Weibel Lines

Book Review: The Alchemist

The Alchemist is a pantheistic parable.  Paulo Coelho’s most popular work has a charming simplicity about it, embodied in the notion that we all have a Personal Legend, a destiny of dreams accessible only via the paths of courage and passion. That our hearts speak in a Universal Language most fluently to children (and drunkards and the elderly) is a common enough theme in literature. Coelho makes his case through a naïve Andalusian shepherd who is willing to risk his life to follow a dream strengthened in credibility by recurrence and the intercession of Melchizedek, King of Salem (not for nothing is Coelho called an occultist, though simple spiritualist is probably closer to the mark).  There's nothing cultish here... just supernatural realism churned with the sort of advice we're inclined to give our children and not follow ourselves... and a willingness to see and follow omens.

In Coelho's view, the burdens of adult life steal destiny from us, replacing it with the false gods of comfort and illusory security. The Language of the World, of the heart, of all things in their singular identities is accessible, but only through courage and passion, and the taking of risks these attributes enable.

God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures… things have to be transmitted this way [person to person] because they were made up from pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words.

The Alchemist is a more serious work than, say, Peter Pan, but they have in common the evocation of belief that is itself of value, irrespective of its ‘reality’. Fate is fate, but it is inclined to be dormant without courageous belief leavened with passion. Together, they support a transformative self-fulfillment that creates new futures.  For all this seriousness, I found a good deal of Monty Pythonian whimsy in this slim volume as well.  Altogether a satisfying read.  My only complaint? It wasn't long enough... I had to start Zahir before i fell asleep on the dark path over the Amazon.  More on that soon.

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Image: The Brazillian Congress, 07-07-07

Characteristics of Names and Identifiers

My colleague, Diane Vizine-Goetz, and I were ruminating about names and identifiers today, and reflecting on the daunting challenges of deconstructing descriptive practice with the idea of reconstructing them with greater effectiveness.  The library community is deeply immersed in such efforts, the hallmark of which is the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, or FRBR, which has since spawned related efforts (the Functional Requirements for Authority Data, and more recently, the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records).

Today's discussion had to do with modeling names and identifiers, raising the question of whether they are different sorts of entities, or rather are variations on the same theme.  Diane referred me to the FRAD report which provides for definitions and attributes of names and identifiers.

One useful way to determine the similarity of two abstraction is to examine the attributes defined for each, and doing so in this particular case revealing:

Names Attributes:
    type or category (personal, corporate, family, trade...)
    scope of usage
    dates of usage
    language
    character set
    transliteration scheme (for conversion across character sets)

Identifier Attributes:
    type    (domain of authority - isbn, issn, urn...)
    string (unique identifier within a domain)
    suffix (checksum)

So, while it is easy to conceive of names and identifiers as closely related means of reference, their attributes are distinct, and other of their functional characteristics are distinct as well.

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Image: children playing on the Mongolian steppe (2004)

    

Testament

A yard on a rural country road in Licking County, Ohio