Submissions to Parliament concerning New Zealand's national library

There has been a great deal of off-list interest in my posting on the Select Committee hearing into the State Sector Management Bill, much of it from researchers, authors, and librarians overseas. 

As I described, there are serious concerns about the impact of the proposals to combine the National Library (including the internationally iconic Alexander Turnbull Library) with the National Archives and make the catch-all body a sub-department of Internal Affairs.

A submission was made by conference call from Auckland, by the head librarians of the Auckland City Library and the Library of the University of Auckland, Janet Copsey and Sue Cooper, where concerns were expressed that the full function of the National Library is not appreciated.   They likened it to the 1980s debacle of selling off the Government Printing Office.  The Government at the time, reckoning that it was just a printing business, sold it off at fire-sale rates to Graeme Hart (creating a local millionaire) and then realized belatedly that the Government Printer had been the issuer of Parliamentary printed documents, a role that no ordinary printer could ever fill. 

Read their submission here.

The application of the Guardians Kaitiaki of the Alexander Turnbull Library, with a draft of their submission, can be read here.

And an excellent summary of Dr. Donald Gilling's arguments, made in the context of his application to make a formal submission, can be read here.

For those interested in the positions of those who use the New Zealand National Archives, their thoughts are also online.  To read all the arguments made by wise historians, librarians, and archivists, trawl through the list on this page.

There are, as you will see, two pages of submissions, evidence of the deep concern felt throughout the country.  It is nice that it is all online -- that New Zealand is an open society.

My own thought is that it is very strange when the national historical and bibliographic heritage becomes part of the department that issues passports.

THE AUTONOMY OF A NATIONAL TREASURE

There is quite a history to this particular national treasure, and one modest man's name dominates the story. 

As far back as 1858, the foundations of the National Library of New Zealand were laid, when a General Assembly Library was formed in Wellington, to serve Members of Parliament.  Then, in 1918, a bibliophile by the name of Alexander Turnbull bequeathed his library to the nation.  This led to the 1965 National Library Act, where the General Assembly Library, the Alexander Turnbull Library, and the National Library Service (which interloaned books all over the country, majorly to schools) were combined, to form the National Library of New Zealand.

This was considered so important that in 2003 another Act was passed, which strengthened and clarified the relationship between the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library, and affirmed that their collections were a taonga -- a National Treasure.  At the same time a body called the Guardians Kaitiaki of the Alexander Turnbull Library was formed.

The Guardians expressed grave concerns about the independence of the institution they guard, at a Select Committee meeting last week.  This was because of a new Bill, the State Sector Management Bill, which threatens the autonomy of this national treasure. 

According to the website, "The purpose of the Bill is to amalgamate a number of existing agencies to achieve gains of financial efficiences ..."  In a word, it is to cut costs.  According to the testimony of one of the speakers, Dr. Donald Gilling, even this is doubtful, as the figures are controversial. 

Yet, this Bill will effectively remove the independence of the National Library, as with the National Archives, it will be integrated into the Department of Internal Affairs.  Once the integration is accomplished, the Chief Archivist and National Librarian will report to a Deputy Chief Executive, who will be in charge of a proposed catch-all Branch of Knowledge, Information, and Technology.

Elizabeth Caffin reminded the committee that the job of the Guardians Kaitiaki of the Turnbull was to advise the Government on matters relating to the integrity and status of the library collections, and the special research character of the services.  As she pointed out, the Alexander Turnbull Library was one of the world's greatest and most respected research libraries -- "Yet this treasured institution is to be embedded at a low level in a government department in a way that diminishes its status both at home and abroad."

Delegates from the Public Service Association reinforced this by expressing their concern that the Chief Archivist and the National Librarian would be downgraded to third tier management.

After pointing out that the Bill would also remove any ministerial oversight of selling off the holdings, union member (and librarian) Peter Sime said, "We're looking after the national heritage here and it's a pretty big deal to get rid of that sort of material."

 

BRETT BATTLES, PATRY FRANCIS and JASON PINTER

Not long ago, I commented on a collection of thriller shorts by debut writers who had been sponsored by veteran authors, Killer Year.  I enjoyed the stories, finding some particularly good, and have set myself a part time task of searching for books written by these fortunate souls.

Jason Pinter's short story was a stand-out for me, so I looked for him first in the library, and found that though he has produced an astonishing number of books in the meantime, they are hard to find -- simply because they are so popular.  I finally tracked down The Guilty, so was introduced to the character, Henry Parker, a rookie reporter who gets into trouble very easily.  In this one, a female superstar is killed on the red carpet outside a glamorous nightclub, and the fun begins. 

