The forest of unread books: A future library in Norway
26 October, 2020
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
She was walking down the forest path with a roll of white cloth in her hands. It was trailing behind her like a long veil.
<p> It was sweeping needles, leaves and soil lumps, drawing a pattern on the sandy pathway. The whiteness of the cloth contrasted with her black attire and the dark thick forest. As the path went up and down, the crowd following the woman at a distance would lose sight of her, only to see her again in a short while, like a white signpost. </p><p>Once the procession reached the clearing surrounded by old trees, the woman in black kneeled down in the centre. She began to wrap something with the cloth, already quite tatty after the walk. Her face was tense and her hands were shaking as she tried to tie up the bundle with a string. Eventually, she brought her emotions under control, tightened the knot, and held the bundle to her breast. The onlookers formed a circle around her, maintaining, however, a respectful distance. They didn't want to disturb this intimate moment: a moment of farewell.</p><p>The people who gathered there to view the ceremony sat on the moss and May-dewed grass. They walked carefully, making sure not to trample on dozen-centimetre-tall spruce trees with red ribbons tied around their tops. One could already see this year's bright green growths on the saplings.</p>
<p>The woman in black was the 49-year-old South Korean writer Han Kang, who won the Man Booker International Prize 2016. The thing she wrapped with the white cloth was a manuscript. When the spruce saplings with red ribbons grow, they will become her book. It will happen, however, in the year 2114. Until then, for nearly 100 years, Kang's manuscript, in a tatty cloth, will have remained hidden from public view. Neither the writer nor her 18-year-old son will live to see its publication. The onlookers who gathered that day in the Nordmarka forest in the hills outside of Oslo won't bear witness to it either. 'Future Library' is being created for the generations to come, in the hope that in 100 years' time humanity will still exist and want to read books.</p><p>Future Library<em> </em>is a project conceived by Scottish conceptual artist Katie Paterson. Each year, on the clearing where future books are growing, a writer selected by the Future Library Trust hands over their manuscript. Its content, form, volume and other details – except the title – will remain secret for 100 years. The first contributor who arrived in Oslo in 2014 was Margaret Atwood, renowned for her dystopian representations of the future. She was followed by British novelist David Mitchell, Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, Turkish author Elif Shafak and, in 2019, Han Kang. The next contributor is Karl Ove Knausgård, who will hand over his manuscript on the forest clearing in May 2020. From among all the writers, he will have the shortest distance to cover to get there: he is a Norwegian, born in Oslo and still living there. There is space for 94 more authors.</p>
<h3>59°59'10.0 N 10°41'48.6 E</h3><p>Take Line no. 1 (<em>T-bane</em>) in downtown Oslo. While still within the city limits, the train goes above ground and up the hills overlooking both the fjord and the capital. At the end of the line, Frognerseteren station, follow the signs to the restaurant. Once there, follow the forest road lined with streetlights – in winter-time they light up the cross-country skiing route. After a slightly more than kilometre-and-a-half-long walk, enter a much narrower and steeper path. It is the start of the trail that climbs up to Frønsvollen hill. After 100 metres, you will see a sign in both English and Norwegian: 'Future Library Forest' / 'Framtidsbibliotekskogen.' You are here.</p><blockquote>A forest<br>of unread books<br>growing over 100 years<br></blockquote><p>Katie Paterson didn't expect her idea to turn into something more than three lines of text in the haiku-like form: that is how she tends to note down her project-related thoughts. Future Library has become, however, a large-scale undertaking; or, perhaps, it is still becoming one since there seems to be no form that could contain the project that unfolds over 100 years.</p><p>"I began by drawing rings," she tells me. "I would draw tree's growth rings, imagining each to be a subsequent book chapter. I was pondering the relations between the tree and the book, the forest and the library – their interfusion. As I immersed myself in thoughts, I would doodle more rings on the sheets of paper."</p>
<p>Paterson is 38 years old. Her art often engages with the cosmos and brings to mind scientific research projects, like her map of the sky with 27,000 dead stars or clocks that tell the time on different planets. Some of her artworks – for instance the bulb that emits the light of a full moon, or the spinning wheel that contains all the colours of the universe – were created in collaboration with scientists and engineers. She even invited the European Space Agency (ESA) to one of her projects. They helped her return to space a Campo del Cielo meteorite, which had travelled through our solar system for 4.5 billion years before it fell to Earth. Recently, NASA has expressed their wish to collaborate with her. One might look at Paterson through the prism of the places where she has exhibited: Tate Britain, Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, or Turner Contemporary. This doesn't make much sense, however, since what is equally important are her open-air projects, located far from famous galleries. One fine example is "Hollow"<em> – </em>an installation in the grounds of University of Bristol, which is composed of 10,000 wood pieces, each from different tree species from all parts of the world. Another project invites people to go to the beach and make sand replicas of the most famous mountains. Participants are provided with special Kilimanjaro- or Stromboli-shaped molds, and when the high tide washes their replicas away, they might ponder time and transience, which also come to mind in the context of Future Library.</p>
