s place, so they would probably be looking for Lil’s car. He parked it in an alley and took the subway. There were no aliens on the subway, for some reason. Maybe they were too good for such things, or maybe it was just because it was so late at night.
When one finally did get on, George got off.
He went up to the street and went into a bar. One of the Fascinators was on the TV, saying over and over again, “We are your friends. We are your friends. We are your friends.” The stupid lizard sounded scared. Why? What could one man do against all of them?
George ordered a beer, then it suddenly struck him that the Fascinator on the TV no longer seemed to have any power over him. He looked at it again and thought, “It has to believe it can master me to do it. The slightest hint of fear on its part and the power to hypnotize is lost.” They flashed George’s picture on the TV screen and George retreated to the phone booth. He called his control, the Chief of Police.
“Hello, Robinson?” he asked.
“Speaking.”
“This is George Nada. I’ve figured out how to wake people up.”
“What? George, hang on. Where are you?” Robinson sounded almost hysterical.
He hung up and paid and left the bar. They would probably trace his call.
He caught another subway and went downtown.
It was dawn when he entered the building housing the biggest of the city’s TV studios. He consulted the building director and then went up in the elevator. The cop in front of the studio recognized him. “Why, you’re Nada!” he gasped.
George didn’t like to shoot him with the poison dart gun, but he had to.
He had to kill several more before he got into the studio itself, including all the engineers on duty. There were a lot of police sirens outside, excited shouts, and running footsteps on the stairs. The alien was sitting before the TV camera saying, “We are your friends. We are your friends,” and didn’t see George come in. When George shot him with the needle gun he simply stopped in mid-sentence and sat there, dead. George stood near him and said, imitating the alien croak, “Wake up. Wake up. See us as we are and kill us!”
It was George’s voice the city heard that morning, but it was the Fascinator’s image, and the city did awake for the very first time and the war began.
George did not live to see the victory that finally came. He died of a heart attack at exactly eight o’clock.

(via)

Valérie Belin réalise un travail photographique étonnant. Ses images semblent plus figées que des photographies ordinaires ce qui donne à ses sujets une densité et un aspect dramatique absolument incroyable.

Un très belle collection de bibliothèques sur Dezeen, un site dédié à l’architecture .