It is all very youthful.  Pinter writes with the wide-eyed zest of a winger playing for the All Blacks for the very first time, and his hero is naive to suit.  Everything is calculated to appeal to the sub-thirties set, which is obviously very successful ploy.  Not for the blue rinse set, however.

More mature ladies would prefer Patry Francis, whose the liar's diary is a thought-provoking exploration of the impact of a charismatic eccentric on a small New England community, and the violence that follows. In its way, it is as controversial as the famous Virginia Andrews Flowers in the Attic, but does not get away with it quite as well.  This is partly because Francis, aware that she was perhaps being over-ambitious, lacked confidence, and partly because there are unanswered questions that haunt the reader, but do not seem to be deliberate. Also, the main character, Jeanne Cross, is pictured as dependent on alcohol and sleeping pills, to justify her reactions, which is no substitute for good solid psychological reasons for her actions.  Judging by the acknowledgments, Francis had a lot of advice and help from people who saw great promise in her work.  Another book or two will justify this, I think.

Then I came to Brett Battles, and was astonished.  From the very first word of the very first book, this guy writes like a pro.  His protagonist, Jonathan Quinn, is a true original -- a cleaner, a crime-scene janitor, the man who clears up the mess after those who have done "the wet work" have gone.  Quinn's apprentice, Nate, is even better.  It might sound like Batman and Robin, but Battles gets away with it. Let me make a prediction -- Jeffery Deaver, his mentor, has made himself some competition.

I'd like to know more about Battles himself, but his website, while as professional as his thriller writing, doesn't reveal much.  His first book was apparently bought by a publishing house called Ugly Town, and plucked out of obscurity to be published by Bantam Dell instead.  That's a big step.  How did it happen? 

It's a mystery worthy of working into a Jonathan Quinn page-turner. 

VANDA SYMON, KIWI CRIME WRITER

Vanda Symon has been interviewed by the New Zealand Society of Authors in their NZSA Chapbook -- as the chair of the Otago-Southland Branch.

First, they ask what GENRE she writes in.

Vanda Symon's answer:
I write crime fiction, detective crime fiction to be specific. My protagonist is a young woman, Detective Sam Shephard, who starts out in this series in Mataura, but then moves to Dunedin to undertake detective training in the big smoke. I love writing my novels in a local setting, and make full use of our New Zealand way of speaking and doing things. Some people say you can’t sell books overseas if you set them in New Zealand, but my books have sold into Germany. I think international readers like to get a taste of a foreign country. I really enjoy writing crime fiction, and am very happy in that genre.

How long have you been writing?

I started writing my first novel when my youngest son was 6 months old. He’s eight now. Where did that time go! That first novel took four years from whoa to go, as life was pretty hectic with pre-schoolers. Now the kids are older I aim to write a novel a year. I have a mental image of myself when I’m old and doddery with a gin and tonic in one hand and still writing with the other.

What originally inspired you to start writing?

I have always been an avid reader, and from childhood always assumed I’d write books some day. You have to love the innocence of youth - it had never occurred to me that I couldn’t.

What is your most recent publication?

My third novel, Containment, came out in December 2009. I’m delighted that it has been named as a finalist in the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for best Crime Fiction. I have just finished reading the proofs of my fourth novel, Bound, which will be published in February next year. My publisher is Penguin.

What advice can you offer to new writers?

Read, read, read. And read broadly, not just in the genre you have chosen to write in. It gives you a broader picture of how the world works, and how people work. Also it makes life so much more interesting to expand your reading horizons. I have only recently discovered the wonderful world of biographies and memoirs. They provide a great insight into characters, and people dynamics, as well as being straight out inspirational.
When it comes to the writing part – nothing happens unless you sit your butt on a chair and actually write. Sometimes it can be exhilarating, other times it can be a slog, but, as Stephen King put it “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
How long have you been a NZSA Branch Chair?

I think it is five years now. Time goes so fast! The Otago Southland branch is fantastic, a really warm and supportive group of writers. It’s such a pleasure to be a part of it.

BUYING E-BOOKREADERS AND THE LENDING OUT OF BOOKS



Jon Snyder/Wired.com



Obviously, there is huge public interest in e-book reading, and, as American naval novelist and historian James L. Nelson comments below, little knowledge of the damage that lending and re-selling of "real" books does to the income of struggling authors.

Follower Don Gilling sent me a link to an interesting commentary by Victor Keegan in the UK Guardian, which deplores the fact that e-books cannot be passed around between friends, saying that reading should be a communal business. 

