Varna’s Mind

Universities house an enormous amount of information and their libraries are often the center of it all. You don’t have to be affiliated with any university to take advantage of some of what they have to offer. From digital archives, to religious studies, to national libraries, these university libraries from around the world have plenty of information for you. There are many resources for designers as well. Although this is mainly a blog that caters to designers and artists I have decided to include many other libraries for all to enjoy.

DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Capturing images of manuscripts, art, and artifacts, digital libraries are an excellent way of both preserving the past and sharing it with everyone.

1. Harvard University Library. Browse through 24 different collections ranging from cultural images of eastern Asia to 19th century American trade cards.
2. Yale University Library: Digital Collections. Find ancient manuscripts or read a classic all preserved digitally courtesy of the Yale University Library.
3. Indiana University Digital Library Program. Download manuscripts from Isaac Newton or view photographs, film literature, and music from the collections at this library.
4. Michigan State University Digital and Multimedia Center. Find several texts from authors such as Joseph Conrad, Aesop’s Fables, cookbooks, and texts on orchids or veterinary medicine in PDF format.
5. Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections. Browse through one of over 10 different digital collections that range from medieval and early Renaissance manuscripts to architectural drawings or visit the online exhibitions for even more.
6. Rutgers University Digital Library Projects. Learn about the history of alcohol, New Jersey, Italy’s people, and much more in this diverse digital library.
7. Ohio State University Libraries Collections. See photos of Bird’s expedition to the South Pole, learn about the women of Burlesque, and more in these digital archives.
8. Syracuse University Digital Library. Find interesting information on the history of the New York area as well as recordings of popular WWII songs.
9. Ohio University Libraries Digital Exhibits. Learn about Ohio history, visits from important people, read WWII papers, and more in these archives.
10. Brown University Library, Center for Digital Initiatives. This collection includes such interesting topics ranging from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, and African American and Yiddish sheet music.
11. JSU Houston Cole Library Digital Collections. In addition to profiles of several local historical figures, there is a collection of oral histories from people who lived through historic eras of the early to mid 20th century in America.

INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARIES

These digital libraries either have a focus on a culture other than that of the United States or are housed in another country.

1. The Digital South Asia Library. Sponsored by University of Chicago, this library provides images, reference material, statistics, indexes, and more all focusing on South Asia.
2. Cambridge University Library Digital Image Collections. Study ancient texts, photographs from the late 19th century through the mid 20th century, Pascal’s Treatise on the Arithmetic Triangle, and more.
3. Nagoya University Library. The manuscripts in these digital databases are in Japanese, as are most of the sites (with some English and French). Whether you know any Japanese or not, if you appreciate the beauty of ancient Japanese manuscripts, you can randomly click through these sites and find some beautiful images.
4. Ryukoku University Electronic Exhibition. The digital collection from this university in Kyoto, Japan offers glimpses of art and manuscripts with descriptions of each in English.

BOOKS & TEXTS

These libraries offer books or texts for you to read online and free of charge.

1. Universal Digital Library. Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, this site offers one million online texts touching on literature, the arts, and science.
2. The Perseus Digital Library. Find Greek and Latin classics, English Renaissance, and more on this site. Currently, a newer, more modern version is in testing, so feel free to give that a try too.
3. The Oxford Text Archive. Scroll through these digitally preserved texts for access to hundreds of classic texts. If the text is available for download, it will be designated “free” to the right of the link.
4. Kelvin Smith Library eBooks. This listing ranges from links to full-text reference material to style guides to classic dramas. They also have an exclusive collection of early American and British books.
5. University of Chicago Library EOS. Find image-based electronic texts available to all from the University of Chicago’s collection.
6. The University of Adelaide Library e-Books. This Australian library offers free texts to all. Browse by author, title, chronology, or theme.
7. Literary Resources on the Net. Hosted by Rutgers University, you can find any number of classic texts here categorized by category.
8. The Internet Classics Archive. Find major classics, including some Chinese and Persian texts, on this site hosted by MIT.
9. Renascence Editions. Find English language texts written between 1477 and 1799 at this site hosted by the University of Oregon. Scroll through the alphabetical listing to find texts by author.
10. The Beck Center for Electronic Collections. This collection of resources hosted by Emory University offers projects such as Women’s Genre Fiction, The Belfast Group, and the W.B. Yeats Collection, all of which provide downloadable texts pertaining to each topic.
11. Carrie: An Electronic Library. Hosted by the University of Kansas, this online library offers several collections with focus mainly on history and social sciences.

