#the main library card catalog
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The Main Library Card Catalog
My other blogs:
The Library of Paranormal Experience - Art, design, music, general weirdness, and my paranormal miniature photography.
The Library of a Former Bookseller - A catalogue of my library of illustrated books, mostly devoted to natural history, art, design, typography, and other general weirdness.
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On the subject of young Rolans very 1st crush
The boy is fair of face with ivory skin and honey brown hair blonde in the sun. Why does rolan know that? He looks away from the boy and back out the window... not down to his books.
Sitting at the library again, sharing a space, quietly with little happening bit for the flipping of pages. Rolan has already absorbed his book, a mind as voracious as his consumes tomes with ease. It seems that is not the case for everyone, the boy across the table huff in agitation before grumbling and looking up towards Rolan.
" You read this last week right?"
He flipped to the checkout card at the front tapping rolans name. Rolan nods once elbow perched on the edge of the table with his palm pressed to his chin.
The boy glances about, pink lips pressed to a thin line, agitation making an ear twitch.
" I don't understand it..."
"Did you read the previous volumes?"
Rolan blinked slowly at him, looking a bit tired. The boy stared up at him perplexed.
"What other volumes?"
Rolan shifts in his seat to stand and collect the books he'd already finished.
" I'll show you."
The boy huffs but follows him, trying not to look at rolans tail while it sways lazily behind him. He watches while Rolan places his books back on the shelves in cataloged order with one hand before stopping in front of a shelf of what appears to be encyclopedias.
"These ones. You don't need to read them all but it helps."
The boys face pales at the number of thick books weighing down the shelf.
" You read them all?"
Suddenly Rolan felt his face flush with warmth. Why was he suddenly so embarrassed?
"Of course I did. But some of it is a bit repetitive so you could probably skip this, this and this one."
He tapped the spine of a few particular volumes, trying not feel the way the boys eyes focused on his hands.
" how did you find the time? Didn't it take forever to read all that?"
Rolan blinked at him, one eyebrow going up slightly.
" I just multitask, read while I'm doing other things. It doesn't take long, maybe a week?"
He tried not to see how jarred the boy looked at his words. He tried not to pay attention to the way he put his hands over his mouth. Clean hands, well kept.
"I can help if you like. I took a fair few notes to clarify parts..."
Ah, why did he say that? Why did he make that offer? He has other things to do...
Suddenly the boy changed, from anxious to outraged. His face shifting from near colorless to pink and red, balling up his hands at his side.
"Oh you're gonna help? Cause you're so damn smart!?"
Rolan blinked at him, not sure what went wrong.
"I am smart, I am offering to be of assistance... or I was."
The boy suddenly shouted at him before slamming his hands against rolans chest, knocking him backwards into the shelf.
" I DONT NEED CHARITY FROM SOME SHOW OFF TIEFLING ORPHAN!"
Outraged and embarrassed, the boy stared down at Rolans shocked expression looking up at him.
" stop staring at me you pronged freak!"
He stomps hard as he can on Rolans tail before running for the door. Rolan yelps, jumping in place, knocking one of the heavier books loose from above him. It falls fast and lobs the top of his head.
Now with his eyes watering, he grips his injured tail and whimpers in pain. A small older woman peeks in around the shelf, gasping at the image he made laying in all that mess.
" boy what happened?"
She wrinkled her nose and squinted through thick lenses at him.
" I'll clean it up, don't worry."
Both of them turn their head at the sound of a loud scream, yelp, and thump.
Rolan sighs heavily before getting to go see what it is. Out in the hall just outs the main library door, he sees the boy scrambling to his feet, bawling while holding a quick forming bruise on his face.
Unsurprisingly there stands Lia huffing and puffing before kicking at the tile.
" Can't be nice to anyone, yeesh."
A few minutes later, they've found Cal and start the walk home. Cal glances up, trying not to see how tight Rolans jaw is set. Lia reaches over and puts her hand in Rolans, unsure how to help. A tear slips down his face, immediately followed by a silent parade of them. Lias hand tightens in his, with his free hand Rolan begins wiping his face.
Cal huffs crossing his arms over his small chest and says firmly.
" boys are stupid anyway."
Now caught quite off guard rolan stares at him, then suddenly can't stop laughing. Lia cracks up shouting
" yea! They're stupid!"
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View of Music and Performing Arts room, Main Library, Detroit Public Library. Tables and chairs in foreground; shelving with phonograph records in background. Librarian stands at card catalog on right. Handwritten on back: "1954."
Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library
#detroit public library#detroit#1954#library#libraries#card catalog#librarians#vintage#1950s#detroit history
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five years after graduating, i finally got around to obtaining an alumni library card, time to go figure out what databases might be useful/fun to me
it took me this long because to do so, i had to physically go to the alumni center, talk to the person there, and then physically go to the main library, in a town where i no longer live that's like an hour drive away. but i happened to be there for other reasons so... why not
edit: lmao apparently alumni straight up are not allowed to use online resources unless they are physically on campus... so while i can, like, search the library catalog, any database that's not accessible to the general public is still not accessible to me. well. good to know. at least i can poke around at research guides and get an idea of which resources might be useful to me if i do get a chance to spend some time in town
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Introducing our new Teen Wellness Kits! Each kit contains resources related to one of seven different topics for teenagers: anxiety, bullying, coming out, finding your direction, grief, healthy relationships, and self-esteem. Inside the kit you will find a variety of fiction and nonfiction books, stress relief and mindfulness tools, coloring supplies, a booklist, and other helpful resources. The kits can be found in the Teen area of the Main Library and are available to be checked out with your library card.
You can view the kits in our online catalog here:
Teen Wellness Kits
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tuezdai
i was thinking about crossposting this to dreamwidth and THEN i remembered that ive been looking for an excuse to make. a neocities website. so. :3 i am going to make a neocities page for weekly roundup hehe
relatedly look at this bizarre captcha i got when i went to make an account. like. any of these fools could be robots.
listening: not a lot of music this week but ive been listening to rangedtouch's just king things podcast! i'm listening in order from the beginning and im at about halfway through ep 8 (the dead zone). i really enjoyed their homestuck reread podcast so when that finished i was like. well. i want to listen to these clowns (appreciative) hang out more. time to peruse their back catalog. and ive been enjoying it so far! i wouldn't call myself a huge king-head, i've read carrie, salem's lot, the shining...pet sematary? cujo? a few other misc king stories. there's a short story about a cat that crawls its way down someone's throat i think was stephen king and that one lives in my head rent-free. so definitely a lot of books ive never even heard of in here, and i definitely haven't read the Big King books (the stand and dark tower, mainly) but it doesn't matter too much for podcasting :)
sidebar, i told my roommate about the podcast and she misunderstood the premise and thought it was like. audiobook style. like they were reading the books out loud. i was like babe the stand episode is less than 4 hours long. do you think it's on like 10x speed. lololol
music-wise, @delta-orionis has some DELICIOUS synthwave playlists that ive been working out and studying to. it's like 40 hours long. go nuts
reading: i went to the library with the intention of wandering the nonfiction section until i found something that looked fun but they're remodeling soon so a ton of the stacks aren't open for wandering rn...i can reserve stuff and pick it up but they're not accessible to the public :( the fiction section is though so i grabbed "the birthday of the world", a short story collection by ursula le guin! i thought short stories would be nice because of my lack of time to properly get engaged in a Book and i was right, it rules. i read the first three or so last weekend when i took myself to brunch at a new tea place on main street (3/5 for the brunch, the restaurant is brand new so there are definitely some things that went wrong - food took forever to come out, i was frequently forgotten, after i was seated i waited for like 10 minutes to be noticed by waitstaff, when i finally got my food the rice was crunchy, etc. i would go back to eat there but not any time soon, maybe in a few months after theyve been open for a while. the tea RULED though. their gimmick is like...travel? airplane? so all the staff introduce themselves as flight attendants, and their rewards card is formatted like a passport book where once you get a row of stamps for a certain continent you get a free tea, and once you fill out the whole book you get another free tea........it's so cute.......)
actually now im not sure if it's the location the tea came from or the Type of tea? because that top column goes from japan to england which is not exactly a Region. eurasia????? idfk. still cute
anyways. the short stories. i read the first three ("Coming of Age in Karhide", "The Matter of Seggri", and "Unchosen Love") and really enjoyed them! i never finished Left Hand of Darkness (i will return to her one day i promise) but it definitely wasn't required reading even though the first story was set on that same planet. the next story is "Mountain Ways" which is actually available online for those interested :)
watching: more evangelion, and my roommate put on "cunk on earth" for me and it rules it's so funny. obsessed with her.
making: embroidery progress! about halfway done filling in the headphone cord.
as a self reminder, the task list for finishing this is:
fill in headphone cord
words along the side
fill stitch for hair
color in eyes
add misc hair flyaways
misc: quantum midterm thursday......it's open note so im not as frantic as last semester's exams but still. ah. ahhhh. :(
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Librarian Idyll - May 2022
Librarian Idyll is a game myself and a few others are developing where you are a mage who has been task with building and running a magical library in a small town.
Finally wrapped up Pre-Alpha 4.5 a couple days ago, and decently happy with out it turned out. It has featured an overhaul of the backend of the dialogue system, along with new graphics for dialogue and the core conversation menu.
I’m not 100% of these still - will do more tweaking when I go in and add animation and transitions to the various UI elements.
Expanding on the new summaries of books in the new catalog card popup format I showed last check-in here, the game finally supports fully readable books as well, which while not super relevant to gameplay, really needed to be included in a game about a library.
Looking towards 4.6 now (in a few days once I rest enough so my girlfriend stops wagging her finger at me disapprovingly), I’m focusing on three main features:
Renown System - Depending on the size of the library's collections, you'll gain renown. This is used to purchase services from the Council of Bibliomancy, such as ordering books from the archives, having the Council promote your library so it gets more visitors from abroad, and later on, acquiring additional specialized staff to help with library operations as it grows (things like additional librarians - jobs like gardening and general housekeeping will be filled by locals you hire).
