The future of pulp and paper technology circa 1962, anyway.

>(Somewhere here I have the brochure from the grand opening of the
>company's brand new Engineering and Research Center in the 1950s.
>It's full of the grandiose optimism stereotypical of the era, about
>how the state-of-the-art facility would help the company harness the
>boundless power of science to make everything better forever. Kind of
>depressing to read now, when the building is a crumbling ruin and
>everything is not better forever, but at the time it must have been
>hard not to be swept along by the current. I scanned it once, a few
>years ago, since as far as we know it's the last copy. Maybe I should
>dig up the files and post them?)

http://www.eyrie-productions.com/G-GFX/GNP%20ERC%201962%20brochure.pdf

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

This is actually pretty timeless graphic design. With the exception of some minor trivialities (the font choice, the paper stock, the photos being in black and white) this could be laid out just like that today and it would work perfectly well. Well... maybe not the floor plan. That would never be published today for security reasons.

I'm curious, Ben. You say you might have the last copy of this particular curio. Does Millinocket have a Historical Society? Most towns do. My own little village along the Erie Canal has one. It isn't very big, but you can walk in and see all kinds of stuff like this. We have a whole case of similar documents to this one published by local heavy industry until we... stopped having local heavy industry. One imagines they'd like to have this.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>I'm curious, Ben. You say you might have the last copy of this
>particular curio. Does Millinocket have a Historical Society?

It does, although, as with so many things in small towns like this one, there are... certain political realities.

I've been meaning to check the special collections at the University of Maine's Fogler Library, where most of the original GNP's papers went, to see if they have a copy. If they don't, that would be my first choice of home for it. If they do, the town museum might be interested; the library might have as well, before the town council defunded it. Now that it's being operated at a loss by the Friends of the Library society, they probably don't have the bandwidth for keeping special documents.

Yeah, that's how fucked Millinocket is.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

... good lord, really?

In my neck of the woods, the original town library is usually one of the two or three oldest municipal buildings in the town, right after the town hall and a church of some sort. (Yeah, I know, churches aren't technically municipal buildings but in the early 19th century they might as well have been.) Having a functional library was just... what you did. It was considered part of being a civilized community.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>... good lord, really?
>
>In my neck of the woods, the original town library is usually one of
>the two or three oldest municipal buildings in the town, right
>after the town hall and a church of some sort. (Yeah, I know, churches
>aren't technically municipal buildings but in the early 19th century
>they might as well have been.) Having a functional library was just...
>what you did. It was considered part of being a civilized community.

Of course. What does it contribute to the Bottom Line? Nothing, it's just a time waster.

NOTE: Those who espouse shut views are morons. And *I* am not one of them.

It is one of those requirements, like a fire department and a source of groceries.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-02-16 AT 02:32 PM (EDT)
 
>... good lord, really?

Yup. Really.

Paraphrased somewhat for brevity, the council's logic is, "It costs money and people nowadays don't read anyway. Also, something something the Internet."

The council chairman at the time was a man who has been known for openly mocking people who use their words—we had a lot of trouble with him at the newspaper back in the day—and I'm sure it didn't bother him in the slightest to hang the Financial Hardship sign on closing the library. If he could get away with it, he'd probably do the same to the school district. As it is, the council routinely forces two or three local votes a year on whether it should honor the budget the School Board presents each spring. (N.B. This is not something that, under the town charter, should even be open for discussion; the School Board sets the school budget and the Town Council comes up with a way to fund it, period. But that doesn't stop them from demanding vote after vote until it comes out the way they wanted, which is always forcing the school district to take less money than it asked for.)

This man, by the by, is no longer the chairman of the Town Council, nor even a member of the Town Council...

... because that body hired him to be town manager. I presume he did at least have the sense to recuse himself from the vote about whether to give him the job.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>... good lord, really?
>
>Yup. Really.
>
>Paraphrased somewhat for brevity, the council's logic is, "It costs
>money and people nowadays don't read anyway. Also, something
>something the Internet."
>

If Millinocket offered free Internet access to all its residents, they might have one-quarter of an argument there. Maybe.

Since, as far as I'm aware, no municipality in the United States does this...

>
>This man, by the by, is no longer the chairman of the Town Council,
>nor even a member of the Town Council...
>
>... because that body hired him to be town manager.
>

Thus do we refute Lawrence J. Peter's hypothesis of management.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>>Paraphrased somewhat for brevity, the council's logic is, "It costs
>>money and people nowadays don't read anyway. Also, something
>>something the Internet."
>>
>
>If Millinocket offered free Internet access to all its residents, they
>might have one-quarter of an argument there. Maybe.
>
>Since, as far as I'm aware, no municipality in the United States does
>this...

One of the best counters that I'm seeing in the "what use are libraries in the Information Age" arguments<1> is the Cleveland library system's Makerspace, which includes everything you'd need to do basically anything from get a prototype up for a hardware company to record and mix an album. Including instruments.