MEDICAL LIBRARIES

These libraries offer medical information for both the professional and the lay person.

1. Welch Medical Library. This library, courtesy of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, offers a search feature for articles published in medical journals and online. They also have Subject Guides under the “eResources” section that offers links to topics ranging from Alternative Medicine to Grants and Funding to Writing and Publishing.
2. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Care Center. Each page at this site provides a wealth of information explaining about specific types of cancer as well as topics related to cancer such as pain, fatigue, and genetics.
3. Duke University Medical Center Library Online. Get databases, journals, tutorials, tools, and more at this medical library.
4. Lamar Soutter Library. Courtesy of University of Massachusetts, this library offers plenty of information for the general public with access levels clearly labeled on most resources.
5. Michigan Ear Institute Medical Library. Find several articles about diagnosis and treatment of ear issues in this online library intended for both professionals and laypersons.
6. South Carolina Department of Mental Health. Geared toward both the professional and clients and their families, this site offers a wealth of information from the diagnostic stage to treatment.
7. Encyclopedia of Psychology. This site run by Jacksonville State University provides links to anything related to psychology. Read about organizations, learn about the major theories, or find out about a career in the field.
8. Children’s Hospital Boston Interactive Features. Click on these features to make neurons fire, see cell growth as you travel through cancer stages, create red blood cells, and more.
9. Tufts Open Courseware. Tufts University medical school has put several medical courses online for anyone to access.
10. Bastyr University. Focusing on natural health medicine, this university library offers a nice database with resources for natural medicine.

LEGAL LIBRARIES

Whether you are studying the law or are just interested in it, these libraries have information for you.

1. UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy. This archive provides a rich resource for all formative laws taking place between 1995 through 2002.
2. Berkman Center for Internet & Society. A part of Harvard Law, find publications and research that pertain to Internet law.
3. Emory Law Ready Reference. This site offers links to free primary and secondary research sources. Find an Internet Legal Research Guide among many other guides.
4. Santa Clara Law Library. Find lots of legal resources available on the Internet as well as legal research guides here.
5. Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute. Find procedures, codes, and more at this resource for public legal information.
6. New Jersey Digital Legal Library. Hosted by Rutgers University Library, you can find papers on New Jersey law and legal history here.
7. Tarlton Law Library. From the University of Texas School of Law, this library offers access to plenty of information for the general public.
8. USC Gould School of Law. This library provides users online access to journals, legal resources, and electronic resources.
9. Wise Law Library. In addition to the databases, this site also offers links to helpful legal websites, research tools, and library tools courtesy of University of Colorado Law.
10. O’Quinn Law Library. From University of Houston, this library has access to databases as well as a few special collections available online.

NATIONAL LIBRARIES OF EUROPE

The following libraries are both national libraries that offer a glimpse into the culture and history of the country they represent as well as hold affiliations with universities.

1. National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This library is open to both those affiliated with the university and general readership, but note that there is not an English version available.
2. The National and University Library in Zagreb. This library in Croatia offers collections of ancient papers and manuscripts available online.
3. Copenhagen University Library. In conjunction with the National Library, this site offers a wide range of materials available in both English and Danish.
4. National and University Library of Iceland. Look at ancient maps of Iceland or explore the multiple databases available on this site. Some areas are restricted to those associated with the university.
5. National and University Library St. Kliment Ohridski – Skopje. Available in English, this library of the former Yugolslov Republic of Macedonia offers a limited amount of information online, but you can access some databases. Members of the library have access to more sections.
6. National and University Library of Slovenia. The digital library offers access to many national treasures of Slovenian history. Much of the website can be navigated in English.

WORLD RELIGION LIBRARIES

From various types of Christianity to Judaism to Buddhism, these libraries offer an opportunity for religious research.