As you grow the library, you will also increase in library rank based on your renown, which will unlock more features of the library, increase your regular funding, more things you can acquire from the CoB, and attract more scholars and other visitors.
End of Day Screen - Your character doesn't end the day by going to sleep - they're closing up the library and wrapping up whatever records are there for the evening. When the player ends the day, instead of just fading to black and coming back at the end of the day, it will show the general notes on what happened the day - changes to library's funds, additions to the library's collection, any unread mail that came in during the day, any notable visitors that came by today (as well as collecting any patronage they left) and so on.
Mail - The player needs to be able to receive stuff they get from the Council of Bibliomancy, as well as receive letters from people in town, people who came to town in the past, and contacts/friends back in Layan. There's not as much to say - it's a mail system. It'll be delivered to the library's front desk for the bibliomancer to pick up.
I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to get these done in the month I try to aim for in each update - only went 2 days over for 4.5! - and in fact I might end up adding some more smaller things on top of these once they’re squared away.
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Day 5,
Making a habit of writing down something short before I head out in the morning. When you look out to sea from the Village, it’s not just open ocean that you’re looking at. The horizon is dotted with small islands. Small compared to this one anyway. The closest is to the south and east, not quite directly across from us. The side facing the Village is a high cliff, and atop that cliff is a thick forest, much like the one that surrounds the Village itself. And above those trees rises what appears to be the towers and maybe walls of an old castle or fort. I wonder if anyone’s living over there? I imagine the view from one of those towers must be spectacular. Maybe I should try going up there sometime. It’d be nice to get a proper view of the Village from afar.
*******
Taking a break from library work. I swear if there’s any kind of system at all to how the books here are arranged it’s the idiosyncratic sort that only makes sense to the one who came up with it. Doesn’t help that it sounds like Pat and Theo (still haven’t met him, but Pat says he’s a grump) were just reshelving books wherever and going off memory for those particular books afterward. Speaking (writing?) of Pat, when I got in today he gave me the key to the archive, not the whole building - because there isn’t one, just a latch on the inside of the front door – but to the room where all the books are. Said that he was formally ending his term as interim archivist and putting me in charge.
Wait… I’m in charge. I’m not working with anyone else. There’s no reason I need to be beholden to the current “organization” of these books. I can arrange them however I want. I could even label the shelves. Put together a card catalog so I don’t have to memorize everything. I assume that’s how card catalogs work? I know that’s a thing libraries had for organization in wherever I was before this but I’m not sure what they actually are.
*******
Well, I’m spooked now. In my power tripping flurry of reorganizing, I accidentally stayed at the library later than I had been the previous days so it was already getting dark when I left to make my way back to the house. I’m actually a little surprised about how unafraid I was of making the trip through the woods by myself racing the sundown. Then again, I had a lantern crystal and I’d been assured that the wildlife is almost never dangerous on this part of the island, this close to the Village. And besides, this whole place has such an air of peace about it that it’s hard to get too worried about much of anything (which is its own sort of disconcerting now that I put it that way). But then I found the ruined cathedral.
Not too long after I got on the main road it started raining. That hard, tropical, rain that comes down in sheets, comes back up as mist when it hits the ground, and flows in rivulets off the broad leaves of the trees. Between this weather and the impending dark, it’s little wonder that I took a wrong turn off the road. Instead of going out of the woods to traverse the border between forest and farms, this one took me deeper into the jungle.
By the time the freshly muddy path started sloping uphill I’d realized my mistake, but at that point the rain had only increased in intensity and my indecision on whether to turn back or keep going was tipped by the sight of the path going back to cobblestone just a little further ahead. At this point just wanting out of the storm as soon as possible – for it was indeed fast becoming a storm and not another one of the common showers of the past few days – I chose to gamble on the chance of there being a closer shelter here than backtracking all the way back to the main road and then even further to my own home.
And, in a sense, my gamble paid off. At the top of the hill was what could only be called a cathedral, half devoured by vines and roots and moss. But as I made my way through the partially unhinged doors I soon felt a chill entirely unrelated to my sodden state. Still, it was protected from the growing wind and apart from the spots where the roof had long since fallen in it was relatively dry. After taking a moment to wring what water I could from my clothes and hair I picked my lantern back up to take a look around.
Apart from the drop in temperature that I was increasingly sure wasn’t just me being cold and wet, the first thing that struck me was the sheer scale of the space. It wasn’t so obvious from the outside with the overgrowth, but the central nave alone could have easily held any two or three buildings from the Village. The light of my lantern barely reached across from one side aisle to the other, much less to the far end where, if this were indeed a church, I expected to find an altar. Of the ceiling, it may as well have been a black void, which made the intruding columns of rain all the more eerie in the lamplight.
As I made my way down to the far end from the entrance and passed the rotten and overgrown lumps of what may have once been pews it occurred to me that since my arrival I’d not heard a single reference nor seen the smallest sign of organized religion or faith until now. While the Village had a few larger buildings in a basilica style, I’d gotten the impression that they were for civic rather than religious use, and again while larger than their neighbors were but a pale shade of the crumbling majesty I now found myself surrounded by. My curiosity piqued even further, I hastened my step, now practically oblivious to the pounding of the rain high above, caught up as I was in this new wonder.
I quickly found myself not at an altar or pulpit but at the base of a statue of a figure (man or woman I couldn’t quite tell) seated on a pedestal reading from a book whose spine was longer than my own. Moss had settled into the cracks and folds of their robes, accentuating the underlit shadows from my lantern. Wings sprouted from the figure’s shoulders; not a great hawk-like affair one would find on a depiction of an angel, but small malformed (or perhaps newly formed) things barely the length of the reader’s arms. They seemed rough and sharp compared to the rest of the statue, and if they truly were wings they were either plucked or yet to plume, the only suggestion of feathers being a few jagged points along the underside.
It was as I circled this sculpture, taking it in from all sides and catching a glimpse of a further chamber beyond that I noticed the sound of rain had softened from a torrent to a murmur. And with this lessening of the background noise I could now hear the chanting.
It was soft, but undeniably there. And once I became aware of it, the more I focused the more clearly I could make out the words. Not that it helped me understand what was being said, for the tongue was utterly foreign to me. Yet, while definitely present I could not for the life of me pinpoint where it was coming from. It wasn’t moving, it was just there. Ambient. Everywhere and nowhere at once.
While I can remember precious little about myself or the history of where I came from, I can still remember stories. And I knew enough stories of ghosts and horror to know when to take the rain over the unknown. And so I fled, back out the crooked doors and into the now soft, warm rain at the tail end of storm that had run its course. Down the hill, back to the cobblestones of the main road and successfully this time onto the road and path that leads to my home.
I’m pretty much dry now and, I think, calm enough to sleep. Still, I can’t quite get that place out of my head. I’ll need to go back there at some point. Preferably in the daytime and in better weather.
<==Previous Next==>
#daily writing#serial fiction#original fiction#writing#epistolary novel#writers on tumblr#sliceoflife#original prose#fiction#creative writing#literature#prose#writers#web novel#webnovel#novel#journal#isekai#epistolary#fantasy#slice of life#words#my writing
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Flutter Widget Catalog: An In-Depth Exploration of Flutter Widgets
Flutter, Google's open-source UI toolkit, has gained immense popularity among developers for its cross-platform capabilities and extensive widget library. The widget library is one of the key strengths of Flutter, offering a wide range of ready-to-use components that enable developers to create stunning and interactive user interfaces. In this blog post, we will take a deep dive into the Flutter widget catalog, exploring some of the most commonly used widgets and their functionalities.
What are Flutter Widgets?
Flutter widgets are the building blocks of a Flutter application's user interface. They are reusable UI elements that can be combined and customized to create visually appealing and interactive interfaces. Widgets can be classified into two main categories: Stateless and Stateful widgets.
Stateless Widgets: Stateless widgets are immutable and do not change their appearance based on user interactions or external data. They are ideal for representing static UI components. Some commonly used stateless widgets include Text, Image, Icon, and Button.
Stateful Widgets: Stateful widgets, on the other hand, can change their appearance or behavior based on user interactions or external data. They maintain their state and update their UI whenever the state changes. Examples of stateful widgets include Checkbox, TextField, Slider, and DropdownButton.
Layout Widgets: Layout widgets in Flutter help in organizing and positioning other widgets within the user interface. They provide a way to structure the UI elements in a specific layout pattern. Some popular layout widgets include Row, Column, Stack, Container, and ListView.
Material Design Widgets: Flutter provides a set of widgets that follow the Material Design guidelines, enabling developers to create visually consistent and aesthetically pleasing UIs. These widgets include AppBar, FloatingActionButton, BottomNavigationBar, Card, and Snackbar.
Cupertino Widgets: Cupertino widgets are designed to mimic the iOS-style interface, providing a native look and feel for iOS applications developed using Flutter. They include widgets like CupertinoNavigationBar, CupertinoButton, CupertinoTextField, and CupertinoDatePicker.
Animation and Gesture Widgets: Flutter offers a rich set of animation and gesture widgets that allow developers to create engaging and interactive user experiences. Some notable widgets in this category are AnimatedContainer, Hero, GestureDetector, and DragTarget.
Custom Widgets: In addition to the built-in widgets, Flutter allows developers to create their own custom widgets tailored to their specific needs. Custom widgets provide flexibility and reusability, allowing developers to encapsulate complex UI components into a single widget.
Testing and Debugging Widgets: Flutter provides a range of widgets specifically designed for testing and debugging purposes. These widgets assist in identifying and resolving UI-related issues during development. Widgets like Semantics, TestWidgetsFlutterBinding, and MediaQuery are commonly used for testing and debugging purposes.
