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This report of research on concepts and problems of "Libraries of the Future" records the result of a two-year inquiry into the applicability of some of the newer techniques for handling information to what goes at present by the name of library work— i.e., the operations connected with assembling information in recorded form and of organizing and making it available for use....

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Mr. Vinycomb has in these articles aimed to give his readers a practical dissertation upon the modes of execution, rather than upon the history and classification of styles in the production of book-plates; and in this he has certainly departed from the beaten track, and has furnished a very concise and clear account of the various processes by which our book-plates are produced and reproduced, and the numerous and ingenious methods of manipulation resorted to in their manufacture....

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Madame Butterfly is the story of the young Japanese girl Cho-Cho San, who marries a flighty American naval officer, and is thenceforth outcast from her relatives. Anxiously she awaits the return of her beloved husband, but when he finally anchors in the harbour, Cho-Cho San does not get the happy ending she was hoping for. This short story by John Luther Long has inspired Giacomo Puccini to write the opera of the same name. (Introduction by Availle)...

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Fiction, Literature, Romance

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. Windsor. Before PAGE?s house. [Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER, and SIR HUGH EVANS.] SHALLOW: Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire. SLENDER: In the county of Gloucester, justice of peace and ?Coram.? SHALLOW: Ay, cousin Slender, and ?Custalorum. SLENDER: Ay, and ?Rato-lorum? too; and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself ?Armigero,? in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, ?Armigero.? SHALLOW: Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years....

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Als der berückend gutaussehende Jüngling Dorian Gray sein Porträt betrachtet, kommt ihm der Gedanke, wie herrlich es sein müsste, wenn das Bild an seiner Stelle altern könnte, während er selbst für immer jung und schön bliebe. Als sich dieser fantastische Wunsch zu erfüllen beginnt, genießt Dorian seine ewige Jugend in vollen Zügen - während in seiner Seele ein grauenvolles Werk der Zerstörung seinen Lauf nimmt. (Zusammenfassung von Al-Kadi)...

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Literature

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil?s Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths. ?Run, Jimmie, run! Dey?ll get yehs,? screamed a retreating Rum Alley child. ?Naw,? responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, ?dese micks can?t make me run.?...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Queen Guenever rode a-Maying with certain knights of the Round Table and clad all in green. So it befell in the month of May, Queen Guenever called unto her knights of the Table Round; and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-Maying into woods and fields beside Westminster. And I warn you that there be none of you but that he be well horsed, and that ye all be clothed in green, outher in silk outher in cloth; and I shall bring with me ten ladies, and every knight shall have a lady behind him, and every knight shall have a squire and two yeomen; and I will that ye all be well horsed....

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Excerpt: Shanghaied This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses. There had been a great number of debutantes ?coming out? that season in San Francisco by means of afternoon teas, pink, lavender, and otherwise. This particular tea was intended to celebrate the fact that Josie Herrick had arrived at that time of her life when she was to wear her hair high and her gowns long, and to have a ?day? of her own quite distinct from that of her mother....

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Excerpt: Alexander Pope?s ?The Rape of the Lock?.

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Excerpt: The Shade of Cardinal Richelieu. In a splendid chamber of the Palais Royal, formerly styled the Palais Cardinal, a man was sitting in deep reverie, his head supported on his hands, leaning over a gilt and inlaid table which was covered with letters and papers. Behind this figure glowed a vast fireplace alive with leaping flames; great logs of oak blazed and crackled on the polished brass andirons whose flicker shone upon the superb habiliments of the lonely tenant of the room, which was illumined grandly by twin candelabra rich with wax-lights....

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Excerpt: Speeches: Literary and Social by Charles Dickens.

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Contents SPEECH: EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841.................................................................................................................. 6 SPEECH: JANUARY, 1842. ..................................................................................................................................... 10 SPEECH: FEBRUARY 1842. ................................................................................................................................... 11 SPEECH: FEBRUARY 7, 1842. ............................................................................................................................... 15 SPEECH: NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1842. ..................................................................................................... 19 SPEECH: MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 5, 1843. ................................................................................................... 23 SPEECH: LIVERPOOL, FEBRUARY 26, 1844. .................................................................................................... 28 SPEECH: BIRMINGHAM, FEBRUARY 28, 1844. .........................................................