1. Hartford Seminary Library. Find books, dissertations, and more on Christian theology here. Some access is restricted to students of the seminary.
2. Brigham Young University Digital Collections. Click on “Text Collections” for a wide range of available texts including children’s literature, sermons of John Donne, and a huge collection of Mormon literature.
3. The Divinity Library, Vanderbilt University. Get the revised common lectionary, access their many free databases, and read guides on how to do religious research at this library.
4. University of California Library Religious Studies. Use research tools, use library guides, and browse through the religious studies collection at this library.
5. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library. Research with the online databases, take advantage of tutorials, and more at this site.
6. The Catholic University of America Library. Research religious studies, philosophy, and canon laws at this library.
7. Ostrow Library at American Jewish University. Search databases, take advantage of suggested links, and more at this library focusing on Jewish culture and civilization.
8. Digital Library and Museum of Buddhist Studies. Hosted by National Taiwan University Library, this site offers scriptures, tools, and more to help your study of Buddhism.
9. Al – Islam Digital Library. Discover Islam by browsing through material selected from our Library. A simple guide for those who wish to journey through material available in the Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library in order to find out more about Islam as taught by the Prophet and his family.

SPECIALIZED COLLECTION

From maps to architectural images to information on deafness, these libraries offer a very specialized collection.

1. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Study topographical maps from around the world at this library.
2. Texas Tech University Libraries 3D Animation Lab. Learn the basics and find some handy tools to get you started with creating your own 3D animation.
3. United Nations University Library. Browse through this online library with the mission of solving global concerns and bringing peace worldwide.
4. News and Newspapers Online. A service of the University Libraries of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, this library will help you find current news anywhere in the world.
5. SPIRO. Courtesy of University of California, Berkeley, you can find over 270,000 architectural images in both slide and photograph format.
6. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library. Find two online collections that offer images of ancient Chinese maps.
7. Documenting the American South. Hosted by the University of North Carolina, you can find full texts by various authors that document the Southern Americana heritage.
8. University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. Read more than 85,000 human rights documents at this online library.
9. Gallaudet University Library. This library has an extensive section on deaf research including statistics, deaf people and animals, ways librarians can communicate, and more.
10. Hargrett Library Rare Map Collection. View more than 800 maps ranging over a 500 year time span in this online collection from University of Georgia Libraries.

ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Whether you are researching Mark Twain or war in the 20th century, these libraries offer resources to help you.

1. HighWire Press. Hosted by Stanford University, this free repository holds journals and other academic articles available to the general public.
2. Mark Twain Project. Co-sponsored by the University of California, you can find texts, documents, and research available online about the life and works of Mark Twain.
3. Project Euclid. Sponsored by Cornell University, this site offers online resources for math and statistics.
4. NARCIS. Hosted by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, this database provides access to scientific papers based out of the Netherlands.
5. The World of Dante. Study Dante’s Inferno online courtesy of the University of Virginia. It has been tagged using SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) to enhance the interface and study of this poem.
6. Southwestern Writers Collection. Texas State University houses a huge collection of manuscripts and information on southwestern writers. Much of the information is available online in the archives.
7. Peace and War in the 20th Century. From McMaster University Library in Ontario, this library provides records, case studies, a time line, and more focusing on war and peace around the world in the 20th century.
8. Internet Public Library. Founded by University of Michigan School of Information and hosted by Drexel University’s College of Information Science & Technology, this incredibly comprehensive library has plenty to offer.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITES

These American university libraries have plenty to offer to anyone who takes the time to explore what is available.

1. University of Texas Libraries. Browse through the multiple libraries and museums available on this site. Some access is restricted to those affiliated with the university, but there is plenty of information for the general public.
2. Georgetown University Library. Search you databases, journals, and special collections at this combination of both the Lauinger Library and the Blommer Science Library.
3. Princeton University Library . This library offers lots of information for the general public. Be sure to check out their incredible reference database too.
4. LSU Libraries: Special Collections. While only parts of these special collections are available online, you can learn about the oral history of Louisiana, rare books, and the Civil War.
5. University of Nevada, Reno Libraries. Find Basque books and films, information on Earth sciences and mining, and maps and history of the Nevada area at this library.
6. Washington University Libraries. Ask a librarian, find journal articles, and browse through reference sources here.
7. Howard University Library System. Students and non-students alike can take advantage of the databases, catalog, and faculty papers.
8. University of Delaware Library. In addition to access to five libraries, you can also view a digital collection, instructional media collection, and other special collections.
9. University of Virginia Library. This library offers a good selection of labs, such as the digital media lab, which the general public can access portions of online.
10. J. Willard Marriott Library. From University of Utah, this library offers a good selection of special collections, digital collections, and more.

INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES

Travel around the world from your computer and learn what these international university libraries have to offer.

1. The University of Edinburgh. The resources here are available to the general public; however, most licensed electronic resources are not available to non-university people.
2. The Library at UCD Dublin. While much of the information is restricted to either those associated with the university or visiting scholars, the general public can access electronic resources including eBooks, online reference sources, and more.
3. University of Oxford Bodleian Library e-Resources. This library offers a good selection of resources available to all ranging from digital archives to research articles written by Oxford authors.
4. Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne. Check out the electronic resources for the biggest selection available to the general public at this library. The site is completely in French.
5. Free University of Berlin Universitatsbibliothek. Research 700 databases and 20,000 journals in this university’s digital library. The site is available in English, but some of the pages may only be available in German.
6. Roskilde University Library. Of the open-access services available at this library, there is a good mix of information in both English and Danish.
7. Stockholm University Library. Search the databases, e-books, and e-journals available at this library. Not all information is accessible by the general public, but what is available is clearly marked.
8. University Library Ghent. This library in Belgium offers digital databases with historic photographs and more, a section with a five-year focus on architecture, and much more. Some of the site is available in English.
9. Open University of Catalonia. Search for information in English, Spanish, or Catalan in this library that offers an online collection ranging across many topics including the arts, philosophy, labor sciences, law, marketing, tourism, and more.
10. University of Zurich. This university has made several libraries and online databases available for use. There is a mix of resources in both English and German.
11. National University of Singapore Libraries. Get links to information about Singapore from government to statistics as well as the ability to search the university databases.

I am perhaps a little more hopeful, though I would agree that the changes are unlikely to come in the university setting. The elephant in the room is that the currently existing university and college system is simply unsustainable. When Reagan changed the funding of college from state governments and grants to loans he basically killed the university system.

It is like the patient my father operated on when he worked in an ER. The man walked in with a little hole in his chest joking The small caliber bullet had passed through his heart. He was dead already, he just didn’t know it.

Americans who are shown the door at 18 simply can not compete with Europeans who often leave home in their mid thirties, and Chinese and Indians who pay a tenth or even a hundredth as much for housing.

As wages fall to reflect these realities college education is swiftly becoming a bad deal for Americans who have to pay for themselves as opposed to Europeans or Chinese. For minority groups who make less money with their degrees it already doesn’t make sense to pay for a four year degree.

The sad truth we all want to deny is that the African American male who doesn’t make any plans to attend a four year institutional is making a logical not a lazy choice. Soon this will be true for all Americans. Only those who graduate with advance degrees will recoup their investment.

Colleges seem totally oblivious to this. They waste money on luxury dorms and providing the farm leagues for the NFL and NBA. They are spending more on administration and less on students. Just like the housing market they are providing a service that their customers just can’t afford.

Something will have to radically change and soon. The vast majority of the children of people who went to college will not be attending anything similar, they simply can’t afford it.

Something new will come. It won’t be able to be a four year party. It may have to be combined with some sort of required military or public service. It will have to be more vocational, but also life long.

Hopefully more people will think of themselves as life long thinkers and new more democratic institutions will arise to support classical concepts of education.

The first step is realizing we can’t keep what we have now, but what comes next might be even better.

— Robert Lee Hotchkiss

An article published today in TIME magazine explores that little medication with which so many of us are intimately familiar: the pill. The piece is TIME’s cover story, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of the pill for contraceptive use. But the fact that we celebrate the 50th anniversary of approval, rather than invention, kind of says it all. The pill has been under ideological fire since the first tiny tablet hit a woman’s palm. And the impact it’s had on women’s autonomy and freedom has been – as decades have passed – nearly equal to the fear (and subsequent restriction) it’s instilled in those who believe in curtailing reproductive rights.

TIME’s Executive Editor Nancy Gibbs takes her time exploring and illuminating the contradictions of the pill, particularly the perceived impact – or lack thereof – it’s had on the family structure, romantic relationships, and women’s freedom. She does an excellent job of addressing the myriad factors that affected women’s lives during the advent of the pill, and is careful not to put too much stock in the medication itself. “If there were no opportunities out there, it would just be another contraceptive but not revolutionary,” Gibbs quotes Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril and Liberation. “The revolutionary potential of the Pill could never have been achieved without the opportunities that came about because of women’s activism.”