Conclusion: In this blog post, we have explored the Flutter widget catalog, highlighting the different types of widgets available and their functionalities. Flutter's extensive widget library empowers developers to create visually stunning and highly interactive user interfaces for their applications. Whether you are building a simple static UI or a complex custom widget, Flutter offers a wide range of tools and components to meet your needs. By leveraging the power of Flutter widgets, developers can save time and effort while delivering top-notch user experiences.
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Libraries and Librarians on Film: You're a Big Boy Now (1966)
This film is notable, not just just because it prominently features a library, but because it features the central research library of OUR library system! It features such NYPL treasures and landmarks as our famous reading room, the Patience and Fortitude lion statues, the Gutenberg Bible, the stacks beneath the library where staff members wear roller skates to get back and forth through the stacks quickly (wait ... what?), and the giant walk-in safe where the library keeps its classic pornography collection (wait ... WHAT???)
Needless to say, there is SOME fictionalizing of our library in this film!
Now, if I was going to discuss this entire film, it would take a LOT of posts, because there are so many topics worth discussing. I could share all of the New York City locations that are frozen in time, like the Automat, the last of the old Penn Station as it was being demolished, the "OLD" Times Square (if you know what I mean), and the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. I could also discuss the intricacies of the plot, like how a young man named Bernard Chanticleer who works for the New York Public Library feels overwhelmed by many things in his life, including his relationship with his parents, his desire for two different women, and the challenge of living in the same building as an aggressive rooster. Or I could talk about how this film is populated by a very strange cast of characters, including, I kid you not, an albino hypnotherapist with a wooden leg!
Okay, but since I'm NOT going to talk about all of that, let's focus on the vintage NYPL stuff, shall we?
No one will be seated during the gripping CARD CATALOG scene!
BTW, if you're wondering (like I was) what books she's looking up and requesting, WE NEVER FIND OUT!!!
Here's Francis Ford Coppola's credit, over a shot of the book elevator. Fun fact: you're only supposed to use this elevator for books, NOT staff members!
Here's our hero Bernard holding his roller skates, listening to his colleague Raef tell him why he shouldn't ride in the book elevator.
This is a cool shot of the interior of the library's main hall. If you come in through the main entrance on 5th Avenue, look up and you'll see these archways.
Ah, yes. THE VAULT. If the head of the library (I.H. Chanticleer, played by Rip Torn) wants you to go in THE VAULT with him, you should run in the other direction.
FYI, this plot point was one of the reasons that NYPL objected to having this movie filmed in this building. From IMDB trivia:
Francis Ford Coppola was desperate to film on location at the New York Public Library but the library refused because of the scene involving classic pornography locked up in a steel vault. However, Mayor John V. Lindsay was eager to promote the city and prevailed on the Library to change it's mind. This is why Lindsay gets a special thanks credit. The vault scene was eventually filmed on a sound stage.
Now, one of the movie's plot points that is technically true is that NYPL does own one of the famous Gutenberg Bibles. They don't leave it out in the open, though, which is probably a good thing ...
Because this makes it easy for Bernard to steal it ...
And run through the reading room ...
... and run outside with it down Fifth Avenue ...
... and this chase scene continues downtown, right through a department store where people apparently didn't realize that they were being filmed! From IMDB trivia:
The chase through the store occurred at the Mays department store on East 14th Street and Union Square. It happened during normal business hours and used hidden cameras.
I hope that you enjoyed this unusual tour through the yesteryear of the New York Public Library, where some ideas worked, but other ideas were sometimes a problem:
FYI, I can't find any evidence that NYPL staff ever used roller skates to get around the stacks. Mr. Coppola said in an interview on TCM that his older brother told him that "... below in the stacks, the young people who get the books are on roller skates. I don't think it was true." HOWEVER, it appears that this urban legend has some layer of truth, because it was reported in The New York Times that this technique was once employed at the NYU library!!!
If you would like to experience You're a Big Boy Now for yourself, you can check it out on DVD from the New York Public Library. It's available to watch through the Internet Archive, and you can also keep your eyes peeled in case TCM shows it again!
ETA: in case you’d like to get the vibe of this movie without watching the whole thing, TCM has a clip of the first several minutes of the movie on its website! Red-hot card catalog action! Walking through the reading room! PNEUMATIC TUBES!!!!! Plus, some amazing music!
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How to watch Disney Plus using a VPN?
Particularly popular for watching audiovisual content across borders, Private Virtual Networks (or VPNs) make it possible to relocate the connection in order to access services that are not yet available in France.
If you're a fan of the Walt Disney Company designs, find out how to bypass geographic restrictions to access the entire catalog using a VPN for Disney Plus .
How to explain the boom of Disney Plus?
In early March, the streaming service reached the 100 million subscriber level, just 18 months after its launch. Available in France since the spring of 2020, the video-on-demand network seems to seduce its audience, in particular with a catalog that is constantly filling up: Disney creations, Marvel films, documentaries, and, more recently, with the Star extension which offers a wide choice of series ...
This success is also explained by the closure of cinemas and screening rooms during the Covid-19 pandemic. Forced to stay at home, Disney Plus subscribers had time to discover or rediscover many films. But one of the main disappointments of users is not being able to access all the content offered by this service due to national limitations ...
Why does the Disney Plus catalog change depending on the country?
Depending on the country of residence, geographic restrictions prevent users from accessing the entire Disney Plus library. This is in part because of the broadcast licenses.
Some contracts are strictly reserved for specific countries and are therefore not visible to all subscribers around the world.
Using a VPN for Disney Plus allows, among other things, to locate your connection virtually in another country. Thus, you bypass geo-restrictions and you can discover the American or Australian Disney Plus library, for example.
A VPN to discover the Australian or American Disney Plus library. © Cottonbro, Pexels
In addition, certain legal restrictions also impact access to new products. In France, the media chronology defines the exploitation of films after their theatrical release until their arrival on the SVoD platform (which can be translated as " Video-on-demand service"). Currently, the waiting period is 36 months but, with the use of VPNs, the game cards are redistributed. It is the opportunity to discover exclusives before the general public in a way!
How to access the entire library?
To consult the range of content offered by Disney Plus, the process is relatively simple.
First step: subscribe to a free or paid VPN. But keep in mind that the free versions are more restrictive and sometimes less secure… On average, paid VPNs cost € 5 per month.
When launching, you will be able to connect to a remote server by choosing its location. This step allows you to change your IP address and make your connection anonymous and untraceable. This practice allows the Disney Plus platform to believe that you live in another country.
Nothing's easier! For example, by virtually connecting to a server located in the United Kingdom, you will have privileged access to the Disney Plus library. It's all the more interesting to see films that are not yet available in France such as Solo: A Star Wars Story which was exclusively reserved for Disney Plus UK users!
Have you all enjoyed the Q/A Disney Plus using a VPN? Post!! Friends, your suggestions are always welcomed. Feel free and drop the message and also comment on the comment section, don’t hesitate to Contact us
Have a good day! See you all soon.
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Libraries are progressing
When most people think about libraries, they tend to imagine outdated gadgets, stiff furniture, dusty smelly books, and an intimidating staff that wants everyone in the building to be quiet at all times.
In reality, libraries have changed from the typical media perception. As these institutions are including more digital services for patrons to enjoy and creating more activities to incentivize people to visit and hang out in the communal spaces, libraries are "no longer silent" places.
"Libraries provide valuable services for residents of all ages, incomes, and ethnic backgrounds," Johnnie Sue Saylor Hawley states in her article for East Tennessee State University ("Introduction," p. 10).
Prior to her current role as an elementary school librarian, Hawley taught English to elementary and middle school students for 8 years. She earned her "master's degree in Educational Media and School Library Services" ("Statement of Research Bias and Limitations," 13). She claims that libraries "have evolved and adapted to the current technology-rich needs of their patrons" ("Statement of the Problem," p. 11).
For her research in determining "how community and school library services are evolving," Hawley chose to investigate her local community's usage of their public and school libraries in Johnson City, Tennessee ("Statement of the Problem," p. 11).
Library Services in the Past
"[Libraries] were rare and expensive [in the 1730s, thus] Americans had little or no access to books . . . [By the 1930s] the role of the library was a warehouse of books where patrons could choose and borrow a book, and based on the honor system, were expected to return the item before selecting a new one." ("Past: Origin to 2000 AD," p. 16, 17-18)
Books are the main characteristic of a library. They "cover virtually all topics, both fact and fiction" ("Sources Available in Libraries," 22). Libraries also provide other forms of printed material such as magazines, newspapers, and reference materials.
According to Hawley, libraries used to offer patrons a physical collection of items, known as a vertical file, "that contained ... copies of images collected for patrons to ... view places, people, and items ... they had no previous knowledge [of]" ("Sources Available in Libraries," 24)
Card catalogues were a crucial part of libraries, too. These index cards contained "a list of materials" and detailed "where each item [was] located" for the convivence of library staff and patrons ("Sources Available in Libraries," 24).
As expected, this catalogue process was tedious.
Library Services in the Present
"While [disagreements exist] . . . there are four recognized types of libraries: academic, public, school, and special. Each offers some similar resources, programs, and services, but each has unique offerings and specified patrons . . . academic libraries serve colleges and universities, public libraries serve communities, school libraries serve a specific school, and special libraries are created for specific entities such as corporations, hospitals, or even private businesses." ("Current: 2000 to 2015 AD," pg. 19)
Like books, the internet has become an important part of libraries. Hawley states that access to the internet allows "patrons the ability to [receive] information and quickly [find links] to related information" ("Sources Available in Libraries," 23). But, she believes that people have to be aware of how to use the internet "not all [the available] information is reviewed before posted on the web" ("Sources Available in Libraries," 23).
With frequent public use of the internet, online catalogs have been implemented in libraries, removing the need for card catalogues as "this electronic database has made searching for items easier for the majority of patrons" and staff alike ("Sources Available in Libraries," 25).
At my library, there are four computers stationed throughout the building that only display our county's library catalog. Not only do these computers grant patrons the independence to search for their own materials, but it allows staff on the floor to quickly research an item or it's location when we are stopped by a patron.