<p>"Immediately after receiving the invitation to become a writer for Future Library, I imagined the world one hundred years from now. The world a long time after I myself have died, when my child, however long they manage to hold on to life, will likely no longer exist, and neither will any of the ones I love, any of the human beings who are living and breathing together with me on the Earth in this moment. It was a frighteningly lonely image to conjure. But, cutting across that desolateness, I kept on imagining. Imagining the world one hundred years from now which, since even in this moment time is owing without fail, will arrive as an inevitable reality. The trees of the forests around Oslo, that will grow thick and dense in those hundred years. The leaves and branches of spring, the afternoon sunlight that will shine down on them. The evenings and cold, still nights that will come without fail," said Han Kang quietly, standing in the centre of the clearing, surrounded by the spruce trees that will become books, and one of them – her book.</p><p>To understand how much can change over the coming century, imagine that in May 1914 – 100 years before the first manuscript was handed over to Future Library – the Great War hadn't broken out yet. It turned out to be the First World War, as 25 years later humankind decided to prove that it is capable of even more horrendous acts. Soon, such terms as the Holocaust, D-Day, or Little Boy came into use. People didn't even dream of the internet or mobile phones, not to mention mobile phones with internet access. It wasn't until 1926 that Henry Ford started to close his factories over Saturdays and Sundays, thus introducing the idea of the 'weekend'. In most European countries, women were granted suffrage after 1918. In the US, the 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote in 1920. It wasn't until 1964 that the US abolished racial segregation. 100 years is a very long time.</p>
<p><em>"Sometimes I imagine the world in the year 2114. I guess that the most optimistic scenario is the one in which no radical changes take place; the one in which everything stays almost exactly the same, with minor differences only," says Paterson.</em></p><p><em></em>The curators decided to equip Future Library with a printing press and instruction manual in case 100 years from now humans lose their ability to produce paper books (provided, of course, that humankind survives). On the eve of Han Kang's manuscript handover, an informal dinner for Future Library's friends was held in a theatre in Oslo. At this small event, attended by slightly over 40 international guests, Anne Beate Høvind, the project technical director, entered the stage and discussed some unexpected practical problems. As she explained, the presses intended for industrial printing are not supposed to be turned off. "Once switched on, the machine operates continuously. When switched off, especially for a long time, it starts to rust," she clarified and added, smiling: "The printing problem hasn't been solved then. Well, I'm going to worry about it later, in about 10 years…"</p><p>Overpowered by emotions, Han Kang didn't come to dinner. On the following day, she admitted to having a moment of doubt as to whether to condemn her book, the writing of which took such an immense effort, to a 95-year-long oblivion. Kang has a delicate voice. When she speaks, it is as if she was whispering. She seems fragile and shy, yet in her works she deals with the thorniest issues.</p><p>Kang's most recent work, published in English under the title <em>White Book</em>, is an attempt to confront her own history. The narrator is her older sister, whom she never got to know since she died only two hours after birth. Their parents said that if she had survived, they wouldn't have decided to have more children. When Kang's mother was pregnant with her, she seriously considered having an abortion. The idea for the book, in which each chapter is a description of something white, was conceived far from Kang's hometown, but close to the editorial office of "Przekrój". She was working on it during a four-month residency at the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Oriental Studies. Although she felt lonely and isolated, since she didn't know the local language, she took to Warsaw at first (and liked it "till November", as she emphasized). She enjoyed strolling around the Łazienki Park, but the ubiquitous remnants of World War II kept haunting her. She was thinking about destruction and reconstruction, and realized that her sister's spirit was part of her. And since for her the colour white represents both life and death, she decided to hold a roll of white cloth during the manuscript handover ceremony in the Nordmarka forest.</p>
<p>"On the one hand, it felt like a wedding ceremony, with the cloth as a veil. It was a wedding of the book and the forest. On the other hand, it seemed like a ceremony celebrating the birth of a child, in this case a new book. At the same time, I had a strong impression that it was a funeral, with the cloth as a mourning dress: the funeral of my book," observed Kang.</p><p>At the ceremony, Kang, almost whispering, shared her dimly optimistic vision of the future: "And the moment I eventually write the first sentence; I have to believe in the world one hundred years from now. In the uncertain possibility that there will still be human beings who have survived, and who will read what I write. I have to hope that human history will not yet have vanished as a phantom, that this planet will not have become a huge ruin or grave of humans. It is a hope whose foundation is shaky, like the assumption that the people who run this project, and the writers of the present and future, who will die and be born in the course of the next hundred years, will continue this work as though carrying embers forward. Yet I have to believe, even in the tenuous possibility that a paper book's fate will be to survive long enough to reach the world one hundred years from now."</p><p>The story of Future Library is not only a story about faith and hope, but also fear. If predictions prove correct, in 2114 those humans who have survived will be too busy fighting for water or habitable land to think about an art project that dates back 100 years. According to the Australian think tank National Centre for Climate Restoration (Breakthrough), so many regions will become inhabitable around 2050 that great masses of people will have to move, nations will dissolve, and the world order as we know it today will collapse. Over a billion people will be forced to migrate and two billion will have limited access to water.</p><p>The coming of the Anthropocene, the epoch in which human actions exert an impact on natural processes, has been discussed for almost 100 years. Although the term itself hasn't been officially recognized yet, the Anthropocene doesn't seem to care much. One million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction, glaciers are melting, and the temperature is rising regardless of the fact that the term hasn't been accepted.</p>