See: http://cpl.org/thelibrary/subjectscollections/techcentral/makerspace-2/ for more information.

Also, per Adam Savage (who was invited to the grand opening) one of the things they're doing as part of that project is putting together a playbook for other municipalities trying to put together a similar thing, including "how to convince your city council that it won't cost a fuckton of money"

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

<1> Which is just dumb. We're in the fucking Information Age, maybe we should listen to people who have dedicated their lives to figuring out how to store and catalog and distribute information despite the fact that it's shitall expensive and doesn't pay for dick. But I digress.

>We're in the fucking Information Age, maybe
>we should listen to people who have dedicated their lives to figuring
>out how to store and catalog and distribute information despite the
>fact that it's shit-all expensive and doesn't pay for dick. But I
>digress.

I'm especially in favor of libraries for one reason:

I can go in, grab a book, and read it without having to turn on my Bullshit Detector. If it's fiction, I know; if it's non-fiction, I know.

On the internet, I need to guard against things that sound right, but are completely woven from lies - and some people don't even bother.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>I'm especially in favor of libraries for one reason:
>
>I can go in, grab a book, and read it without having to turn on my
>Bullshit Detector. If it's fiction, I know; if it's non-fiction, I
>know.
>
>On the internet, I need to guard against things that sound right, but
>are completely woven from lies - and some people don't even bother.

Just because it's printed and the author and publisher claim nonfiction doesn't guard from this.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

>>I'm especially in favor of libraries for one reason:
>>
>>I can go in, grab a book, and read it without having to turn on my
>>Bullshit Detector. If it's fiction, I know; if it's non-fiction, I
>>know.
>>
>>On the internet, I need to guard against things that sound right, but
>>are completely woven from lies - and some people don't even bother.
>
>Just because it's printed and the author and publisher claim
>nonfiction doesn't guard from this.
>

True enough - but either I've been lucky, or such things don't make it into libraries.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>If Millinocket offered free Internet access to all its residents, they
>might have one-quarter of an argument there. Maybe.

It did, but you had to go to the library to use it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I was about to say...that's the sort of thing you have LIBRARIES for...

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

>I was about to say...that's the sort of thing you have LIBRARIES
>for...

To be fair, the free wifi did tend to encourage people to hang around the library, which is clearly not acceptable. You don't want to give the impression that the citizens are welcome to make themselves at home in public buildings.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>You don't want to give the impression that the citizens are welcome to make
>themselves at home in public buildings.

Well, no. Of course not. Heaven FORFEND!

I think that mentality like that is an excellent reason to punch people quite thoroughly in the nose.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

>>... good lord, really?
>
>Yup. Really.
>
>Paraphrased somewhat for brevity, the council's logic is, "It costs
>money and people nowadays don't read anyway. Also, something
>something the Internet."

Something I enjoy pointing out to idiots like this, although it took me forever to dig the link back up; a couple years ago Pew did a study and found that younger Americans (thirty and under at the time, which means most but not all millenials circa 2014) were actually reading more books than previous generations.

There are, of course, caveats as relates specifically to public libraries; younger people are more likely to buy books than borrow them, and overall library usage is flat. And lots of people aren't aware of all the services a library offers, but in that they aren't too different from older generations either. But the idea that Kids These Days don't care about reading anymore because they're too busy deciding what Instagram filter to use just doesn't hold water.

-Merc
Keep Rat

> Now that it's being operated at a loss by the Friends of
>the Library society, they probably don't have the bandwidth for
>keeping special documents.

Slate ran an article about a week ago on this sort of thing; it's mostly about the challenges of building and maintaining archives in the digital age, dealing not just the archival loss of our common history, but its active and relentless commodification. Money grafs:

The (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) paper had an existing relationship with Newsbank, a digitization and archiving company based in Florida. In 2014, Newsbank approach the Milwaukee Public Library about buying the rights to the Journal-Sentinel archives. The MPL already subscribed to two Newsbank services—an obituary archive and a modern database of the Journal-Sentinel–and regularly purchases proprietary databases whose subscription fees are in the low five figures. But it couldn’t afford the Journal-Sentinel archives.

In May, Newsbank came to the MPL again, offering a menu of purchase options. The most expansive offer was almost $1.5 million, with an annual hosting fee. That nearly amounted to the library's entire $1.7 million annual materials budget. “To be asked to purchase outright something for a million dollars is just out of our scope of possibility,” said Paula Kiely, the library director.

Then, in August, Newsbank let the other shoe drop: According to Urban Milwaukee, Gannett—which purchased the paper in April—asked the Journal-Sentinel to ask Google to remove the paper’s digital archives, which the company did. It’s harder to sell a product when it’s being given away for free, after all.

Things aren't all doom-and-gloom for the good people of Milwaukee, or at least historians thereof, of course, as their newspaper archives are still searchable on microfilm at the paper itself, and there's a digital solution forthcoming... which all, of course, depend on the paper itself not folding anytime soon.

-Merc
Keep Rat