Library Services in the Future
"Libraries have the luxury of time to reinvent themselves . . Librarians have realized that their role is more about connecting learners and helping them construct knowledge rather than simply house sources . . . the library would be a louder place full of people working, talking, and learning where there are no preconceptions of physical barriers and where curiosity is encouraged." ("Projected Future...," p. 28, 29, 30)
In the section of Hawley's projections for future library services, she details libraries utilizing their available spaces in the building, access to video games, new technologies, 3D printers, e-books, introductions of learning centers and makerspaces, and a new library classification system.
Hawley wrote her article in 2016, and it is fascinating that her future ideas are commonplace in libraries today.
Some libraries have video games that can be checked-out, but my library does not. Instead, we have multiple consoles available for patrons to use during open hours. We also have a 3D printer that is used often (especially when it's not overheating). There are several areas in our library that are meant for prolong time such as a kid's playroom, a teen hang-out spot, study rooms, and several tables and private desks for people to hang out or work.
My library still relies on the Dewey Decimal System, but there are several libraries that are transitioning to genre-based classifications as this allows patrons easier browsing for books they might enjoy.
Hawley mentions a several perspectives on the removal of the Dewey Decimal System, and she agrees that "they key factor [should] always be the patron" ("New Organization...," 41).
"Libraries cannot only become a resource for ... new technologies but also must be the ones to help the public learn how to best use these devices" ("Makerspaces," p. 32).
Source: Johnnie Sue Saylor Hawley in "The Evolution of the Library Media Center: A Study of the Past, Current, and Projected Future of Library Services Available in Johnson City, Tennessee."
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Text
ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT
WORLD
J. G. Landels
University of Reading
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
This revised edition first published 2000
First published 1978. First paperback printing 1981
Copyright © J. G. Landels 1978; 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by an means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-52030
ISBN 0-520-22782-4
0908 07 06 05 0403 02 01 00
l0987654321
Printed and bound in the EU
Contents
1.
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
9
Man-power
9
Animal power
13
Water power
16
Wind power
26
Steam power
28
2.
WATER SUPPLIES AND ENGINEERING
34
Appendix -
The sizes of measurement nozzles,
and
Frontinus'
arithmetic.
53
3.
WATER PUMPS
58
4.
CRANES AND HOISTS
84
5.
CATAPULTS
99
6.
SHIPS AND SEA TRANSPORT
133
Appendix-Methodsof estimating the
maximum
speeds of oared vessels
166
7.
LAND TRANSPORT
170
THE PROGRESS OF THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE186
THE PRINCIPAL GREEK AND ROMAN WRITERS
ON TECHNOLOGICAL SUBJECTS
199
Hero of Alexandria
199
Vitruvius
208
Frontinus
211
Pliny
215
APPENDIX: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A TRIREME
219
SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS
225
BIBLIOGRAPHY
229
INDEX 233
Preface to the second edition
THE purpose of this book is to discuss and illustrate a number of technological achievements in the Greek and Roman world. Twenty years ago most of the information on these topics was con-tained (if anywhere at all) in a number of highly specialized stud-ies, not all of them easily accessible, and few of them written by classical scholars. What I attempted to do was 'to give the reader (whether a student of classical civilization or a layman interested in the history of engineering) some insight into the mechanical skills of the two most fascinating civilizations of ancient Europe'. In the twenty years since the publication of the first edition there
has been a considerable upsurge of interest in ancient technol-
ogy, and a number of major works have been published, includ-
ing an important source-book. It has been fully recognized that
arguments based on technical constraints which remain today
exactly as they were two thousand years ago can be useful in solv-
ing some historical problems-an approach which was pioneered by the late Professor J.E.Gordon. There have, accordingly, been a number of projects carried out, some of them involving a fruitful collaboration between classicists, technologists and archaeologists ( in whichever order of priority the reader considers appropriate). It is no longer justifiable therefore to complain, as I did in the preface to the first edition, that 'in most standard histories, the archaeological evidence is treated in a descriptive way, and very little attempt is made to envisage mechanical contrivances in action', or that 'the written sources are not always examined in detail, and the Greek and Latin terminology is not usually ana-lysed.'
The main text of the first edition has been reprinted without change. The translations of passages quoted from Latin and Greek authors were all my own; other versions may be superior in liter-ary merit, but even the most eminent translators can sometimes make extraordinary mistakes on technical matters, such as the
8 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
techniques of boat-building used by Odysseus in OdysseyV. Two sections have been added at the end-an appendix (pp. 219-24) on the reconstruction of the trireme which was completed in 1987, and a section containing some further thoughts, mostly on mat-ters to which my attention was drawn by reviewers and correspond-ents. Also the bibliography has been expanded and updated, so far as time and space have allowed.
In writing the first edition I was helped by a number of scholars in various disciplines, and here I must acknowledge once more my indebtedness to Professor J.E. Gordon, who died in 1998. He allowed me to see his notes on a course of lectures on the history of naval architecture (the graph on p. 167 was reproduced with his kind permission), and gave much helpful advice on the engi-neering problems of catapults. I also received much useful infor-mation on archaeological finds from Dr (now Professor) Michael Fulford.
More recently, Dr Michael Lewis has given valuable help with bibliographical references, and Mr Digby Stevenson has kept me informed of his researches on catapult spring materials. But my most important debt is to Dr Boris Rankov, who has been most helpful in giving prompt and expert answers to my questions on rowing matters, and has kindly allowed me to see a draft of his chapter on the sea trials of Olympiaswhich is due to appear early in 2000 in a new edition of Morrison and Coates' The Athenian Trireme (CUP).
Twenty years later, I have once again to thank my wife Jocelyn for her help and encouragement.
Reading, September 1999 J.G. Landels
1
Power and energysources
THE sources of power available in classical antiquity were severely limited by comparison with those of the present day. Virtually all work was done by man-power or animal power, and the kind of constraint which this imposed may be seen from a simple illustra-tion. One gallon of petrol may seem very expensive nowadays, but if used in an ordinary engine of average efficiency it will do the equivalent work of about 90 men, or of nine horses of the smallish size used in the ancient world, for one hour. Water power was used for pumping and industrial purposes, but probably not much before the first century B.c. The theoretical possibilities of steam power, hot air expansion and windmills were known, but appar-ently never exploited except on a very small scale, and not in use-ful or practical applications.
MAN-POWER
The most common mode of employing man-power was in the handling an<l porterage of small burdens of the order of 20-80lb (9-36kg). This is discussed in detail in Chapter 7, and all that needs to be done here is to note a very important limitation, which should be quite obvious, but is all too often forgotten. If a burden requires more than one man to handle it, its size and shape must be such as to allow the necessary number of men to stand close enough and get a grip on it. For example, in the fifth century B.c. the columns of Greek temples were built up from a number of sections, called 'column drums'; these might be anything up to 6ft 6in (2m) in diameter. The only possible place to grip such a lump of stone is around the lower edge, and it would be very difficult for more than 18 men to get into position to grip it at once. It follows, therefore, that if its total weight was more than about a ton (as it often was), they would be unable to lift it up off the ground, let alone move it, turn it round or position it on a column. They might just be able to roll it along level ground on its edge, but that
10 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
would be all. When, therefore, people say 'of course they had thou-sands of slaves to do the building for them', two facts should be remembered. Though the Pharaohs in Egypt may have had vast resources of manpower, Greek and Roman building contractors rarely had more than a small labour force, and in any case, no matter how many they may have assembled for the more ambitious projects, they could never have man-handled the larger stones used in classical buildings. Either one of the lifting devices described in Chapter 4 must have been employed or else the very slow and extravagant method of building a ramp, and dragging the stones up the slope on rollers.
There were two important mechanical devices for harnessing man-power. One was the capstan or windlass, particularly useful on cranes or aboard ship. The power could be transmitted over a distance by ropes, its direction could be changed by pulleys, and the force could be multiplied by block-and-tackle arrangements.
The windlass itself has a built-in mechanical advantage. It was also found to be ideal where traction was required, of low power but finely and accurately controlled. Two medical uses illustrate this.
One was the so-called 'bench of Hippocrates'-a plinth with a windlass at each end to provide the extension needed for reduc-ing fractures and dislocations of the arms and legs. The other was
a device apparently used by some gynaecologists-a small capstan mounted below a 'midwifery stool', used for extracting a foetus from the uterus.*
It is generally agreed that the Greeks and Romans did not, apparently, discover or use the crank in place of the handspikes on a windlass. Hero of Alexandria speaks of something called a 'handholder' (cheirolabe) for turning axles. This might have been a crank, but there is no proof that it was. There was at least one situation in which the main advantage of the crank could have been exploited, and where its disadvantage would not have been
noticed-the repeater catapult. Since it was not used on that weapon, it seems almost certain that it was not known to the designers.
How serious a drawback was the lack of this device? The answer
seems to be-rather less than is sometimes suggested. The only real advantage of using a crank is speed. A single grip (firm, but loose enough to allow the handle to turn in the palms of the hands)
*Hippocrates, On joints chapter 72: Soranus, Gynaeceia XXI, 68.
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
11
can be maintained all the time, whereas with handspikes the grip has to be changed, usually four times per revolution. But in situa-tions where speed is less important, the crank has a positive disad-vantage. The force which can be applied to it varies according to its position in relation to the operator, reaching a minimum twice during each revolution when the handle crosses a line drawn through the operator's shoulders and the axis of the crank, and a maximum when it is roughly at right-angles to that line. This is why a car starting-handle used to be be so arranged that the points at which most force is needed to turn it occurred when the han-dle was at 'two o'clock' and 'eighto'clock'. Thisimposesaserious limitation on the crank. When it is under continuous loading (e.g. on a crane when the load is raised, or a well-head when the bucket is full), the reverse thrust applied to the crank handle by the load must never exceed the minimum applied by the operator at the two weakest points of the cycle. If it does, the handle will fly back-wards, and once it has started swinging round the load may acquire momentum and make the handle impossible to stop. To avoid this danger, most modern cranked winches are fitted with a ratchet. Such a device, dating from the late fifth century B.c., was found near some naval installations at Sunium, and may have been used on a winch for hauling ships up slipways.