<p>Half a century ago we landed on the moon. We boasted about being able to see from there a man-made artefact: the Great Wall of China. It turned out not to be true: the Great Wall is too narrow to be seen from the Moon with a naked eye. We can see from space, however, Dubai's artificial palm-shaped archipelago for the rich, Almeria's greenhouses with roofs made of white plastic (which cover an area half the size of Warsaw), open-pit mines, the cutting-down of the Amazon Rainforest, the illuminated India–Pakistan border, and the earliest evidence of the Anthropocene: the Pyramids of Giza. It isn't necessary to fly into space, however, to see what is happening on the Earth. 18 of the 19 hottest summers – those with the highest average temperatures – have been reported since 2001, with 2016 as the warmest year on record. This data is provided by NASA, but the numbers given by Climatic Research Unit and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are almost the same. In their October 2018 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alerted us that there are 12 years left to prevent the catastrophe. 12 wasted months later there are 11 years left, and the clock is ticking…</p><p>Paterson claims, however, that Future Library makes her optimistic: "It is the forest that has such an effect on me. Whenever I'm there, I'm reminded of how old it is. Primeval forests are beyond time – when humans enter them, it is as if they travelled into the distant past. Hopefully, the forest we planted will be like that as well: the saplings on the clearing will grow as tall as the trees surrounding them. My optimism is tempered, of course, when I see what happens to our planet. I know that a lot of my projects immediately bring to mind climate change. This is also true for Future Library. I'm perfectly aware that the Earth is in horrific crisis, but it is not the struggle against the crisis that should define my art. My goal is to stir people's imagination. I'm interested in the entanglements and interfusions. The forest is turned into paper, the paper into a book, the book into a library, which, in turn, connects future readers with the authors who lived in the past. Future Library is mostly a project about time. It has to do with the environment and ecology as well, of course, but I'm not vain enough to claim that I can change the world through art."</p><p>Nevertheless, she does change something. While you're reading this text, the manuscripts are held in a safe in Oslo Public Library, Deichmanske Bibliotek. Han Kang's new work lies next to the oldest book in the collection: a handwritten manuscript of the Vulgate bible of Aslak Bolt, written in 1250. Next year, the library will relocate to a new facility situated next to the famous Oslo Opera House in the Bjørvika neighbourhood, which has been undergoing urban redevelopment, or rather, has been built from scratch. Bjørvika – until recently an industrial port area – in now a modern neighbourhood, characterized by steel and glass design. The final touches are now being put on office and apartment buildings. The Opera House, the new Munch Museum and the new library are meant to be the flagships of this revamped neighbourhood, situated by the fjord.</p><p>On the top floor of the new library, which will be fully operational by spring 2020, there will be a room made from wood. In this specially-designed room there will be 100 removable drawers, where manuscripts will be kept. Those which already hold manuscripts will be delicately illuminated. Each author will be able to choose their drawer. Han Kang was the first to chose. Other writers who have already handed over their manuscripts will come back to Oslo and have their pick.</p>
<p><em>As Paterson explains: "The room is made from the trees cut down in the Nordmarka forest to plant new trees for Future Library. Manuscripts will be safe there. As for the forest itself… well, there is not much we can do. Ideally, we should leave it alone."</em></p><p><em></em>It is not a coincidence that this project was developed in Oslo. It is, in fact, a municipal project: the only person who could officially accept Han Kang's manuscript is the mayor of the capital of Norway—Marianne Borgen. Only in Scandinavia can a high-ranking official show up on the forest clearing, get there on foot and without security, and instead of turning their speech into a rally, thank previous generations of politicians, who 120 years ago decided that Nordmarka should be under protection and that it should be the people's forest.</p><p>In 2018, electric cars accounted for over 49% of all new cars bought in Norway. The government exempted their owners from the car tax and the 25% VAT, while Oslo city council waived parking fees and congestion charges. This exemplifies how systemic solutions are far more effective than individual spurts. Which doesn't mean, however, that you, Dear Reader, should go back to using plastic straws or drinking water from plastic bottles, waiting for politicians to tackle the climate crisis.</p><p>Future Library is one of the projects that accompanies the redevelopment of the Bjørvika neighbourhood. As Høvind clarifies: "The city council announced a competition for public art projects that engage with the nature of time." A few steps away from the Opera House, you can also find the Losæter city farm.<strong> </strong>On this quite big plot of land, local people grow vegetables and fruit. There are chickens roaming around the rows and a beautiful arc-shaped bakery made from wood and glass. The city employs a farmer who takes care of the land, relying on traditional agricultural methods. This project was conceived by the American artist Amy Franceschini. The room of unread books is not far from the farm.</p><p>Paterson expresses her hope that "future generations will somehow benefit from the project." "These are just books," she says, "but they show that we think about those who haven't been born yet. They demonstrate that not all of us want them to inherit nothing but havoc and devastation."</p>
