Not so easy come...

The following post is dredged up from February when, for some reason I forget, I forgot to publish it online. As you will see, this is the second time I've dredged it up. Let us hope for York's libraries that it again proves third time lucky...

Yesterday, for the second time in my life, I moved out of York. In spite of all its tedious flatness and tourist jam, York is very dear to me, and it is always sad to be leaving. 

A month ago Francis Maude gave York council some money to farm off their library services. I don't know where they are with these plans, or what will come of them (this site offers some background), but I do know that one must deal wisely with pawnbrokers. 

What follows is a post dredged up from the "abandoned" bag. It's a brief account of the struggle to create York's public library, and is cribbed heavily from a chapter in The Noble City of York (ed. Alberic Stacpoole, 1972). I present it now merely as a reminder not to casually destroy the hard efforts of others...

In 1850, the Public Libraries Act scraped into existence. Boroughs with a population in excess of 10,000 would be able to fund the building and staffing of a library for a halfpenny on the rates. This was extended to 1d in 1855 to include the costs of stock. Not everybody was keen on the public library idea, and this post takes a look at the struggle to create a public library in York. 

The York Herald were one of the leading campaigners for a library. Of the existing libraries in the city, it was the Herald's view that: 

• The Minster Library, Yorkshire Museum Library, and Subscription Libraries catered only for a small minority.
• The Railway Library was limited to company employees.
• The circulating libraries' stock was substandard and of "doubtful utility", with rates in considerable excess of the financial burden of a public library service.

But it wasn't until the 1880s that broader opinion began to shift, momentum being developed via a series of public addresses on the topic. In 1882 a poll was held to determine the appetite for a public library and the rates increase its creation would demand. 3,045 voted for a public library, 4,309 voted against. In a city that charged tolls on its bridges, many felt that a rate increase might be put to more practical use in the abolition of such charges. 

Five years later, the council saw the Queen's Jubilee as an opportunity to create a commemorative public library. It calculated that £12,000 would suffice for a library and gallery: £5,000 from public subscription, the rest from sale of other holdings and from loan. Another poll was held, and again the proposal was defeated (by a margin of 817 votes). 

It was central legislation that forced the matter, assisted by the acquisition of an existing library building. The Technical Instruction Act of 1889 would apparently only benefit councils that had a school board or public library. A new campaign was launched, and the York Institute offered their library building for £4,100. Another poll was held, and it was third time lucky by a majority of 2,961. The library was taken on in 1891 and formally opened in 1893 with a staff of Librarian (£170pa), Assistant Librarian (£70pa) and two boys (on 5s and 6s pw).

Forty years of campaigning, and the library was still only brought into being as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Things so often come into this world kicking and screaming and we must ensure they do not more gently slip away from us. The effort expended in creating our public library system may need to be matched if we are to prevent its demise.

Yesterday there were reports of job cuts. It's a long way short of problems elsewhere in the country, for now at any rate, but doubtless a call to vigilance.

Calling out the Fire Engines

Recently I acquired a Kindle Fire. Despite its name, a Kindle Fire is not an ebook reader (or a flint book). Rather it is a tablet device. Its operating system is a rebadged Android. It is the second time I've played with an Android tablet, and I have found both experiences somewhat bothersome. Part of this bother is, of course, the suspicion of the new, but there's something more fundamental at work, and this post is going to be me trying to put my finger on a trend in personal computing that I find genuinely concerning. 

I am of the Domesday Disc Generation: my childhood idols were Maggie Philbin and Fred Harris, and there was a home-computer in our home since I was three. I accept that my generation is not like other generations: those before us for whom computers were a confusing novelty, and those after us who have never typed "GOTO 10" with a sense of anarchic delight. We are special. We grew up with the computer. We played silly games together in our childhood, amazed by the simplest things. In our teens we got all surly and it all became about speed and whizzy graphics and sex and violence. Then we went to university together and got the internet and fell in love with its anarchic global community where all things were held in common, programs were shareware, and content was self-made. And now... now we're in our thirties and all the hippies are working in the banking sector...

