I vote for Mixel's idea. It has the additional benefit of ensuring some discussion between folk on the books requested, which means that one benefits from 'interpretative' aspects of 'the other', and not just from a subjective 'private' read. It also builds friendships and collaborative possibilities. And I certainly do not feel comfortable digging around in CLEA's basement!
I understand your problem with the CLEA basement, but one reason to centralize most books there is because CLEA itself owns quite some interesting books that are hardly ever consulted by anybody (e.g. things on evolution, cognition and consciousness ordered by Liane who has now left CLEA). It would be silly not to make use of that potential. Moreover, I expect that most ECCO PhD students would have at least a (temporary) residence in CLEA.
But I agree with Mixel's idea: making a good database that can be consulted over the web is the most efficient way to provide access to the literature. The database should include where you can find a book or paper (e.g. in CLEA, in the VUB central library, in the CLWF collection, in someone's private collection, on the web) and provide an as efficient as possible connection to that location (e.g hyperlink to VUB library webpage or PDF file on the web, email to owner or library administrator to request a book...). In that way you should be able to request a book stored in a place to which you don't have direct access (e.g. message to Mixel "Could you please bring me your copy of Clark?")
A suggestion for discussion: It appears that I will be reassigned to a new office in C building which because of voice-dictation I shall have to my self (am I blessed or what?). I am happy to suggest that I leave a spare key with out secretary with a list of people who belong to ECCO, and if I am not there, or it is outside of the strange hours I generally keep, perhaps they could respectfully browse the library in there as it seems that there will be space. There should be no problem with security for example, as anything I own of value (????) would be in my filing cabinet anyway. If anyone has any other idea along these lines perhaps it should be examined?
Ideally, ECCO would have its own offices, including a library, somewhere in an unused VUB wing, but given the scarcity of space that is merely an ideal for the future. While some of the books could be stored in your office (at least your own books), a solution with a key that is to be requested from a secretary who has to check who you are, and who may not be around much of the time, seems at least as awkward as the CLEA basement, and has the disadvantage that it cannot include the CLEA books...
I have Dan Dennett's Freedom Evolves (on its way from Canada), but suggest that what we begin to do is move away from the more 'popular science' versions of the subjects of common interest (not that Dennett's book is exactly non-academic), and that we start getting into the meat of some of these issues. (Apologies if they are needed �?). I really think we should be striving for rigour, and whilst most subjects are often approached through 'softer' versions of the subject initially (a necessary step), ramping-up our expectations would be a good thing. Of course I speak for myself, intellectually, too.
I think we need both more introductory/popular books for the people starting with a new subject AND more advanced books.
I would like the online data base to have information that includes the academic papers touching in some significant way on these subjects (selected by ourselves and the next-neighbourhood of colleagues), and papers which critique the ideas in the book. I see no reason why the digital database should not commence immediately. Why wait? We will all just get busier and busier, so now is as good a time as any.
Mixel:
Still with a good database readable form the internet it would be as easy to borrow this books as they where in the house. So I like to skip the first stage and get more involved in the later one. I would love to start talking about webhosting for ECCO. We could create a separated workgroup on it.
As I said, the database, and by extension the website, for ECCO are priorities for me too, and if people like Mixel are volunteering to help set these up, I see no reason to wait. I have plenty of ideas for the kind of functionalities such a database/website should have, and I suggest we discuss these at our next meetings.
At the least I would like to see some intelligent "recommender system" that tells you which papers/books are most likely to be relevant for your specific research interests. This would require some possibility to search for keywords (which can be part of the title/abstract/personal reviews) and an easy way to enter personal evaluations of how good you found a book that you read. The generalized co-occurrence/Hebbian algorithsm that I have been developing should be able to derive taylormade recommendations from this, so that anybody consulting the database could indicate a number of keywords or publications that characterize their domain of interest, and would get an ordered list of the best publications to read (including our own publications!).
Another important principle is that such a database should be very easy to use, so that people would be inclined to enter a lot of data without having to be pressed to do so. More generally, a "collective intelligence" will emerge most easily if it provides immediate INDIVIDUAL benefits, i.e. if the database would be so handy and useful that you would enter data for your own use (e.g. maintaining a bibliography of papers you read for your PhD thesis), even if it this didn't have any collective benefits (e.g. being able to use part of other people's bibliographies relevant to your work). Otherwise, you would need peer pressure or an outside authority to remind you to enter data for the collective benefit. (some of you may recognize my "mediator" theory of the evolution of social organization in this argument ;-)
The VUB as a whole is trying to move in this direction by creating an "electronic portfolio" and other database utilities for PhD students, but knowing them it may take a while before something truly handy comes out of this. So, it is worthwhile to move ahead on our own, offering the VUB an early example of what can be done. Still, we should try to coordinate our efforts with theirs so as not to create incompatible systems, or needlessly duplicating efforts. I'm in contact with Tanguy Coenen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, a young researcher who is trying to press the VUB into developing a more intelligent shared database/website for researchers, and via him we may try to influence their efforts. I include one of his proposals (in Dutch) as attachment.
Francis --
Francis Heylighen Center "Leo Apostel" Free University of Brussels http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