<p>Høvind also imagines the world 100 years from now: "I'll be dead … that's all I know. I'm scared, but I do whatever I can because of a sense of great duty. I believe that we need projects rooted in cathedral thinking," she explains.</p><p>'Cathedral thinking' is a term that applies to projects that don't unfold over years, but over generations. It is thinking and designing in a non-egotistical way, where the satisfaction is derived from the process itself, not the final result. As its name suggests (and as those who haven't come across the term before can quickly infer), cathedral thinking has its roots in the Middle Ages and the building of cathedrals. The idea and its execution were separated by hundreds of years, and subsequent generations continued to work on the same design. The builders knew they would never witness the final effect of their work. At that time, such future-oriented thinking was motivated by the desire to secure one's place in heaven. Today we need it to make heaven on Earth. Or, at least, to escape hell.</p><p><span></span>Cathedral thinking optimistically assumes that the future matters, stoically forcing us to ponder the meaning of life and the passing of time. "I'm sure I won't have a chance to read the books collected in Future Library, but this young boy here… who knows?" Paterson points at her son, who is sitting on her lap. "His life is still being measured in months, not years. He is intimately related to this project. I was in the forest while pregnant – back then spruce saplings hardly protruded above the ground. Last year we went there together again, and I had to carry him around. This year he was the loudest participant of the ceremony. He will be growing together with the forest."</p><p>Han Kang closed her speech on the Nordmarka forest clearing with the following words: "If it is possible to call prayer the moment when, in spite of all the uncertainty, we have to take just one step towards the light, in this moment I feel that perhaps this project is something close to a century-long prayer." She could reveal only one fact about her book: its title. "My Dear Son, My Love," she whispered.</p><p><em>Translated from <a href="https://przekroj.pl/kultura/las-nieprzeczytanych-ksiazek-klara-kowtun-and-piotr-zelazny" target="_blank">the Polish</a> by Joanna Mąkowska.</em></p><p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/" target="_blank" style="">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/culture/the-forest-of-unread-books-klara-kowtun-and-piotr-zelazny" target="_blank" style="">original article</a>. </p>
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A time capsule of computer code is buried deep in the Arctic
We're safeguarding the world's seeds in the Arctic, why not our most precious data?
23 July, 2020
Image source: Hans-Jurgen Mager/Everyday basics/Unsplash/Big Think
- Buried underground near the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the Arctic World Archive safeguarding humanity's books, documents, and data.
- The Archive includes the massive GitHub library of software code behind the world's open-source applications.
- Information in the vault is stored on special media said to be durable for 1,000 years.
For a place that's so cold, Norway's Svalbard archipelago is downright hot when it comes to safeguarding some of humanity's most precious stuff. We've written before about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that holds the world's backup supply of seeds capable of replanting our planet's flora should some horrible catastrophe occur. Since 2017, there's been another critical repository embedded about 91 meters down in that Svalbardian mountain: It's called the Arctic World Archive (AWA) and it holds the world's books, documents, and data from across the globe.
The Arctic World Archive
The AWA describes itself as "home to manuscripts from the Vatican Library, political histories, masterpieces from different eras (including Rembrandt and Munch), scientific breakthroughs and contemporary cultural treasures." Government and research facilities can store their data at AWA, as can private companies and individuals, for a price.
"Our ambition is to be a secure world archive to help preserve the world's digital memory and ensure that the world's most irreplaceable digital memories of art, culture and literature are secured and made available to future generations." — Arctic World Archive
AWA's first deposits were made by the National Archives of Mexico and Brazil, and have been joined by a growing number of entities from over 15 countries. These include the National Museum of Norway, the European Space Agency, the Museum of the Person, and major global corporations.
The AWA is a collaboration between SNSK, a 100-year-old local coal mining company, and piql, which has developed a unique means of storage employed in the vault we'll explain below.
GitHub’s vault with a vault
Within the AWA is the GitHub Arctic Code Vault, located roughly 76 meters below the Svalbard surface. GitHub is the preeminent library of programming code for those who develop open-source software applications. Each directory — think: folder — of code is a GitHub repository. Together, it's a massive resource used continually by countless programmers storing and sharing their source code. GitHub says it has 37 million users and holds over 100 million repositories.
21 terabytes of GitHub data have already been moved to the code vault — or copied, presumably, since GitHub remains an active day-to-day resource — beginning with the 2019 deposit of 6,000 of the most important repositories GitHub held at the time. The latest transfer contains a snapshot of all of GitHub's active libraries as of February 2, 2020.
Says GitHUb's director of strategic programs, Julia Metcalf, "Our mission is to preserve open-source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to last a thousand years." It's hoped that the source code in the vault will provide insight into today's programming and provide a trail of bread-crumbs that reveals the workings of apps from our era, apps that may become foundational for future applications.