Keegan begins his discussion by meditating, "Books have come late to the digital party, but change is now happening at such a furious pace that even conservative members of the trade are starting to realise that their industry is being snatched away from them before their eyes."  In fact, as he goes on to comment, it is analogous to the shift from scrolls to books.  In medieval times, reading was confined to the educated few with access to the scrolls -- it was a little closed elite community that exploded when the print revolution made reading available to the masses.

Now, that reading public is going to get even bigger.  As e-books are read on devices like fancy cellphones, laptops, and i-pads, the number of those who enjoy reading will increase, probably in dramatic leaps -- "more books will be read in future as out-of-copyright ones are reprinted and 18-to-24-year-olds, the drivers of mobile adoption, take to reading on their phones and other devices."  With the right e-bookreader, you can read in bright light on the beach, or in completely unlit airplane cabins. As he says, "the product itself --­ the book -- ­ is not threatened, only the way it is read."

To which, I comment that the way it is read is going to become important, too -- even more important than the old choices we've been making, between hardbacks, mass market paperbacks, and audiobooks.  Choosing your e-bookreader is going to become as mind-taxing as deciding what kind of television you want in your lounge.  Already, manufacturers and e-bookreader retailers are competing madly for this growing market, as a recent story on wired attests, and the range of readers is widening all the time.   Don't opt blindly for a kindle, they advise (especially if you live outside the States).  Head to the experts before stopping at the store, and even then think very carefully, because it looks as if you are going to be using it a lot.

But, as Keegan points out, reading is going to be a lonelier business than it used to be, because  e-bookreaders and the folks who sell or give you the digital books make it impossible to lend a book if you don't lend the device as well. "Some publishers even ask you to state that you won't read the book aloud," he exclaims.

Well, not being allowed to read out choice bits is really rather extreme.  One wonders how they think they could possibly police it.  But, as far as authors and publishers are concerned, recommending books to friends is a very good thing, but it is hard on the pocket when they are loaned out for free.  It would be ever so much nicer if those friends paid to have those books downloaded onto their own personal readers.  And, if e-books eliminated the secondhand book market, it would be an unexpected bonus.

YEAR-TO-DATE E-BOOK SALES COMPRISE 9.0% OF TRADE BOOK SALES

The latest figures from the Association of American Publishers are quite startling.

Indeed, it is little wonder that MediaBistro.com has headlined the news that adult hardcover sales sagged 24.4% in August 2010. 

That is not all that is dire.  Paperback sales decreased 18.3% that month, while adult mass market sales plunged 21.9%.  Religious books were also down, but by the relatively insignificant figure of 0.4%.  More disturbing are August figures for children's reading, hardcover children's books being down by 8%
and children's/young adult paperback sales down 15.1%.  Remarkable, too, is that sales of hard-copy audio books decreased by 21.9% that month.

Yet the news is not all bad.  Book sales over all increased by 3.4% when compared with figures for August 2009, and year-to-date sales are up by 6.9%.  So what has bolstered the figures?

Textbook sales are partly responsible.  University press hardback sales were up 10.2% in August, while university press paperback increased by 15.7%.  The market for other professional tomes rose by 14.5%, which indicates that people still need real books if they want to learn.

Another factor is that downloaded audio books saw an increase of 4.6% over last August.  Not bad -- but that figure pales into utter insignificance when compared with the revelation that E-book sales increased by 172.4% when compared to August 2009. 
 
Looking at a wider range of dates produces an even more impressive figure.  E-book sales for January-August 2010 totaled $263 million, compared to $89.8 million over January-August 2009, an overall increase of 193%.
 
It is the increase that is so significant.  Year-to-date E-book sales comprise only 9.03% of total book sales -- but at the close of 2009 the figure was only 3.31%. 
 
Obviously, that percentage is going to soar, and the future for E-book sales is guaranteed to be dramatic.

LONG-LOST DR SEUSS MANUSCRIPT FOR SALE

It has been hidden from view for almost forty years, but now it is up for sale at Nate D. Sanders auction house -- an original Dr Seuss handwritten book.

According to MediaBistro.com, the master wrote just the first seven pages, and an assistant created the next twelve, but you can see Dr Seuss corrections throughout.  It also doesn't make much sense, being a germ of an idea for a book on sports -- "All Sorts of Sports.  Shall I play checkers?  Golf? Croquet? There are so many games there are to play" -- but the wackiness and rhythm are plain to see.

