January
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March – no books?!
April
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December
This post was made possible by LibraryThing, where I tag books I’ve read with the month and year I read them, and keep track of what I want to read in the future. Now that I’m into the swing of it, hopefully the year in review for 2010 will be more complete.
The March 29 issue of Advertising Age has a feature on the history of advertising. One article is a reprint of a 1977 essay by Isaac Asimov, forecasting “what the advertising future would be like in 2000”. It’s impressive how accurate a lot of his ideas are. It’s also amusing how many sci-fi writings from the 60s and 70s mention microfilm as the media of the future. I remember reading old articles in library school and laughing at that. Asimov’s predictions focus on the personalization of media consumption and advertising, which has obviously become reality. The odd thing is that he describes it as if consumers would voluntarily subscribe to certain types of ads, instead of ads being targeted at consumers based on company-created consumer profiles. Excerpt:
Ad Specialties Inc. is, for instance, widely recognized among the advertising community representatives as being the wave of the future. It produces coded ads much as a library produces a coded catalog.
Its philosophy is that people who view ads as intrusions on their newspaper or on their TV programs do so because most of the time they have no interest in the product being advertised. If they were looking upon, or reading, an ad dealing with something that they very much want at that time, it would be the news or the program that would be viewed as the intrusion.
It is now possible, therefore, for subscribers to Ad Specialties Inc. to inspect an elaborate catalog of product listings (“from plasma lights to plastic leads,” one of its own ads says) and then code their TV sets for the reception of ads dealing with some particular type of product. They can inspect the various ads for that product, facsimile those they choose to, and be prepared for further inquiries.
Then the grandiose but equally prescient suggestion that advertising and marketing tactics can play a part in political and social change:
We must sell the world, through the persuasion techniques developed by advertology, on the necessity of reducing population, of conserving and recycling the Earth’s resources, of exploiting space to supplement Earth’s energy supply. Most of all, humanity must be sold on the necessity of employing its aggressive impulses not against itself, but in battling ignorance and folly and in extending the frontiers of knowledge and wisdom.
And in that manner, we may all be saved.
He also talks about holograms. <3 Asimov <3
(image from positivepsychologynews.com)
From the Library of Congress weekly lists for December 2 and 9, 2009.
Aggressiveness in art [Not Subd Geog] [sp2009009189]
Andy Kehoe – “Kick Us When We’re Down”
Androids in literature [Not Subd Geog] [sp2009009278]
Philip K. Dick’s website has a fun gallery of cover images from all the various versions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Architecture photographers [May Subd Geog] [sp2009009076]
Kim Høltermand – “Monolith”
150 Crime in music [sp2009009410]
680 Here are entered works on the depiction of crime in musical compositions. General works on the relationship between crime and music are entered under Music and crime.
550 BT Music
681 Notes under Music and crime
150 Heroines in dance [Not Subd Geog] [sp2009009518]
550 BT Dance
150 Landscapes in music [Not Subd Geog] [sp2009009236]
680 Here are entered works on the depiction of natural landscapes in musical
compositions.
550 BT Music
Mood films [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008025676]
680 This heading is used as a genre/form heading for films that emphasize a mood or
atmosphere rather than a plot.
555 BT Fiction films
The record for the above heading indicates that there’s a genre of Japanese fiction film to which the term “mood film” has been applied. A friend suggested that something like Wavelength might be considered a “mood film”. However, it also seems to be a common term in the advertising field, where it refers to things like this. According to NTC’s Dictionary of Advertising, 2nd ed, a “mood commercial” is a “commercial message designed to establish a particular atmosphere.” Or perhaps a commercial that encourages you to match your fridge to your mood?
Odeon of Agrippa (Athens, Greece) [sp2009008379]
410 UF Agrippa, Odeon of (Athens, Greece)
410 UF Agrippeion (Athens, Greece)
410 UF Ōdeio tou Agrippa (Athens, Greece)
410 UF Odeion of Agrippa (Athens, Greece)
410 UF Odeum of Agrippa (Athens, Greece)
550 BT Theaters—Greece
The Athenian Agora Excavations website from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens is a lovely example of how archaeological data can be digitized and presented in a clear, interesting way. Also, check out the catalog card on this page. And I thought library catalog cards were messy…
I’m including this next one not because I’m a Potter fan, but because I find it bizarre and amusing that there was probably a discussion (or a lively debate?) about whether Hogwarts should be considered a place or an organization. I guess imaginary places are as worthy of accurate subject headings as real places, or, um, organizations…?
150 Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Imaginary place) CANCEL
(C) 150 Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Imaginary organization) [Not Subd Geog] [sp 00002633]
450 UF Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Imaginary place) [EARLIER FORM
OF HEADING]
150 Legislators’ pets [May Subd Geog] [sp2009009244]
550 BT Pets
In My senator and me : a dog’s eye view of Washington Senator Kennedy’s dog, Splash, follows the senator around for a day and introduces readers to the White House.
There’s also a Presidential pet museum?!