The implications for ancient devices worked by handspikes are clear enough. For cranes or hoists of any kind the use of a crank would have lowered the handling capacity by some 20-30%, and it seems rather improbable that a slight increase of speed would justify that sacrifice. On the repeater catapult the slider was fitted with pawls and a ratchet, and would only fly forward a short dis-tance if the tension on the draw-back cord were relaxed. It would therefore have been reasonably safe to use a crank on the capstan at the rear of the machine and thereby speed up the loading
operation-a particularly important benefit, for that particular weapon.
The other mechanical device was the treadmill-a pair of verti-cal wheels with treads (like those of a step-ladder) between them. It has become very difficult nowadays to talk, or even to think about this apparatus unemotionally, and in purely engineering terms, but in fact, if well designed, it can be one of the most effi-cient devices for this purpose, and the most comfortable for the
operator-in so far as any continuous, monotonous physical work
12 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
can be comfortable. The basic action is not unlike that of pedalling a bicycle, and it is significant that recent attempts to reach the absolute limits of the human body's capabilities, in the develop-ment of man-powered flight, have mostly used that arrangement.
The difference is that a cyclist pulls on the handlebars, and uses the abdominal muscles as well as the leg muscles; the treadmill operator uses the reaction from lifting his body weight, mainly with the leg muscles.
A very useful feature of the treadmill, especially when used on a crane, is that the torque, which determines the pull on the hoist-ing-cable, can be easily and accurately adjusted by the operator shifting his position on the wheel. The maximum torque is obtained when the operator treads the wheel at a point on a level with the axle ( this can only be done from the outside). If he treads above that point (outside) or below it (inside) the torque is less, and if he stands directly above or below the axle it is zero. Thus the amount of torque required between the maximum and zero, can be obtained by moving forwards or backwards.
This may possibly afford an explanation of a rather mysterious length of wood with notches along one side, found near the Roman water pumps in the Rio Tinto mines. When these pumps (which themselves acted as treadmills) were being used in a series, it would be very important to keep the output of each of them constant, and consistently the same as that of the pumps above and below --otherwise the sumps would either empty or overflow. If this piece of wood was one of two beams supporting a movable handrail, the necessary adjustments for men of different weights working the same pumps at different times could be made by shifting the rail along one or two notches, forwards to reduce output or backwards to increase it.
A second valuable feature of the man-powered treadmill is its mobility. The crane shown on the monument of the Haterii (p. 84) could presumably have been dismantled, and its jib laid horizon-tally on one or more carts, while the treadmill itself could have been rolled along any reasonably level road (that was also one method used for transporting column-drums). There was, in fact, no other suitable power source available. Wind power is hope-lessly unreliable, and a builder would be extremely lucky to have water power available on the site at all, let alone near enough to any particular building. A glance at the later history of cranes shows
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
13
that the treadmill continued to serve this need right through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and that the first alternative to be made effectively mobile was steam, as used on railway breakdown cranes. Indeed, the problem is still with us. Owing to difficulties of gearing and transmission the internal combustion engine is not very suitable for large cranes, and the cost of laying supply cables makes it uneconomical to use electricity for anything less than a large and lengthy building project.
The Greeks and Romans also used manpower for the propul-sion of virtually all fighting ships. Merchant ships, except for quite small ones, were normally under sail. Warships used sails on long voyages, or while cruising on patrol, but in battle conditions, or during a battle alert, they usually left mast, yard and mainsail ashore, to cut down weight to the absolute minimum, and relied entirely on rowers.
ANIMAL POWER
From remote antiquity there has been a contrast between the work-ing animals used in the Mediterranean area and those used in northern Europe. The predominance of the horse in northern Europe, closely related to climatic and ecological factors, could never have occurred in classical Greece, and did not affect Roman practice to any great extent except in so far as Roman armies came into contact with the peoples of France, Germany and central Europe. The situation in classical Greece is summed up both accurately and poetically by Aeschylus in a passage of his Prometheus Bound. The hero, describing his services to mankind, says (lines 462-6)
'And I was the first to link oxen beneath the yoke
With yoke-straps, to be man's slaves, and with their bodies' strength
Give him relieffrom the heaviest of his toil;
And to the chariot-pole I brought
Horses that love the guiding reins,
Delight and pride of massive wealth and luxury'.
The slowness and ugliness of oxen (a generic word, meaning 'great knobbly beasties' is used in the Greek original) is contrasted with the speed and elegance of horses. The assertion in the last line, that horses were expensive to buy and maintain, is borne out by
14 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
the fact that several words denoting social and economic status in classical Greece were connected with horses. The word hippeus, referring to a particular income-group, originally meant a man wealthy enough to own his own horse and (in wartime) to fight in the cavalry of the citizen army. In Athens the next lower property-classification was zeugi,tes, meaning a man who owned a pair of oxen. The historian Herodotus, wishing to stress the great wealth of a particular family, calls them tethrippotrophon-able to maintain a four-horse racing chariot (for entry at the races during the great games at Olympia, Delphi and elsewhere). The 'conspicuous con-sumption' of such a family must have made a deep impression.
By contrast, a pair of oxen could be fed much more cheaply, on inferi-Jr fodder of a kind available in areas of Greece and Italy where the paJture was not adequate to support horses. They yielded a rt turn on the owner's investment; they could pull a heavier load than two horses of comparable size. Their progress was slower, but then speed was not the most important considera-tion in ancient farming or transport. Farm animals had to be fed all the time, whether in use or not; a transport contractor would naturally want to complete each job as soon as possible to be ready for the next. But to use horses to speed up his operations would have been quite impractical. And finally-an important point for people living close to subsistence level-when their working life was over, oxen could serve as food. The meat would be tough as old boot, no doubt, and would need a long spell in the stewpot, but it would be better than nothing. The Greeks and Romans, for reasons not clearly defined but presumably religious, did not as a rule eat horsemeat.
The one advantage that the horse had over the ox was speed, and it was precisely in those situations where speed outweighed
everything else that the horse was used-in warfare and in chariot-racing. The high mobility of the cavalry gave that arm its particular role in battle tactics, and on the race-course a chariot, made as light as possible, and drawn by a matched team of two or four horses, represented the ultimate in speed to the Greeks from the eighth century B.c. onwards, and to the Romans after them.
Oxen, then, propelled the heavy lorries of the ancient world, and highly-bred horses its Aston Martins and its Lamborghinis. Between these extremes of utility and luxury came the small travelling vehicle for passengers or light merchandise, drawn by
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
15
donkeys or mules. These animals could move rather faster than oxen, but not as fast as horses. They cost a little more to feed (in proportion to their weight and pulling capacity) than oxen, but only about 60-70% of the cost of horses.
The use of animals in transport, and the problems connected with harness, are discussed in Chapter 7. Apart from transport, the use of animal power was rare. In mining operations it seems to have been almost negligible, for obvious practical reasons. Unless there was access via horizontal tunnels ('adits'), it would be very difficult indeed to get animals into or out of a mine, and ancient workings did not normally include entrance edits or any galleries or spaces in which animals could be kept, fed and housed underground. The haulage of ores and spoil seems to have been done exclusively by man-power, using buckets on ropes, and it was extracted via the nearest shaft, not taken along any great distance underground.
Until about the first century s.c. animals were not used in mill-ing. The only type of mill which can be operated by a horse or donkey is a rotary mill, and that invention did hot come into the classical Greek world at all. The so-called Pompeian mill, with a fixed lower stone of conical shape, and a rotating upper stone shaped like an hour-glass was quite certainly designed to be turned by animal power, despite the fact that the space available in some of the buildings for the animals to walk round seems very limited indeed. The earlier 'pushing' type of mill, in which a grinding stone is pushed back and forth over a trough, must have depended on human effort. Such work was sometimes imposed on slaves as a punishment, but at all times it had to be done by someone, and as a punishment it was probably not much more severe than the 'spud-bashing' to which army offenders used to be subjected-a tedious, irksome job which nobody would do from choice. Some illustrations of rotary mills being turned by horses give a highly idealized picture of noble steeds striding around; in real life, the oldest and most broken-down horses and donkeys were put to this kind of work-the last stage on the road to the knacker's yard.
Finally, there is a bizarre invention described in a Latin work written in the latter half of the fourth century A.D., but almost certainly never constructed. The author's name is not known, and the work is usually referred to as Anonymus De Relms Bellicis. Oxen are used to propel a ship (Fig. 1). They walk around in pairs, at opposite ends of a capstan-pole on a vertical axle. Through a
16 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
gearing system (not described, but clearly a crown wheel and pinion, as used in water-mills) this axle drives a horizontal one
athwart the ship, with a paddle wheel on each end-the descrip-tion of the paddles has some verbal resemblances to Vitruvius' description of an undershot water wheel (X, 5, 1.) We are not told whether the paddle-wheel shaft was higher or lower than the platform on which the oxen walked, but since they were 'in the
Fig. l. Oxen used to propel a ship.
hold of the ship', it seems more likely to have been the former. The total number of oxen is not specified, except that there was more than one pair. Though there is no theoretical reason why this should not work, the whole idea does not sound very practi-cal. The space needed for the oxen to move around would be
considerable-a circle of 10ft (3m) diameter at the very least. If we assume three capstans, the ship would require a beam of about 13ft (4m) and a length overall of at least 43ft (13m), and at 'six oxpower' such a vessel would be rather under-engined. Commu-nication between the 'bridge' and the 'engine-room' might also be a trifle difficult.