That activism has taken us up to the present moment, when the fight for coverage of birth control – including abortion – nearly stopped health care reform in its tracks. Despite its safety and effectiveness, only in last month’s sweeping health care reform bill has the pill been recognized as worth greater coverage for the millions of American women who use it. As Jennifer L. Pozner noted in a piece published around the advent of Viagra, erections have for years been treated with greater respect by insurance companies than a woman’s right to control her reproductive health:

“Nearly half of approximately 300,000 men who seek renewed sexual vigor via Viagra each week are being fully or partially reimbursed by their health insurers…Only 33 percent of large group health plans cover the birth control pill. Other contraceptive methods are even less financially accessible. Is it any wonder that women of childbearing age pay 68% more in out-of-pocket medical expenses than their male counterparts?”

Just last weekend during our Progressive Women’s Voices training, WMC Board Member and former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt discussed how the massive discrepancy between coverage for Viagra and birth control actually helped underline the need for the latter. Planned Parenthood and other organizations had been trying for years to get greater insurance for the pill, but it wasn’t until Viagra came on the scene and was almost immediately covered by insurance companies, that Feldt and others were able to harness the controversy and generate a real media discussion. In raising awareness about the hypocrisy of insurance companies, they were ultimately able to force a significant shift in insurance coverage for birth control.

In short, it’s not just about the pill – it’s about the payment. Women’s Media Center has been tackling this issue, particularly within our campaign for reproductive rights, NotUndertheBus.com, which AlterNet listed in their Top 10 Defining Feminist Moments of 2009. We’ve highlighted the need for birth control coverage in health care reform, and WMC President Jehmu Greene was asked to comment on it, underlining the “landmark legislation” that gives women access to birth control. The 50th anniversary of the pill’s FDA approval might be something to celebrate, but did it have to take this long to get greater access to insurance for it? Better late than never…if half a century qualifies as simply “late.”

Yes, she founded this organization, and she’s a personal hero, but I’ve got to stop for a moment and quote Gloria Steinem, who Gibbs quotes throughout her article, and who forecast the ideological war generated by birth control. “The real danger of the contraceptive revolution,” Steinem wrote in 1962, “may be the acceleration of woman’s role change without any corresponding change of man’s attitude toward her role.”

I’d expand “man’s attitude” to that of all those against reproductive freedom; the pill is small, safe, and effective. It doesn’t end pregnancies, but prevents them. It’s easy to administer, and inexpensive to produce. The only issue seems to be that, with great help from those like Steinem, the pill revolutionized the independence of women. It’s hard coming to terms with the idea that this particular consequence of the pill should have made it a battleground for half a century, but yeah, Steinem called it.

Watch Gibbs discussing the significance of the pill, including an always-welcome Loretta Lynn reference: 

 

 

The Women's Media Center is a non-profit organization founded by Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan, dedicated to making women visible and powerful in the media.

 

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Inside Pixar’s Leadership

There were plenty of high profile people at the Economist event in March, but hands down the best session was a simple interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Martin Giles from the Economist did the interview, and did an excellent job letting Catmull cover some excellent territory.

Here’s the video, and below I transcribed my favorite quotes.

Interesting,  related to the talk I gave on The Myths of Innovation at the same event, how little he used the word innovation (I don’t think he says it once).

My favorite quotes from Ed Catmull’s talk at The Economist:

On the Socratic ideal of admitting ignorance:

“We’ve got these successful things going on and we mis-perceive how we got there. Or who the influences are. And we draw these wrong ideas and we then make a series of mistakes which are not well grounded in reality. Which means the things that are happening now that are wrong at Pixar are already happening and I can’t see them. And I have to start with that premise. And through all the history.. there is something going on here and I don’t know what it is.”

On secrets and ‘the management’:

Part of the behavior is I don’t know the answers. And at first that seems a little bit glib. But after awhile people get that I really don’t know the answer to a lot of these things. So we set it up so that the management really doesn’t tell people what to do. We discuss, we debate, [but] people start to refer to ‘the management’, and I say come on guys, there’s three of us, we’re all in this together, and then we’re very open and honest about the problems. Everyone feels like they own it, secrecy is very good at Pixar, it doesn’t get out into the blogs because they all know what’s wrong and it would be an act of betrayal because they want to participate in the discussion and I want them to.