How to store data for the future
The lifespan of any given storage medium is brief. Gone the way of the dinosaurs are floppy disks, cassettes, and so on — a 10-year-old may even wonder what a CD was. "It is easy to envision a future in which today's software is seen as a quaint and long-forgotten irrelevancy, until an unexpected need for it arises," says the GitHub Archive Program website. So, AWA data is stored on a specially developed, digital archival film called piqlFilm — GitHub alone has filled up 186 reels of it so far. This may at first seem sort of a retro approach, but it's not.
piql, one of the two partners behind the AWA, developed the film. The company claims it can "keep data alive" for over 1,000 years, so long as one has an app that can read it, such as the open-source app GitHub has created. piql asserts that their film has undergone "extensive longevity testing," and can withstand electromagnetic exposure.
piqlFilm is made up of layers of silver halide on a polyester backing. The data, when written, looks similar to a QR code, although it can hold far more information: Each frame in piqlFilm can pack about 8.8 million microscopic pixels. A reel of piqlFilm loaded with these frames is almost a kilometer long and can thus store a truly massive amount of data.
Of course, it remains impossible to guess the capabilities of future humans (presumably) trying to decode all this data, so GitHub has a backup plan, a human-readable document called the "Tech Tree," which they describe as "a roadmap and Rosetta Stone for future curious minds inheriting the archive's data."
Warming up to Svalbard
Svalbard has a number of attributes that have made it attractive as a permanent storage site. It's a demilitarized zone by agreement between 42 nations. It's also quite remote. Plus, it's very cold and dry, for now.
When the seed vault was first contemplated, Svalbard seemed a place that could be counted on to remain frigid, with the underground vaults dug deep into the area's permafrost safe from moisture damage. However, conditions are changing more rapidly than anticipated thanks to climate change. The Arctic, says NOAA, is warming at "twice the rate relative to the rest of the globe."
Between 1971 and 2017, the temperature in the Svalbard area has risen by 3-5° Celsius. Svalbard's current average temperature is -8.7° C, but models suggests that with moderate global emission levels going forward it will go up by 7° C, and with heavy emissions up by 10° C.
Already, there has been at least one incident of ice melting and then freezing in the entrance to a seed vault tunnel. Also, less snow and ice means more rain, which can cause landslides in the previously stable local environment, and glaciers nearby are breaking up more frequently.
The seed vault's managers say, for now, that it looks like their vaults will be okay, and the people running the AWA and the GitHub Arctic Code Vault are also optimistic.
Every calculator you'll ever need, for free
The Omni Calculator site is a stunning treasure trove of free calculators.
02 July, 2020
Image source: Dusit/Shutterstock/Big Think
- 1,175 calculators attempt to solve every everyday math problem for you.
- All free to use, it's amazing how many aspects of life get a calculator.
- Bookmark this collection — it's hard to imagine you won't someday need it.
It's true that high-school calculus teachers torture their students with them, but it's also true that once some degree of mastery is in hand. Mathematicians love a good — efficient, clever, and useful — formula.
These things aren't just for classrooms or advanced scientific applications, either. While it's amazing that formulas predict what will happen if we slingshot a spacecraft around some distant celestial body, they can also be part of our earthly lives calculating all sorts of everyday things.
In any event, for many math heads (carefully typed), slinging formulas together and inventing new calculators is just plain fun. Last week, for example, UK physicist Steven Wooding sent us the link to a calculator he and a friend constructed that predicts contactable alien civilizations. That was fun, but the site to which he directed us is nothing short of dazzling: It's called Omni Calculator, and it's a mind boggling repository of 1,175 calculators whose purpose is to help everyone get to the right answers in their personal and professional lives.
A mathematical treasure chest
Image source: Alexey Godzenko/Shutterstock
Want to know exactly how many balloons it would take to send your house airborne, as in the Pixar's "Up"? No problem. Hate running unexpectedly out of toothpaste en route to bed? Live your best life. Ditto toilet paper.
Some of the calculators are pretty profound, too, such as the Every Second calculator that shows just how much happens in the world every 60th of a minute — it's an enthralling set of numbers.
Fun stuff aside, Omni Calculator is an absolutely staggering collection, an incredible resource for normal people and professionals—from doctors, to chemists, to financial advisers, to construction teams, and more.
Who is behind Omni Calculator?
Image source: rawf8/Shutterstock
Omni Calculator is the project of a Polish startup of 24 people dedicated to helping others solve all of the small math problems in their daily lives. The company manifesto:
"In a surprisingly large part, our reality consists of calculable problems. Should I buy or rent? What's my ideal calorie intake? Can I afford to take this loan? How many lemonades do I need to sell in order to break even? Often times we don't solve these problems, because we lack knowledge, skills, time or willingness to calculate. And then we make bad, uninformed decisions?"
Omni Calculator is here to change all that — we are working on a technology that will turn every* calculation-based problem trivial to solve for anyone.
The asterisk says, "within reason."
It all started when founder Mateusz Mucha built a unique web calculator. It could calculate in any direction without a fixed input or output. He invested $80 in translating his Percentage Calculator into 15 languages and stood back as the app was downloaded 4 million times, and counting.
