Special props due to Rob Walker for adding in a little extra context to our impromptu #bookspinepoem party. We were inspired by Maria Popova, and she borrowed the idea from Nina Katchadourian’s project. Here’s hoping that they are very much becoming a thing. murketing: Sorted Books project The Sorted Books project began in 1993 … and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.  (via Nina Katchadourian) I can’t tell if book spine poems are suddenly becoming a thing? But if they are, this person Nina Katchadourian (who I don’t know, obviously, or I wouldn’t refer to her as “this person”) did some pretty great work on those lines that I hope gets attention as a result, if there’s going to be a meme here. So I thought I’d throw the example above into the mix, as it is one I liked quite a bit. More here. (Incredibly dedicated readers may recall my mention of same in March 2010 on the old Murketing.com site.)
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Special props due to Rob Walker for adding in a little extra context to our impromptu #bookspinepoem party. We were inspired by Maria Popova, and she borrowed the idea from Nina Katchadourian’s project.

Here’s hoping that they are very much becoming a thing.

murketing:

Sorted Books project

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 … and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

 (via Nina Katchadourian)

I can’t tell if book spine poems are suddenly becoming a thing? But if they are, this person Nina Katchadourian (who I don’t know, obviously, or I wouldn’t refer to her as “this person”) did some pretty great work on those lines that I hope gets attention as a result, if there’s going to be a meme here. So I thought I’d throw the example above into the mix, as it is one I liked quite a bit. More here.

(Incredibly dedicated readers may recall my mention of same in March 2010 on the old Murketing.com site.)