On protecting a vision:

I do believe you want a vision, so you start off with a person who has a vision for a story. And we do things to try and protect that vision and its not easy to protect it, because they feel these pressures. They also have misconceptions about the creative process sometimes. We do have these people who we give a chance to on the belief they’re right, and can rise to the occasion, and we are wrong sometimes, because we can’t see what goes on in their heads. And our measure, because we can’t see inside people’s heads, is the team. If the team is functioning well, and healthy, it will solve the problem.

The process of giving feedback:

One of the protections is the notion that they have the final say so. Now this is a very hard thing to say because we say we are filmmaker led. The reason its hard is if they can’t lead the team, we will actually remove the person from it. That’s our version of what a failure is… it’s hard because it’s a personal thing. Until you reach that breaking point, you have to do everything you can.. sometimes its adding people to the team, sometimes its removing them, but as leaders we don’t tell them what to do. We have a structure so they get their feedback from their peers… every two or three months they present *the film* to the other filmmakers… and they will go through, and they will tear the film apart. And it’s very important for that dynamic to work, because it could be a brutal process, there needs to be the feeling they are all helping each other who wants that help. In order for that to work its important that no one in the room has the authority to tell the director they have to take their notes [make changes]. So no-one is taking a list of what you have to do to fix the film. All we can do is give the feedback and he goes off with the feedback… our job as leaders is to protect the dynamic in the room so that they’re honest with each other.

The idea of honesty as an abstraction easy to ignore:

They don’t want to walk in and embarrass themselves, they don’t want to say anything stupid, they don’t want to offend anyone, so these personal pressures and responses start to emerge. So I do see it happen, and it happened fairly recently, and I walked out, and I knew they weren’t honest. So then you call them in, maybe two or three people, and say why didn’t you say what you thought. And it’s a personal thing. So we have to change the dynamic.  When we have something tricky and that’s holding things back, we have to have a four person or five person meeting, where the dynamics are different. And sometimes where things are actually going pretty well, then you want to have a room of 25 people, see how it works, and let them express themselves and have them grow. But if you have 25 people in the room some of them then start to perform, rather than participate. So there is this balance, what is the state of the thing… we need to have honesty, we want to have honesty, but honest is a buzzword. Its one of these things we hear, everyone nods their head on, ‘it’s all true’, [but] the gap between the abstractions and where people actually do it is enormous. And people fill it in with all sorts of crap.

On the limits of platitudes:

I don’t like hard rules at all. I think they’re all bullshit.

Dealing with tough, competing constraints:

If I look at the range, you’ve got one [constraint] that is art school, I’m doing this for arts sake, Ratatouille and WALL-E clearly fall more on that side,  the other is the purely commercial side, where you’ve got a lot of films that are made purely for following a trend, if you go entirely for the art side then eventually you fail economically. if you go purely commercially then I think you fail from a soul point of view… we’ve got these elements pulling on both sides, the art side and the commercial side… and the the trick is not to let one side win.  That fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. And the forces of conservatism which are very strong and they want to go to a safe place. I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative, or I want to have enough time for this, and each one of those guys are pulling, and if any one of them wins, we lose. And i just want to stay right there in the middle.

On firing creative geniuses:

[At Pixar] there is very high tolerance for eccentricity, very creative, and to the point where some are strange… but there are a small number of people who are socially dysfunctional [and] very creative – we get rid of them. If we don’t have a healthy group then it isn’t going to work. There is this illusion that this person is creative and has all this stuff, well the fact is there are literally thousands of ideas involved in putting something like this together. And the notion of ideas as this singular thing is a fundamental flaw. There are so many ideas that what you need is that group behaving creatively. And the person with the vision I think is unique, there are very few people who have that vision.. but if they are not drawing the best out of people then they will fail.

We will support the leader for as long and as hard as we can, but the thing we can not overcome is if they have lost the crew. It’s when the crew says we are not following that person. We say we are director led, which implies they make all the final decisions, [but] what it means to us is the director has to lead.. and the way we can tell when they are not leading is if people say ‘we are not following’.

On managers self-destructive tendencies for creative work:

The notion that you’re trying to control the process and prevent error screws things up. We all know the saying it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And everyone knows that, but I Think there is a corollary: if everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up. It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and over plan things.

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• Posted Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 11:47 am

in Innovation, Management, creative thinking | 23 Comments » | Share