(Any excuse to use this photo again)

The first thing that happens when you turn on your Kindle Fire is that it asks you for your name and credit card details. No messing about... it's straight in there with it. You don't have to tell it these things but it is very quiet regarding the alternatives. It's not the most welcoming of introductions. We'll leave the form-filling for now and get to the meat.

There's a handy email client (though you'll need to give Amazon some personal details before you're allowed to set it up), and a built in browser called Silk. Silk is an integral part of the machinery in much the same way that Microsoft would have Internet Explorer be an integral part of Windows. Microsoft keep getting fined for doing this sort of anti-competitive practice, but that's a PC and this is just a tablet. It's lower technology.

It is, too. I had presumed that tablets would be laptops without keyboards, and perhaps the iPad is (I don't know; I've never used one). But this is not a netbook with a broken spine; it's a large mobile 'phone without telephony. This is an important detail, because it means that the Kindle Fire lacks considerable functionality. Browsing the internet is browsing with blinkers on: we see it through mobile eyes. Even in "experimental mode" (effectively browsing by proxy) we are hamstrung by the odd missing bit or bob. 

Don't get me wrong, though. Having a slightly sawn-off internet on a mobile 'phone is amazing, it really is. I'm not knocking it at all. And having the same on a piece of technology the size of a thin paperback is also pretty nifty. I readily confess that the ability to pull out a little piece of internet less than a quarter of an inch thick is bloody brilliant and we are living in the future. But realistically, a bit thicker and you could have a netbook with proper laptop-level functionality, and a bit smaller you could have a mobile 'phone (which is also a 'phone, and which takes up less room in your bag). In that regard, a tablet seems a bit... compromised.

But I don't really have a problem with that, and there will be plenty of people who will find such a device brilliant. The problem is not that it is a glorified mobile 'phone.

Or rather, it is, but in a different way. In the 2G days, when mobile 'phones were telephones with a bit of very ropey internet sew on, 'phone companies (very much corporate entities) sought to capitalise on our bored commutes by offering applications for download, usually in the form of games and usually for a small fee. And because these were alien technologies on bespoke operating systems, and because we didn't have the right USB adaptors (or the inclination) to try hooking up to our PCs in search of online communities of hobbyists making things for fun, and because, also, the fees for these downloadable entertainments paled in comparison to our other network charges, and because we were bored and on the bus, we stumped up a quid for Pacman and amused ourselves.

This model developed, chiefly at the hands of Apple, a company with a cultishly insular approach to its product-range. Now people were buying gizmos for their 'phone as a matter of course. Some apps were works of genius, and very handy tools to have on a mobile device. Others were the sort of tat that's been available as freeware on Tucows for years.

While, as somebody from Yorkshire, I am saddened at this seemingly growing commercialisation of the app market, there are still free apps, and the shareware market was always well-populated by trialware and crippleware programs as an inducement for you to part with your pennies. I don't mind the odd app costing money, providing there is an open market and alternatives for tight people. My problem is that the market is not really open.

Apple take a particularly restrictive approach to app distribution, with users being forced to use the Apple app store unless they jailbreak their machine. Kindle (like Google before it), is not so evil. While Kindle emphatically steers its users towards the Amazon app store (use of which requires your name and address as part of an Amazon account), there are alternatives. This is perhaps as well, for the Amazon app store is not exactly bulging with goodies (though it is by no means bare).

Kindle Fire is a rebadged Android

I said before that Kindle Fire is a rebadged Android. This means that any app made for Android will likely work on a Kindle Fire too. Great! There's loads of apps that have been made for Android! Download all teh apps!

Unfortunately, the Android app store, Google Play, will only allow you to download something if you have a properly badged Android. The Kindle Fire cannot retrieve these goodies. This is somewhat frustrating.

There are other app stores, though it can be tricky to tell other app stores from dodgy app stores, especially when one doesn't have tooltips and right-click functions at ones disposal to help navigate the net. There's also the possibility that the app's creator hosts a copy for direct download. However, this is alarmingly rare, particularly with big corporate manufacturers. In the interests of storage-space, bandwidth and convenience, most app creators seem content to leave distribution to the central app store. If you're barred from that store, as the Kindle is from Google, you're cut off in an alarming way. Welcome to the cloud.

