Blame It On Emerson . . .

In an earlier post, I railed against long pages and the need to scroll for miles to get to the bottom of a blog or article. Such is the nature of the web, particularly when room must be made for user comments, banner ads, etc. Still, uber-scrolling is something I try to avoid.

So, I go to work on my term project for LIS 5433 -- a website designed to show budding Wizard Rockers how to create and distribute their music for free, using exclusively no-cost, downloadable software -- and guess what?

Scroll Hell, that's what.

With all the step-by-step processes I have to list, the pics I'm using to illustrate them, and top-and-side navigation for ease of use, there's no way around the "long-ass pages" I so crassly derided a few weeks ago. So, those words now cling to my buttocks with their sharp, pointed teeth.

In my defense, and for the edification of all readers, I close with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance," because it's a good thing to re-read every now and then. If ever a case can be made for reading a long-ass page, it would be for this essay.

"With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with pockthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today."

Oh, and there's this part, which I'm sure Emerson would apply to my scroll rant:

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius."

Long live scrolling.

Bacchanalian Libraries!

The public library where I work is an amazing place. It's every bit as much a community center as it is an "information repository," and there's always something cool going on -- day-long festivals celebrating the Hispanic or Native American cultures, teens getting together to try out the latest games on XBox 360 or PS3, or a huge celebration of the Harry Potter series that spills out onto Main Street and culminates with a Wizard Rock concert.

Which brings me to a quote I read in a recent copy of a locally-published magazine regarding our library, specifically:

"Those who think of a library as a quiet place where serious people go in order to read, study, and contemplate will agree that ***** lost its library years ago. It evolved into a noisy recreational center where small children and large children, mistakenly called "adults," visit for fun and recreation. The staff, desperate for popularity with the mob, happily indulges them with Roman circuses."

I certainly feel for the person who wrote the letter; I experience similar emotions about the direction it seems many churches are going, where worship services are more like an 80's arena-rock show than the old open-your-hymnals-to-page-187 litany that I fondly recall. That said, I think that public libraries do well to sponsor and create such events. As a result of such activities, our library maintains a high, positive profile in our community and maintains an image as a vital, vibrant institution and a great use of taxpayer money, which in turn allows for an even better library.

So, here's to Bacchanalian Libraries and the "Roman Circuses" we conduct. May we always be so scandalous!