At some point Mucha changed his goal: "Instead of calculating one thing, we'll calculate all of them — for everybody." To serve this aim, all of Omni Calculator's calculators are free to use, developed by the company in collaboration with all sorts of experts.
Go spend some time looking around and bookmarking tools for your own use. You're pretty much guaranteed to find something that solves a problem with which you're struggling. At the very least you'll come across some amazing calculators that will get you thinking about unexpected things.
COVID calculators
Omni Calculator also provides a special set of calculators that allow you to crunch COVID-19 numbers for yourself, from a social distancing calculator to one that can predict when your next stimulus check should be due.
Guess what? We go to libraries more often than movies.
Gallup found that in 2019, movie attendance didn't even come close to library visits.
29 January, 2020
Image source: Amelie & Niklas Ohlrogge/unsplash
- Of all public cultural destinations, libraries are the most often visited.
- Libraries' expanded offerings make them more attractive than ever, especially to lower-income groups.
- Women are far more likely than men to visit a library.
<p>Amazingly, when it comes to getting up off our butts and engaging in cultural activities out in the world, Americans, by far, most frequently choose to go… to the library. Seriously. Twice as often as movies, more than sports or music, museums, or anything else, according to new research <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced-trips-movies-2019.aspx" target="_blank">published by Gallup</a>. Though one explanation may be that we often don't have to go out any more to see movies or sports, when it comes to leaving the safety of our domiciles, yes, libraries are our #1 destination.</p>
Not even close
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNzEzOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzE0NTcwOX0.aUVez6i0tSzKXXd33GhZcGerTk45HQXtXX6fCevTJio/img.jpg?width=980" id="680d7" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4721a3d934dde95f3544adde2a3b7a37" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Tobias Messer/unsplash
<p>The overall average number of trips we made in 2019 to various cultural resources:</p> <ul> <li>Go to a library — 10.5</li> <li>Go to a movie at a movie theater — 5.3</li> <li>Attend a live sporting event — 4.7</li> <li>Attend a live music or theatrical event — 3.8</li> <li>Visit a national or historical park — 3.7</li> <li>Visit a museum — 2.5</li> <li>Visit a gambling casino — 2.5</li> <li>Go to an amusement or theme park — 1.5</li> <li>Visit a zoo — 0.9</li> </ul>The survey
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNzE0Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzIwMDU3MX0.2SB5_vUC6pUN0Gs7cqHjumjDMWiHmhQqt802LVpveFU/img.jpg?width=980" id="03d0c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a1a62fe51d4d9b10dda1a4ae683950d2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Mid-Manhattan library
Image source: Robert Bye/unsplash
<p>Cellular and landline telephone interviews were conducted December 2-15 of last year. There were more cellular respondents than landline, which seem right these days. 1,025 adults were questioned from all 50 U.S. states, and the results have a sampling error margin of ±4%.</p><p>This is Gallup's first survey update since 2001, and reveals a 1,3-trip reduction in the number of movies attended, though again, this could simply mean we're choosing to view them more often at home.</p>Who’s making all these trips to the library?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNzE0Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDMxODY2MH0.YU_qEQbh7B11r7mjnlA75jrF3jVcyVcbzFvAoIABCfE/img.jpg?width=980" id="fb44c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0c060991ad9f6465431b51c1153efd25" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Danny/unsplash
<p>Gallup found that women are almost twice as likely to visit la bibliothèque, with 13.4 visits as apposed to men's 7.5. On the other hand, men were more likely to frequent casinos, sporting events, and parks.</p><p><strong>Income insights</strong></p><p>Today's libraries offer, of course, more than books, most notably, computers for internet access and WiFi, and so it's not surprising that lower-income respondents paid them a greater number of visits. They're also the group most often visiting casinos.</p><p>The people who use libraries the least are those who make more than $100,000 annually. These people, conversely, are the most frequent attendees of events that carry higher ticket prices such as movies, shows, and concerts.</p><p><strong>Age</strong></p><p>While it's no shock that the age group most likely to visit a library are those of student age, 18-29, the group with the highest overall attendance record for all cultural activities are those from 30-49. Their average, 7.4, is more than three points higher than older adults and more than twice the number of visits for younger adults. Gallup suggests this may reflect a time of life when one is still relatively young but is more likely to have the money to pay for entertainments.</p><p><strong>Regional variations</strong></p><p>Gallup found certain clear regional preferences among the cultural destinations they tracked. Residents of the eastern U.S. are the most frequent museum-goers, while those in the West, more often visit parks and casinos.</p>Exceptional U.S. libraries
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNzE1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNTc4MTMxMH0.LjujPx9KNu6Oi2MTaATWszCEueqqhkQ-LVfv6gwqpes/img.jpg?width=980" id="f74cb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="db300d24af793b42e9b91e9b2e1b78ac" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Checubus/Shutterstock