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Fiction about (or involving) motion pictures started appearing in the late nineteenth-century, when writers first became aware of early kinetoscope technologies. These stories grew more and more popular as the public became increasingly fascinated with the movies, the film industry, and the odd inhabitants of Hollywood. These stories reflect and often respond to the public's fascination with the movies; at the same time, they also reveal their fears and anxieties about the new medium. The first volume of this anthology collects 16 short stories and a monologue about motion picture technology and the film industry published between 1895 and 1922. (Summary by ChuckW)...

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Fiction, Short stories

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Introduction: In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the greater interest....

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Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich is a work of humorous fiction by Stephen Leacock first published in 1914. It is the follow-up to his 1912 classic Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Like that work, it is a sequence of interlocking stories set in one town, but instead of focusing on a small Canadian town in the countryside, it is set in a major American metropolis and its characters are the upper crust of society. Although currently not as well-known as the earlier book, Arcadian Adventures was extremely popular in North America at the time of its publication and for a while was considered the greater success. It was also translated and published by the Bolshevik government soon after the 1917 revolution and it became a bestseller in the Soviet Union....

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Comedy, Humor

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Excerpt: A chapter of which the last page only is of any importance comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker?s eye to raise in bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of incredulity....

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A cautionary tale about the evils of interference, matchmaking and good intentions turned awry, Emma is the study of a young woman raised without sufficient discipline or occupation. Handsome, clever and rich, Emma is the epitome of what a young woman should be in Regency England, except for the fact that her indulgent father and lack of a mother have left her spoiled and used to getting her own way. Emma's only true critic and voice of reason is Mr. Knightley, a gentleman whose opinion she values greatly. She delights in meddling in the romantic affairs of everyone around her, thinking celibacy is a privilege she alone can enjoy by virtue of her social standing. In the end, Emma is forced to acknowledge both her own lack of insight into the motives of others, and admit her need for a companion who can challenge her to become a better woman. (Summary by Moira Fogarty)...

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Romance, Fiction

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Amory Blaine grew up in a wealthy family and was given an Ivy League education. Without a need to learn a profession, he chiefly dabbled in literature and partying. His school chums were of similar background, and the ideas they reflected to each other grew in their minds to be of the greatest importance. Amory began to think of himself as somewhat of a character in a Rupert Brooke poem (from which the book's title is taken). World War I intervened in this happy fog and brought focus to some, doubt to others. In the rapidly changing technology of the war era, the financial underpinnings of the Blaine fortune began to fall apart. The deaths of Amory's parents left the finances without a rudder and as Amory's situation deteriorated he came to realize he had only his interest in literature to fall back upon. Meanwhile, a series of young women traipsed through his life, attracted to his handsome face and bright wit like moths to a candle. But Amory could never master the role of being a real person... and, one by one, they traipsed out. This Side of Paradise was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel and was one of the nation's most popular ...

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Fiction

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Ozma of Oz was the third title in the Oz series by L. Frank Baum. In this book Dorothy is shipwrecked and lands on the shores of a fairy country that adjoins Oz, the land of Ev. There she meets Tiktok, a wind-up mechanical man; a talking chicken, Billina; and Ozma, the girl ruler of Oz who is leading a quest to rescue the royal family of Ev from their captivity by the Nome King. Dorothy is also reunited with her old friends, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. Together the adventurers travel to the Nome King’s underground kingdom and have many exciting adventures before returning to Oz, and for Dorothy, eventual return to her family in the “civilized” world. (Summary by Judy Bieber)...

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Children

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3 Robert Sheckley short stories that demonstrate the breathof his fantastic imagination. In Watchbird, the question can machines solve human problems? is answered with a resounding YES! But there may be a few unforeseen glitches. Just a few. Warrior Race drops us into an alien race of warriors who fight in a way you will never be able to imagine until you listen. And Beside Still Waters is a gentle story that shows us a man who really wants to get away from it all ... sitting on a rock in the asteroid belt with only a robot for a friend. No girls allowed! A poignant and unsettling story to say the least....

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Science fiction

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The Machine Stops is a short science fiction story. It describes a world in which almost all humans have lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual lives in isolation in a 'cell', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Most humans welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own. Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and are threatened with Homelessness. Eventually, the Machine apocalyptically collapses, and the civilization of the Machine comes to an end. (Wikipedia)Comment by book coordinator: A condensed rapidfire of details and ideas imagining a dystopian world. Good thing he made it a short story. And the world he describes feels so appalling, although we are good on the way to be where Forster imagined us - shocker. So imaginative for 1909! Staying at home with the telly and internet and instant messaging and videoconferencing, google and pizza delivery and all flats and all cit...

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Science fiction