The collection includes a typed letter, signed "Ted" (for Theodor Seuss Geisel) and dated July 11, 1983.  It discusses the master's reservations about the idea, saying that a story about a hero who flubs a catch at any ball at all "will make him schnook."  In short, Dr Seuss had a very strong feeling that the reader's first reaction would be, "What's the matter with this dope?"

The auction house was offered the item by one of the master's former assistants, but whether it was the actual assistant who created the last twelve pages is not revealed.  Nevertheless, it certainly has appeal.  The auction closes on Thursday, October 21st at 5 pm US Pacific Time.

"AMERICAN ASSASSIN" TRIGGERS KINDLE PRICING WAR ON AMAZON

Vince Flynn, a bestselling American writer of political thrillers, has inadvertently triggered a fascinating political situation with his latest, called American Assassin.

I have to admit that Flynn's name was unfamiliar to me, probably because his corpse-strewn, neo-con thrillers are warmly recommended by Glenn Beck.  A feature in MediaBistro.com snagged my attention this morning, though, because it relates to the ebook vs. hardback topic that is so relevant right now.

Buyers of American Assassin are infuriated because the kindle version is only twelve cents cheaper than the hardback-- $14.99 and $15.11, respectively.  It hasn't done Flynn's sales any harm, the kindle book being #1 in the paid bestsellers list, and the hardback #3, but his fans are distinctly unhappy.  Ebooks are much cheaper to produce, they argue, and the price difference should reflect this. 

"Greedy" publishers and authors are pilloried in the heated discussions that have sprung up on the Amazon site, no one having taken heavy discounting of the hardback (in response to Amazon.com policy) into consideration.  There is more than discussion going on, however -- the offended fans have taken to facebook, twitter, and all the other social networks, and mounted a Campaign.  And it looks as if those who make policy at Amazon are doing a rapid rethink.

Latest news is that Amazon no longer publicize the ebook:  on the American Assassin page, there is no link to the kindle edition.  And, when you finally find it by devious means, the price is no longer available.  It will be interesting indeed to see what happens next.

But how does this affect the so-called "greedy"authors and publishers?  It is more important to them than it might seem, at first glance.  "At least with the hardcopy book, I can lend it to a friend, or take it to a used book store and trade it for something I haven't read yet," comments William Smith of Kingston, NY.  This certainly snared my attention.  Used book stores do not yield royalties; and unless friends turn around and buy another book by that same author at a regular store, there is no financial gain to the author or the publisher at all.  If a kindle book can be sold only once, however, the benefits are obvious.

Perhaps authors should be mounting their own campaign, in support of realistically priced ebooks.

MEDIUM-LENGTH HISTORY ON YOUR KINDLE?

It could be the answer for thousands of frustrated historians who write readable, well-crafted prose, just to see their papers languish in scarcely read academic journals.  It could also solve the problem of the fascinating topic that is too long for a single paper, and too short for a proper book.

A news release issued today (12 October 2010) by Amazon begins:  "Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century -- works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the 'heft' required to book marketing and distribution."

Now, they say, they have the answer to this untapped store of novella-length nonfiction -- "Kindle Singles."  These are books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature, or about the same length as a few chapters of a regular book.  Naturally, they will be priced to match their length -- a bargain for researchers, who want more than is available in books, but haven't the resources to search all the relevant journals..

The announcement is aimed at "serious writers, thinkers, scientisits, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers," who are invited to "join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world."

How much money would there be in it?  Not much, at a guess.  But it certainly promises an outlet for work that is both too brief and too long to be considered by the publishing world, both trade and academic.

Interested?  Read the release.

LARGEST MONASTERY LIBRARY IN THE WORLD

Publisher Jacqueline Church Simonds sent me a link to the Admont Benedictine Library, which is not just the largest monastery library in the world, but perhaps the most beautiful.  A masterpiece of baroque architecture, it has occasionally been called the eighth wonder of the world.

Trawling through the site, I learned a great deal.  Founded in 1074, this library boasts a massive three-volume Bible, created around 1070, and more than 1400 glorious illuminated manuscripts.  The white shelves hold thousands of precious old books, while the vaulted ceilings above are daintily decorated with frescoes painted by Bartolomeo Altomonte over the years 1775 and 1776.  There is also fine arts museum (full of religious works, of course) and a natural history museum, which includes a collection of wax fruit.

What the website did not tell me was where I must go to view this very special library.  My only guess at its geographical position was that it is somewhere in Austria.

Further delving told me that it is on the River Elms in the picturesque little town of Admont, and has a spectacular setting on the edge of the Gesause National Park.  More than that, I cannot tell you.  Admont isn't even in my atlas!