The app store curator will say that a directly accessible, centralized app store is not an instrument of anti-competitive practice so much as a tool of convenience and a means of ensuring security. The truth is that the centralized app store is all three. For a conventional Android user, with a well stocked warehouse and competing outlets, it's hard to find too much to moan about. But the Kindle Fire demonstrates the shortcomings of trusting in one central repository. Manufacturers of Android apps could also submit to Amazon, of course, and this would solve a good deal of the problem. Likewise, Google Play could raise some of its restrictions. While I have deeper misgivings about relying upon what are effectively geared up to be corporate monopolies, in the case of the Kindle Fire there are more pressing troubles.

Which brings us to ebooks.

There's a menu item called "Books". But it's only a book if you got it from Amazon. If you got it from somewhere else you'll have to find it in "Docs". And you won't necessarily find it in "Docs" either because that's your documents folder and not your downloads folder. To get to any downloads you've made you'll need to use the directory browser in Open Office. 

This presupposes that your Kindle let you download the book in the first place. It is loathe to do such things. For something that capitalizes on its ebook-reading abilities, it doesn't half put up a fight.

The reason I acquired this Kindle Fire was so that I could test the availability of my university's ebook provision. Out of ten different ebook providers we use, Kindle DRM foibles or provider site restrictions mean that half will not permit texts to be downloaded and read on the Kindle Fire via the Silk browser. Using the third-party Opera Mobile browser rather than Silk, one can access texts from two more, bringing coverage to a slightly more respectable 7/10, but Opera Mobile is not available in the Amazon app store (I found my copy via a back-door link posted by an Opera techy on their help forum) so that option isn't really an option for our students. To make matters worse, the five problematic providers include the three we rely upon for most of our titles. So any student who thought a Kindle Fire might be a useful investment for their studies is in for a bit of a frustrating time if they're hoping to fill it with ebook texts.

Oh... and one of the ones that doesn't work does work if you download a third-party PDF reader, but then that reader takes over your file associations and goes on to block some of the other providers, so that's not much help. Another provider is due to launch a Kindle app soon, my response to which is a cry of frustration.

I'm a bit worried about the whole app thing to be honest. For a start I see a lot of apps as a way of selling people something they already have. Why, for instance, would you use a Twitter app on a Kindle Fire when you can access Twitter (or even Tweetdeck) through your web-browser. The cynic in me sees it as an effort to fool paying customers into mistaking what constitutes online content and inadvertently racking up connection charges. That's not to say that some apps aren't genuinely useful programs that by far enhance anything you can do through a browser. But most aren't. When faced with the whole app shop thing, and things like the annoyance that is Windows 8 out of the box, my eye starts to get a bit twitchy. There is undoubtedly something useful about the app as bookmark, or the app as a simplified tool for a mobile device, but we must be alert to the fact that a simplification, while easier to use, may well be a less functional and more restrictive experience. We must be especially careful that we do not standardize the wrong way. The most alarming thing about Windows 8 is the loss of functionality, but that's a story for another time.

For all these problems, there's no denying that the Kindle Fire is quite a nifty little thing. I do love the way you can type by sliding your finger across they keyboard rather than hitting each letter in turn (probably a technology many of you are familiar with from other devices, but new to me), and as someone with a 2nd generation 'phone, it's nice to have a handbaggable device I can hook up to a pub's wi-fi. But if I want an ereader, I'd rather it have an Etch-a-Sketch screen and less restrictions on what I'm allowed to read or call a book (Kobo or Sony seem likely candidates) and if I want a baggable internet device I think I'd just go with a 3G mobile 'phone or (with a bigger bag) a laptop. That, as I say, is just a consequence of my personal needs. The restrictive nature of DRM and app culture are far more concerning, and represent the real turn-offs for me. For those reasons alone I would not recommend the Kindle Fire. In the evil stakes these are minor misdemeanours but better to put our foot down now before things get out of hand, eh?