<p>Gallup's not the only organization with an interest in library attendance, and <em><a href="https://lithub.com/the-12-most-popular-libraries-in-the-world/" target="_blank">Literary Hub</a></em> has identified the 12 most popular libraries globally, three of which are in the U.S.:</p> <ul> <li>New York Public Library, New York, NY — 18 million visitors annually</li> <li>Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY — 8.1 million visitors annually</li> <li>Library of Congress, Washington D.C. — 1.9 million visitors annually</li> </ul> <p>The American Library Association publishes a list of the <a href="https://libguides.ala.org/libraryfacts" target="_blank">25 biggest</a> U.S. libraries, and some of these places are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, as demonstrated by <em>Curbed's</em> list of the <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/9/14551106/best-libraries-architecture-united-states" target="_blank">20 most beautiful</a> American libraries. <em>Huffington Post</em> tells you where to find the best library <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-best-library-in-every-state_b_59b6e4b7e4b0465f75880935" target="_blank">in each state</a>.</p>The national library picture
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYzNzE2Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTUwNDM1Mn0.DXzPEDguagRgo-xQ6shOEmAjvDHD_rD3RU_vl8GFQ0s/img.jpg?width=980" id="eacc0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="817cb662622fb82e07cb9a79b891b3f7" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: American Libraries Magazine's April 2019 Special Report
<p>Libraries' ever-expanding offerings have likewise expanded their importance as community centers in addition to being a place from which to borrow books. <a href="http://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/2019-soal-report-final-accessible.pdf" target="_blank">American Libraries Magazine's April 2019 Special Report</a> concludes that library attendance is on the rise. 2016 saw 1.4 <em>billion</em> visits to public libraries, which works out to 4 million visits a day and roughly 2,664 visits per minute. There are more public libraries (16,568) than Starbucks (14,606).</p><p>In line with Gallup's findings that libraries are of particular importance to people with lower incomes, some of the largest U.S. libraries are <a href="https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/library-late-fees" target="_self">abandoning fees for overdue books</a> to ensure that they're not penalizing — or worse, turning away — the people who most depend on free books and the other services libraries supply. </p><p>Though ample data supports the benefits public libraries provide to communities, the rise of anti-science, anti-education, and anti-diversity attitudes are posing new challenges for libraries, ranging from conflicts over acceptable content to budgeting. The Trump administration, for example, has advocated the last three years running that Federal funding of public libraries be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-third-year-in-a-row-trumps-budget-plan-eliminates-arts-public-tv-and-library-funding/2019/03/18/e946db9a-49a2-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html" target="_blank">eliminated </a>. Fortunately, the proposal faced sufficient opposition that funding was <a href="http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2019/12/fy-2020-library-budget-signed-final-bill-includes-increases-lsta-and-other" target="_blank">increased</a> in the final legislation. Funding for public libraries on the state and local levels continues to be often insecure even as libraries continue to assume their place as brick-and-mortar community centers for the modern world.</p>
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America’s largest public library ditches late fees
With the realization that overdue charges disproportionately affect access for low-income readers, libraries are reconsidering the value of fees.
19 December, 2019
Image source: Kunal Mehta/Shutterstock
- The Chicago Public Library found that a third of their economically disadvantaged members had been denied borrowing privileges due to overdue books.
- Overdue fines account for a tiny fraction of library funding, so the ramifications of ending them are more social than financial.
- Though 92% of U.S. libraries still charge late fees, the number is shrinking.
<p>Whether we're out to quench a thirst for information or lose ourselves in story, checking out a book from a public library may start the first tick of a worrisome clock. It's the time interval in which the book has to be read and returned before the imposition of a rapidly accumulating late-return fee begins. Though the fees are generally fairly small, the threat of them does introduce a measure of pressure that can be just enough to make some — especially those stretching each dollar — decide not to bother in the first place. This is especially true for people who would also have to lay out money to get themselves to the library in the first place.</p><p>Late fees conflict with the reason we have public libraries as stated at the opening of the first public library in the U.S.:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Above all…the first regard should be shown…to the wants of those, who can, in no other way supply themselves with the interesting and healthy reading necessary for their farther education."</em></p><p>With wealth inequality continuing to accelerate in the U.S., more and more libraries <a href="https://www.urbanlibraries.org/member-resources/fine-free-map" target="_blank">around the country</a> are reconsidering the negative effect of late fees. In October, the largest public library in the U.S., the Chicago Public Library, announced they were doing away with them. (<a href="https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=doing-fines-fines-fees" target="_blank">92%</a> of U.S. libraries still have late fees.)</p>
The purpose and history of public libraries
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE5NDA3OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3Mjk2ODcyM30.LPrlfJTYJHQjXguRupsTYrTtw4ihQ7_mYX8qsPmkTKo/img.jpg?width=980" id="cd9e8" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="38e8716e68bd4b592813725a62bebe29" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The Boston Public Library
Image source: Mark Zhu/Shutterstock