WATER POWER
Early Greek poetry contains striking passages in which the destruc-tive force of rushing water is used as a piece of telling imagery, but the problems of harnessing such power and using it to drive machin-
POWER AND ENERGYSOURCES
17
ery were apparently not explored until the early part of the first century B.C. According to the geographer Strabo (XII, 3, 40) a water-mill was built in the kingdom of Mithridates, at Kabeira in the Pontus (near the modern Niksar, N. central Turkey) in the first century B.C., some time before the earliest in Greece or Italy. There may be a simple explanation for this. The basic require-ment for a water-wheel is a water supply which is steady all the year round, and, if it is to be anything more than a toy, the quantity of water needed is quite large. Mithridates' city was close to a sub-stantial river, the Lycus (modern Kelkit) which, though the local rainfall is no greater than that of Greece or Italy, has a large catch-ment area. Relatively few of the rivers and streams of Greece and Italy (except in the north) maintain a substantial rate of flow dur-ing the dry season. However, the effect of this geographical fact on the history of the water-wheel should not be exaggerated. Once the basic idea has been put into practice, the conservation and management of limited or fluctuating water supplies follows soon afterwards.
Our knowledge of Greek and Roman attempts to harness water power rests on rather meagre evidence. Among the literary sources, Vitruvius (late first century B.c.) is much the most im-portant, and he gives a clear description of an undershot wheel, which is discussed below. Two other allusions are important for the question of dating. A Greek epigram in the Palatine Anthol-ogy (IX, 418) speaks of the joyful release from drudgery which a water-mill has brought to the women servants who previously had to grind by hand. Its author was almost certainly Antipater of Thessalonika, who was closely associated with a Roman noble family, the Pisones. He lived and worked in Italy at the end of the first century B.c., and is probably referring to the installation of such a mill on a country estate. His poem would be contem-porary with Vitruvius' work, but there is one interesting differ-ence between the two. Antipater speaks of the Nymphs (which personify the water) as 'leaping down onto the topmost part of the wheel'. Though this has been disputed, there is really little doubt that he is talking about an overshot wheel-a more effi-cient type than Vitruvius' -and this raises a question of priority, which will be discussed later.
Closely related to this is an allusion in Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe,where the poet is speaking about the move-
18 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
ment of the heavenly bodies (V, 509-33, particularly 515-6). It is a difficult and obscure passage, but the gist is that one explanation of the apparent diurnal rotation of the heavens is that a current of air circulates around the universe, causing the 'sphere' to rotate 'as we see rivers turning wheels and buckets (rotasatque haustra) '. Since Lucretius uses this as an illustration, he clearly assumes that water-wheels are familiar to his readers, and as he was writing some 40 years earlier than Vitruvius and Antipater, this suggests that
the use of water power to work pumps (bucket-wheels or bucket-chains, see Chapter 3) came earlier than its use for mill-ing.
Other literary allusions add little or nothing to this. The arch-aeological evidence is equally scarce, but very informative. Two
important wheel sites have been excavated-one in the Agora at Athens, to the south of where the restored Stoa of Attalus now stands, dating from mid or late fifth century A.O. The other is at Barbegal, near Arles in southern France ijust north of the Ca-margue). A very big installation was built there by the Romans in the late third or early fourth century, and was probably in use for the greater part of 100 years. It contained eight pairs of wheels, each driving millstones in a mill-chamber beside the wheel-pit, and its output would have been adequate not only for the 10,000 inhabitants of Arles, but for some area around. The presence of a Roman garrison might account for this. The remains are not very extensive, but the main essentials can be reconstructed from them. Evidence of an undershot wheel ( in the form of chalk incrusta-tion, the wood having all disappeared) has been found at Venafrum in central Italy, and a speculative reconstruction can be seen in the technology section of the Naples Museum.
There are three basic types of water-wheel-the vertical-shaft, the undershot and the overshot. The vertical-shaft wheel has a number of blades inclined at an angle of about 30° to the vertical, fixed to a hub near the bottom of the shaft. The water is directed onto the blades through a wooden trough which slopes down at a steep angle, so that the water strikes them at high speed. This requires a situation where there is a drop of some 10-12 ft (3m) immediately beside the water source. Sometimes a pit can be dug for this purpose, but adequate arrangements have to be made for the spent water to drain away from it. Since the shaft is vertical, it can be made to tum millstones directly, without any need for gears.
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
19
In the absence of any conclusive evidence, some historians of the subject have used the following argument: This is the 'most primitive' form of water-wheel, so, since the Romans developed the more sophisticated undershot and overshot wheels (for which we have good evidence), we must assume that they started with the vertical-shaft type. The parallel between this supposed sequence and that attested for Renaissance Europe is also invoked in sup-port. This a prioriargument is attractive, but it does rest on two doubtful assumptions (a) that milling was the first operation for
which water power was used-and the passage from Lucretius
quoted above makes this very doubtful-and (b) that gearing of some sort had not been previously invented for other purposes, such as coupling animals to a water-pump. Archaeological evidence (or rather, the lack of it) does not help to decide the question. No certainly identifiable Greek or Roman remains of this type of wheel have been found, but the entire structure, including all the water-guidance system, would have been made of perishable material. By contrast, the overshot wheel required a stone-built wheel-pit, which has good chances of survival, and can be identi-fied as such.
The second basic type of wheel is the undershot, sometimes called 'Vitruvian' from that author's description (X, 5). It is highly significant, and consistent with the evidence from Lucretius, that he first introduces the water-wheel as a power source for working a bucket-chain, and then says, 'It is also used for corn milling, the design being the same except that there is a gear-wheel on one end of the axle ... ' He makes no mention of the vertical-shaft wheel. The structure he describes is very simple (Fig. 2). It consists of a spoked wheel of unspecified diameter, with vanes or paddles around its circumference (Vitruvius calls them pinnae, a word used elsewhere to mean the wing-feathers of a bird), which are driven round by the current in the river. There is nothing in his words to suggest that a mill-leat was channelled off for the purpose.
The third and most efficient type of wheel is the overshot (Fig.
3). Using the same kind of argument as with the vertical-shaft wheel, it is usually held that this was developed from the under-shot wheel, the intermediate stage in this process being the so-called 'breast-shot' wheel, which is a simple modification of the under-shot, the water being supplied through a trough level with the
20 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
- :.-
-
--:.-
--➔
-=-
-
~~=
-
-----~
----
Fig. 2. Undershot water-wheel.
Fig. 3. Overshot water-wheel.
axle, so that the main force on the paddles is from the water falling, not merely flowing past. But there is another equally attractive hypothesis--that the overshot wheel was conceived independently of any other type, by simply reversing the action of the bucket-wheel. If one can put power into that machine and get water out
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
21
of the top, why not put water into the top and get power out of it? In fact, this possibility would be clearly demonstrated each time somebody finished a spell of work treading a bucket-wheel. It would have to be slowly reversed until all its buckets were emptied, and the pull it exerted during that operation would be clearly felt. The bucket-wheel was certainly in use by Vitruvius' time, perhaps for some while before, and though he does not describe an over-shot wheel, that might be due to the fact that the undershot type was the only one he had seen.
The question of priority, then, is not easy to answer; but in power output and efficiency the overshot wheel is well ahead. The struc-ture required for an undershot wheel is simply a vertical wall be-side a river or stream,* and, if the water supply is limited, some sort of partial dam to narrow the channel and make it flow more rapidly in the region of the wheel. The potential power output depends on two factors-the velocity of the water flow and the areaofthevaneson which the water impinges (the 'scanned area').
To take a simple example. If the area of each vane is l,000cm 2 (just over 1 sq ft) we may assume that roughly this area is being scanned at any one time. (The exact figure depends on the number of vanes, the diameter of the wheel, and other factors, but this will do as a crude approximation.) If the water flows past at about 150 cm/see (5ft/sec) the theoretical power available is about¼ h.p. (186 watts), but as the undershot wheel can only be made about 22% efficient at the best, this would provide a real power of only about -loh. p., or half the power output of a man working a tread-mill. If the water flows twice as fast, the power is increased eight times and things look better. The theoretical power available is nearly 2 h.p., and the actual output might be about 0.4 h.p.-the equivalent of four men. On the other hand, the water supply for such a performance could not be obtained from anything less than a small river, with a flow of (say) 125 gall/sec, which might be around 12ft wide (3.5m) and 4in (10cm) average depth in cross-section.
The overshot wheel can be made much more efficient-up to 65% or even 70%. Provided that the wheel revolves fast enough, and the boxes are large enough to catch all the water as it comes from the launder, most of the potential energy in the water can be
*For an example, see the Byzantine mosaic in the Palace of the Emperors, illustrated in Antiquity XIII (1939) pp. 354-6 and Plate VII.
22 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
utilized. This potential energy can be worked out quite simply from the rate of the water flow, and the depth of fall which, as a rough approximation, may be taken as equal to the diameter of the wheel. The lesser rate of flow given in the last paragraph (31 gall or 140l/sec), if delivered to an overshot wheel of 7ft (2.13 m) in diameter, would give a theoretical power output of just under 4 h.p. (nearly 3000 watts), and an actual output of perhaps 2-2½ h. p. The power of each of the sixteen wheels at Barbegal might have been of this order. For a modern (and slightly depressing) comparison, a very small motor-cycle engine devel-ops about the same power.
Overshot and undershot wheels may usefully be compared in
two other respects-behaviour under extra load and cost of con-struction. They behave in opposite ways under extra load. Since an undershot wheel is absorbing kinetic energy from the moving water, its torque depends on the difference between the velocity of the water on arrival and the speed of the paddles. To put it very simply, it generates power by slowing the water down. There-fore, if extra loading is put on the wheel (e.g. by using bigger millstones or putting bigger buckets on a chain) it will turn more slowly, but will develop more torque. Conversely, the overshot wheel has a minimum working speed, below which the water begins to overflow the boxes and spill into the pit, reducing the power output and efficiency. These factors must be taken into account when designing the wheel and the gearing, which will be dis-cussed later.
