I just love this coffee table made from an old library card catalog! Though, I’m not very handy, I will totally copy this if I ever see a wood card catalog for sale. -marcia
Card catalog table on Craft
A high school librarian’s daughter illustrated a graphic-novel version of Macbeth. You know, the Scottish play. By that Shakespeare guy. He mentioned it as his pick in the library’s newsletter and put some copies on a library display table (giving free copies to some students). An ethics board decided he had abused his position as a civil servant, fining him $500 and making him sign a three-page admission of guilt.
“There are so many things going on they could investigate,” he said in an interview, “and they had nothing better to do than allege that my daughter would have gotten 20 cents in royalties if someone bought the book. But nobody did. I gave out free copies. I was just so proud of my daughter for writing it.”
HarperCollins has tossed another vegetable into the social networking salad with Authonomy. Here’s how it works: Take your unpublished or self-published book (or part thereof) and upload it to the site. Then other members read, rate and comment upon your work. HarperCollins says once the site is running full speed, it will read the most highly rated manuscripts in search of “talented writers we can sign up for our traditional book publishing programmes.”
My immediate reaction was cynicism and an audible “ick” noise. I don’t know. I just don’t buy that HarperCollins takes these submissions seriously or that anyone of merit is on there. Also, it seems like it is a way to publicize ideas that may be safer left private or shared with trusted professionals rather than shared with the possibly desperate competition. Also also, I sometimes get all anti-Kumbaya at the prospect of social networking, reality-TV-style competitions and online “communities.” But I am kind of a grump.
Pretending I’m not a grump, I came up with this list of reasons why other people might like it: (Read on …)