<p style="margin-left: 20px;"><em>"Of all the human arts, that of writing, as it was one of the earliest invented, is also one of the most important. Perhaps it would be safe to pronounce it, without exception, the most useful and important. It is the great medium of communication between mind and mind, as respects different individuals, countries, and periods of time. We know from history that only those portions of the human family have made any considerable and permanent progress in civilization, which have possessed and used this great instrument of improvement." — First </em><a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000831516z&view=1up&seq=1" target="_blank"><em>trustees report</em></a><em>, Boston Public Library, 1854.</em></p><p>The <a href="https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2236/how-did-public-libraries-get-started/" target="_blank">first public library</a> in the U.S. was the Boston Public library, and the quote immediately above laying out its purpose — as well as the quote in the previous section — were written in its report to library trustees as the library opened its doors to the general population in 1854.</p><p>Prior to this, libraries were mostly personal book collections, at best available only to an owner's family, friends, and associates.</p><p>Benjamin Franklin owned over 4,000 books, and in 1731 created the first subscription library, or "social library," as a means of exchanging books within Philadelphia's literary society. In 1762, William Rind in Annapolis, Maryland, opened the first circulation library, an innovation that saw print shops and bookstores renting out books. School libraries provided reading materials to their students.</p><p>In 1833, the first organization we might recognize as a public library was started in Peterborough, New Hampshire, as the result of an unexpected windfall. New Hampshire had raised tax money for a state college that never made it off the ground and had to find something education-related to do with the money — they disbursed it to towns around the state. Peterborough used its share for a library for its citizens. It was a well-received idea, and in 1849, the state became the first to enact a law empowering municipalities to raise tax money for libraries.</p><p>Just five years later the first truly public library opened in Boston.</p>Chicago Public Library’s announcement
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE5NDA4MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Mjg5Nzc1Mn0.pIOoUgXMx2-R0Lvo8LzJK4t4p27kWx58WK4YrUc0X1E/img.jpg?width=980" id="49f8d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="274af2a3a54fe667ef1cb8e0617c463b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Mural on Chicago's South Side
Image source: Terence Faircloth/Flickr
<p>Chicago Public Library Commissioner Andrea Telli told the <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/30/20890138/chicago-public-library-eliminate-late-fees-fines" target="_blank"><em>Chicago Sun-Times</em></a>, "I think our staff members are going to be practically jumping over their circulation desks to tell people that fines have been eliminated."</p><p>They'll also want to get word out to the 343,208 former patrons who've lost their library privileges to overdue fines. Data recently collected by the library reveals that one in three cardholders in the city's low-income South District is among that number. One in five of those is under 14, children who would benefit from access to the library's books. In more affluent areas, by contrast, just one in six cardholders has been penalized.</p><p>Eliminating the fines aims to return the library system to those most in need of it. Telli said, "We're removing one of the most important barriers."</p><p>Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who supports the change, said in a <a href="https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2019/september/EliminateLibraryLateFees.html?fbclid=IwAR0Sk3G4LDXFSHtFhkQxGjGXSIL3D3WGF2aWw8_R6lxrzI2qgCcqamUR6yo" target="_blank">statement</a>, "Like too many Chicagoans, I know what it is like to grow up in financially challenging circumstances and understand what it is like to be just one bill or one mistake away from crushing debt."</p><p>Chicago is not alone in finding late fees disproportionately affecting its less-monied cardholders. In San Francisco, whose own San Francisco Public Library got rid of late fees last month, 5% of members could no longer borrow, with the majority of them living in low-income communities, African-American communities, and areas with fewer college graduates. Each of those who'd lost library privileges, on average, owed about $24 in late fees.</p><p>Curtis Rogers of the Urban Libraries Council told <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/10/public-library-late-fees-chicago-san-francisco-equity-access/599194/" target="_blank">CityLab's</a> <a href="https://www.citylab.com/authors/linda-poon/" target="_blank">Linda Poon</a>, "Overdue fines are not distinguishing between people who are responsible and who are not. They're distinguishing between people who can and cannot use money to overcome a common oversight."</p>Why bother charging late fees anyway?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjE5NDA4Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTc1OTkxMn0.POcCL7iVBkqzzLg4mdDXEP0kS1yQLIlg7dsDwJEY0zw/img.jpg?width=980" id="7f34e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1240f6efbf284100505ba1b1bb6c7b69" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Image source: Thought Catalog/Unsplash
<p>Libraries cost money. Books must be purchased, facilities paid for, and staff compensated. Nonetheless, late fees constitute just a tiny fraction of a library's budget. As a big library system, the Chicago Public Library collects nearly a million dollars each year through fines, but that represents less than 1% of their annual budget. Rogers says the impact of fees' elimination has proven negligible for other libraries, and may even save them money since personnel and time no longer need to be allocated to collecting them.</p><p>Some consider overdue fees a form of discipline that can reduce the number of books lost to people who never return them, though a 1983 study found that this <a href="https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/removingbarrierstoaccess" target="_blank">isn't so</a> over time. And, in any event, says <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/dawn_wacek_a_librarian_s_case_against_overdue_book_fines" target="_blank">Dawn Wacekof</a> of La Crosse Public Library in Wisconsin, "I don't think it's our task, or that it's mission-centric, any more than teaching people manners is. Our role is to provide access to information."</p>
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