In point of cost, the undershot wheel has the great advantage that no pit is needed, that any riverside situation can be used ( this may reduce transport costs, which were high) and no engineering is required to raise the water to the necessary height. This has to be done for an overshot wheel, and may be very expensive. If the gradient of the river bed is slight, it may be necessary to build an artificial channel 200--300yards long, support it above ground level and make it waterproof. The cost of constructing the aqueduct to feed the Barbegal system must have been very considerable. The efficiency of the undershot wheel is much less, but this need not have worried the ancient engineers all that much. Where fuel is expensive (as in the modern petrol engine) efficiency is the first essential, and must be achieved at almost any cost, but where the energy source is running water, and 'costs nothing', the only
POWER AND ENERGYSOURCES
23
requirement of a wheel is that it should deliver enough power to do the work. If the choice lay between an undershot wheel which would just about turn the millstones and an overshot one which would turn them faster, but would cost four or five times as much, and might have to be built some miles away, the undershot would be preferred. Where the water supply was too small for anything less efficient than the overshot, there was no choice. This was prob-ably the case in the Athenian Agora
Revolvingstont
Fig. 4. Water-mill gears with toothed wheels.
It is not difficult to see, from Vitruvius' clear description and from the evidence of the Agora mill, how the water-wheel, turning on a horizontal axle, was coupled to the upper millstone on a vertical axle (Fig. 4.) 'A toothed disc (dentatum) is keyed on to the end of the axle, and turns in a vertical plane, at the same speed as the wheel.' (The odd phrase in cultrum, which has not been satisfactorily explained, is omitted from this translation.)
'Close to this disc is another larger one, toothed in the same way ( item dentatum) and horizontally placed, with which it engages
24 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
(continetur). 'Vitruvius is clearly talking about two crown wheels. We use the word 'toothed' more loosely, of a flat cog-wheel with radial teeth, but if one thinks of an animal skull, with curving jawbone and teeth at right angles to the 'rim', it will be seen that Vitruvius' usage is really more exact. Marks made by the rim of the vertical gear-wheel on the edge of the gear-pit in the Athenian Agora mill confirm that the teeth were not radial. Vitruvius' ex-pression 'toothed in the same way' (item dentatum) suggests that the so-called lantern pinion (Fig. 5) with two discs was not
Fig. 5. Water mill gears with toothed wheel and lantern pinion.
known to him; a Roman wood-and-metal pinion of this type has been found in Germany* but what part it played in mill machinery (if any) has not been satisfactorily explained. Doubt has been cast on Vitruvius' statement that the horizontal gear-wheel ( coupled to the millstones) was larger than the vertical one on the wheel-shaft, since this would mean that the millstone was geared down, and turned more slowly than the water-wheel. Some schol-ars have arbitrarily changed the text (from maius to minus) to avoid this problem. It is true that later European mills had the opposite arrangement, the millstones being geared up by as much as 2½:l, but these were big, powerful overshot wheels, and the type which
*Illustrated in L. A. Moritz, Grain-mills and Flaur in Classical Antiquity
(OUP 1958) Plate 14(c).
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
25
Vitruvius describes might not have developed enough power even for a 1 :1 gear ratio. The consequences are not nearly so disastrous as some historians suggest. The miller simply worked more slowly,
and estimates of flour production should take this into account.
Water-wheels were clearly used for water-raising and for mill-ing. We might expect some other applications, but the only evi-dence we have is a brief and tantalizing allusion in Ausonius' poem on the River Moselle, written about the middle of the fourth cen-tury A.D. Speaking of the River Erubius (the Ruwar) he says:
'He, turning the millstones with rapid, whirling motion,
And drawing the screeching saws through smooth white stone, Listens to an endless uproar from each of his banks' (362-4)
Ausonius' style is not exactly straightforward, and it is difficult to be sure exactly what he means, but he certainly seems to be saying that water-wheels were used to drive saws for cutting stone. The noise was incessant because the power-driven saws, unlike those in an ordinary mason's yard, did not stop for a breather every few minutes. Pliny (Nat. Hist. 36, 159) mentions stone from this area and from others which 'can be cut with a saw of the kind they use for cutting wood-even more easily than wood, so they say'. It was used for roof and gutter tiles, and was almost certainly some form of soapstone.
But how did the river 'draw' the saws through stone? Trahere would be a strange word to use (even for Ausonius) of a circular saw, though that was perhaps known in antiquity. Did the wheel have a cam and lever, or a crank and connecting-rod to push the saw back and forth? In the absence of any evidence for either we can only guess, and regret all the more that no technical writings have survived from that area or from that period.
Mention was made at the beginning of this section of the de-structive power of a river in spate. Though this power itself was not put to useful purpose, some Roman mining installations in Spain, by 'imitating nature', achieved a great saving of manpower and time. Large reservoirs, known as 'hushing tanks', were con-structed on the hillsides above the workings, with sluices at one end which could be rapidly opened. When the tanks were filled ( in some cases via a fairly long aqueduct) the sluices were released, and a great wave of water rushed over the workings, carrying away
26 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
with it large quantities of spoil. The same water supply, regulated down to a steady trickle, could also be used for washing ores.
WIND POWER
Although the Greeks and Romans harnessed and used wind power for sailing ships, they do not appear to have developed the rotary windmill as a power source. This is strange, and no satisfactory reason has yet been offered. They were perfectly well aware that by adjusting the set of the sail a boat could be made to travel at an angle to the direction of the wind, and a very slight development of this idea could have led to the type of sail-mill to be seen nowadays on Mykonos and in Crete. But we have no evidence for any such machine in classical antiquity. The one and only mention of harnessing windpower is in the Pneumatica of Hero of Alexandria (I, 43), and, being unparal-leled, it has come under suspicion as a later interpolation. But there is nothing in the vocabulary or style of the Greek which is inconsistent with the rest of Hero's works, nor is it easy to see what motive could have prompted anyone to insert such a pas-sage into a fairly well-known text some time in the Middle Ages, when the windmill had come into general use.
Hero's machine, in which wind power is used to blow an organ, is crude but workable. Only a very sketchy outline of the instru-ment itself is given, with no mention of a keyboard or air reser-voir. This may mean that it was something like an 'Aeolian harp' (the introductory sentence says 'it makes a noise like a pipe when the wind blows') or perhaps we are meant to fill in the details from the very full description of an organ given in the previous chapter. The air pump consists of a piston and cylinder, the piston compressingon the down-stroke (Fig. 6). Novalvesarementioned, but we must assume the same kind of arrangement as that given in Chapter 3, except that the cylinder is inverted. It is worked by a rocker-arm, which has on its opposite end a small horizontal plate. The windmill itself is mounted on a separate base, so that it can be
turned round as required to face the wind-perhaps through an arc of 90°. It has a single axle, with two discs (tympania- 'little drums') on it. One has projecting radial rods which, as it turns round (anti-clockwise in the diagram) push down the small plate and lift the piston. As each rod slips off the plate, the piston is allowed to fall, and its weight then forces the air out into the
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
27
organ pipes. The other disc on the same axle is fitted with 'vanes, like the so-called anemouria '. The word translated as 'vanes' (platai) is used elsewhere to mean oar-blades, which suggests that they were wooden, and rigid. The word anemourion does not occur any-where else except as a proper name for a promontory in Asia Minor, but must mean something like 'wind-fan'.
Fig. 6. Hero's windmill for blowing an organ.
Here we have a crude and rather inefficient substitute for the cam, converting the rotary motion of the windmill to the up-to-down motion of the pump. We are not told how many radial rods
were used-probably two at the most, since the interval between each thrust would otherwise be too short to allow the piston to empty the cylinder. Hero says 'they (the rods) strike the plate at longish intervals' (ek dia/,eimmatos), which also suggests that the windmill was designed to turn slowly, with a pitch of perhaps only 5-10° on the vanes.
The device was clearly a toy, but why did nobody (apparently) see its potential as a power source? Perhaps its scale was the real reason. A power source, by definition, had to be something which
could replace a man or a small animal-that is, something which developed about¼ h.p. at least. It may well be that a small wind-mill, with rigid wooden vanes, was simply not thought of in this category, and nobody tried experimenting with a bigger and bet-ter one. But it is still very puzzling.
28 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
STEAM POWER
The failure of the Greeks and Romans to harness steam as a power source was without doubt one of the many factors which prevented industrialization in their society. How near they came to develop-ing a workable steam engine is a much-debated question.
Fig. 7. Hero's steam machine.
Once again it is Hero of Alexandria who provides the only mention in the literary sources of devices worked by steam (Pneumatica II, 6 and 11). The second of these is 'a ball which spins round on a pivot when a cauldron is boiled'. He does not give this device a name, though aeolipyle( or aeolipile)is sometimes used-mistakenly, because that was a different device altogether. The design is simple (Fig. 7). Pressure builds up in the cauldron, and steam passes through the pipe FGH into the sphere, from which it escapes at various points, but mainly through the bent tubes IJK and LMN. As the steam is forced out in one direction (from the outlets), it causes a reaction thrust in the opposite direction, and makes the sphere revolve. The principle is that
POWER AND ENERGY SOURCES
29
of jet propulsion, and the device described in Chapter 3 of the same book, in which figurines are made to revolve inside a trans-parent altar, works in the same way, except that the expansion of heated air is used instead of steam.
Could this form of steam engine ever have been used as a practi-cal power source? The answer is, almost certainly not. It operates best at a high speed, and would have to be geared down in a high ratio. Hero could have managed that, since the worm gear was familiar to him, but not without friction loss. Inadequate heat trans-fer from the burning fuel to the cauldron would keep the effi-ciency low, but the worst problem of all is the 'sleeve joint', where the pipe FGH enters the sphere. When making a working recon-struction of this device, I had the greatest difficulty in reaching a compromise between a loose joint which leaks steam and lowers the pressure, and a tight one which wastes energy in friction. It is in the realm of possibility that, given the technology of Hero's age, overall efficiency might have been as low as 1 %. If so, then even if a large-scale model could have been built, to deliver toh.p. and do the work of one man, its fuel consumption would have been enormous, about25,000 B.T.U. (26.8 X 106 joules) per hour. The labour required to procure and transport the fuel, stoke the fire and maintain the apparatus would have been much more expensive than that of the one man it might replace, and the machine would be much less versatile.
In his introductory chapter, Hero speaks of his various devices as providing 'some of them useful everyday applications, others quite remarkable effects'. We must conclude that the steam en-gine came into the second category. Its most remarkable feature is in fact the speed of rotation. My own working model has achieved speeds of the order of 1,500 rpm, and, with the possible exception of a spinning top, the ball on Hero's machine may well have been the most rapidly rotating object in the world of his time.
It is true that this toy (as it may justly be called) does not incor-porate the essential elements of a useful steam engine, but it is equally true that all those elements are to be found in various other devices which Hero describes. To make a conventional steam engine it is necessary to develop techniques of making metal cylinders, and pistons to fit them; but this problem was tackled in the design of the force pump, and there is even a possibility that 'lapping' was used (seep. 76). It is not in fact necessary to have an
30 ENGINEERING IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
efficient method of converting rectilinear to rotative motion for the construction of a basic steam engine. The earliest working ones were of the beam type, which worked piston pumps without cranks or rotative motion. The one other essential is the valve mechanism, and Hero had devised one for what is usually known
as 'Hero's Fountain'-a device exactly like a modem insecticide sprayer, in which liquid is forced out of a container by compressed air (Pneumatica I, 10.) Water had to be controlled under pressures of the order of 5-6 lb/ sq in (0.35 kg/ cm 2). The type of valve he used is not ideal for steam, but it would have done to start with, and might have been improved in the light of experience. An even more significant feature of the 'fountain' is that Hero uses a spheri-cal pressure-vessel on a special stand, showing clearly that he was aware that sheet metal of a given thickness will stand up to greater internal pressure in that form than in any other. In the progress of boiler design, this might have been the first advance on the bunged-up cauldron.
But there was no progress--not even a beginning. What Hero failed to do, and nobody else apparently tried to do, was to com-bine these essential elements--boiler, valves, pistons and cylinder-to form a steam engine. Why did he not? Perhaps he never thought of reversing the action of a piston pump, forcing liquid or air into the cylinder and taking thrust from the piston. One toy which came very near to this was a 'jumping ball' (Pneumatica II, 6), in which a light ball (made of thin sheet metal?) was blown up into the air by a jet of steam from a boiling cauldron. But where ex-panding hot air, or compressed air, was used to move something mechanically, it was done either by inflating a bladder, which lifted up a weight, or else by shifting water or mercury from one side to the other of a counterbalanced system, which then swung up or down and operated the mechanism by chains and pulleys. These two methods are exemplified in Pneumatica I, 38 and 39.
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Examining representations of librarians in stock photos and gifs
The top part of the search on Unsplash for the word "librarian." I removed the ad here, and these are the top photos which appeared in the search result, already disturbing me as to their lack of diversity.
Some time ago, I learned about Unsplash, calling itself the "internet’s source of freely usable images," I think from an article in a library publication. It is currently a subsidiary of Getty Images. As a test, I decided to search for the word "librarian." 21 photographs come up, tagged with this term, under the heading "Results for Librarian." I hoped for the best in my search, but seven of them have White people, ten include books stacked or the library stacks themselves. If we include the four librarians in the ads sections at the top and bottom, titled "Browse premium images on iStock | 20% off at iStock", it is a little better, as three are Black, one is presumably Asian, and four are White. Even so, they could still do be better, especially since most of the librarians are in the iStock images and not in the main results! Disappointed and disturbed by these results, which had a lack of diversity, I decided to look at Giphy instead to see if the results would be better. As a disclaimer, which should be obvious, this post is only a beginning of an analysis, is NOT comprehensive, and is NOT an academic analysis and should never should be treated as such. Despite those qualifiers, I hope it is helpful to librarians out there, in some way. On with the post!
There are 153 gifs when someone searches the word "librarian." Of these images, at least forty one are White people, one is non-human, one is a person of color, I think, and there is only ONE Black woman, pictured in a gif added by NARA, going through a card catalog:
There are also two giphy clips at the top with White female librarians. So, that doesn't bode well, even though some of these gifs were added by librarians themselves! Yikes.
I looked on Tenor, another gif site, searching for the word "librarian," and there were similar results, although there was more variety than those on Giphy, as there was one Asian female librarian moving books from one shelf to another, which I'll show below. Unfortunately, the "sexy librarian" gifs were at the top of the search and throughout the search itself. There were some non-human librarians shown, and at the very, very end was a gif from Library War, so that was cool.
I searched on gfycat for the word, "librarian," and found nothing but a mix of strange, bizarre, and disturbing results which are replete with stereotypes. It was almost as bad as the search I did for images on Imgur for the word "librarian." The subreddit for gifs didn't have much, the word "librarian" doesn't even show up on one site, or another site also focused on gifs. Results on Tumblr were not that promising, and worst of all is imgflip. After seeing the categories they had, I felt like that was enough and I didn't need to go any further than that to see the type of images on the site:
These results were originally in a long column, but I stuck the two columns together for convenience sake
These results are not altogether surprising. Sophia Noble, who authored the book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism has said that while people "think of search engines as neutral, objective fact-checkers, reliable, and curated by experts" they are anything but that, as she noted that "Google Search is rife with disinformation and propaganda." She then said that social media, internet searches, and the internet itself are "profoundly distorting," with some technologies are predatory, platforms "implicated in trafficking in hate on the internet and in real life," and so on. I'd argue the same applies to sites such as the ones I've talked about in this article, as those sites reflect biases, stereotypes, and prejudices held by society as a whole, and more specifically those individuals, organizations, and such which add the gifs (or stock images in the case of Unsplash) in the first place! A good first step would be for people to add more gifs to these sites of librarians who are people of color, although much more needs to be done beyond that.
GIFs and memes are not harmless, as made clear by White people using gifs of Black celebrities to express their feelings, which some have called "digital blackface." While generally the "images used to share emotions and feelings of relatability over social media and text messages...are almost overwhelmingly black" as noted by Erinn Wong, when it comes to librarians, those shown are overwhelmingly White! This is not much of a surprise, however, as the latest demographic data from the ALA shows an overwhelmingly White membership base (over 86% white), and there are, as of 2016, over 140,000 librarians in the U.S. alone. [2] It was also argued by Jennifer Vinopal that the library field is "starkly lacking in diversity based on race and ethnicity...age...disability, economic status, educational background, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other demographic and identity markers of difference." Even so, there should still be more diverse depictions of librarians. If we use ALA statistics of members by race and family origin, then out of every hundred librarians portrayed, the minimum would be as follows: one should be Indigenous and/or Hawaiian / Pacific Islander, three to four should be Asian, four should be Black, four should be other, and all the others would be White. This doesn't account for the 4-5 would be Latine, as 4.7% said they identify as this when asked to describe their ethnicity. In total, this would mean that there should be a minimum of 16-18 librarians who are people of color in popular culture mediums each year, in order to reflect the field. From now on, I'm going to try and measure that, each year in what I'll call the 16-18 Rule and may rename that in the future to something else. [3] It would only apply to productions, like animated series, made within the U.S., not those made elsewhere, in countries like Japan, for instance. It would NOT apply to these stock image sites, just to be clear.
© 2021 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] This includes a White middle-aged woman in the Netherlands, an old White woman, an old White man sitting at desk, a stack of books and a White woman, and three of a sexy White librarian. Also, a book bag, a book quote, and a castle in distance are pictured.
[2] In the UK it is even less diverse, according to a joint study in July 2017 by the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), saying on page 4 that "...45% of the current library and information workforce will reach retirement age by 2030...97% of the UK library and information workforce self-identify as white...the library and information workforce is 79% female and 21% male." This led some to rightly say that UK librarians need to "work harder to get rid of our unconscious biases, both on an individual and organisational level."
[3] Appended to this can be what I'd tentatively call the three disabled librarian rule, as the ALA survey in 2017 noted that the library field "remains about 86% white and 97% able-bodied," although this is assuming that the ALA accurately represents the library field, which has been thrown into question. That survey, which did not ask about sexual orientation, noted that 19% identified as male and 81% as female, so you could have an 2-8 rule, meaning that for every eight librarians shown, two others should be male. Whether I actually put in place these rules or not, I don't know, but using metrics like this can be useful.
Note, update on 9/21/21: In my original article, in my analysis of Unsplash, did not include the ads at the top of the page. I can't go back in time to when I did this analysis, about a month ago, but I think I didn't include those because they didn't load when I looked at it. Because if they had been there, I definitely would have noted it. So, today I just saw those and updated the article accordingly. I did this in response to one person on Reddit who seemed to say my analysis was faulty, declaring: "But there are only 4 people in the Unsplash search that the author is complaining about. If 18% should be people of color, that is actually 0. So, we don't have enough info as to whether UnSplash is not representative," and adding "at least for me, the iStock photo ads all over the page feature ONLY librarians of color (and not sexy librarians either.) I'm curious if that is what others see too?" The tone of the comment negative, from what I could tell, but I responded to it the best I could. Not sure why people make comments like that, trying to pick away at the post. It is sad to see. Aren't librarians supposed to support one another? As it turned out, the commenter was only concerned about Unsplash not being a good example site, and I said "...I felt like I should include them because they had come up on some library lists...I'm not really a fan of Unsplash either, but they are definitely useless for that search, sure. Google Images is ok, but the problem with analyzing it is that the filter bubble can skew your results, so one person's Google results may not be the same as another person's." So, I guess it ended up being positive in the end?
Reprinted from Pop Culture Library Review and Wayback Machine
#stock photos#gifs#librarians#stereotypes#reviews#national archives#istock#getty images#giphy#library war#imgflip#imgur#filter bubble
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