The Burner Public Library

he current state of written Burner knowledge on the Internet is at best an alphabet soup of websites, blogs, and message lists. Some of the most important information, critical material for the next generation of Burners, is gathering cobwebs in “walled garden” list-group archives where it can't benefit the Burners it was intended to help.

This “scatteredness” creates thousands of difficult to find pockets of Burner wisdom all over the digital world and it hinders our culture's growth and continuation. The next generation of Burners can't benefit from past successes and mistakes if that knowledge is buried in ancient lists or deleted with dead websites. Like all cultures, Burners need a permanent information storage and distribution mechanism - a historical collective memory to reference and build on.

The Burner Public Library (BPL) was created to fill this void... to preserve materials for the future and to freely offer Burner knowledge that is crucial, difficult to find, locked away, or in danger of being lost.

Welcome to the library. Please take what you need.

The Library Index

This expanding index organizes and links all materials in the Burner Public Library. Index topic names evolve as new materials are donated and older materials are re-sorted. Materials are unedited. A Google-like full text search is in development.

Project Status

Burner Public Library Development Start Date	January, 2009 (current version)
Online Date	November, 2010 (current version)
Current Project Phase	7. Collect Donated Materials.
Time To Project Completion	No end date. Project will continue indefinitely.

To learn more, jump down to Project Phases.

BPL Donation Guidelines

These guidelines were developed to shape the collection's content. Please read before donating materials to the library.

What The BPL Needs

Here at the beginning of the Materials Collection phase, the library needs just about any computer file you care to contribute. Here are a few suggestions:

• Documents related to Burner events (documents related to the Burning Man Festival's inner-workings and/or politics will not be accepted)
• Burn event planning documents
• Burner group organization documents (personal data must be re moved prior to donation)
• Volunteer motivation materials
• Directions and commentary on building artistic or unconventional structures.
• Burner How-To's
• Archival docs (examples: past issues of Regional Burn Front Gate Handouts, old Survival Guides, etc.)
• Regional Burn camp maps.
• Information and diagrams concerning temporary outdoor structures (examples: geodesic domes, yurts, tubes, etc.)
• Lists (examples: personal camping lists, fire safety to-do lists, costume sewing lists, Ranger equipment checklists, etc.)
• Camping food and drink recipes
• Audio interviews from Burn events
• Academic/research papers on Burner topics
• Graphs and charts (examples: Burn event patterns, attendance growth projections, weather vs. participation, etc.)
• Personal commentary on Burner topics (blog entries will not be accepted. Group discussion-list captures will not be accepted unless accompanied by the written permissions of all quoted participants at the time of donation.)
• Original Burner costume patterns and directions
• Explorations of the 10 Principles
• Burn event flyer art or Regional Burn ticket art (Vox Ignis may convert exotic filetypes into common file types in some cases)

BPL's ultimate goal is to collect, archive, and offer as much Burner related information as possible. The BPL has unlimited storage space so please consider donating a document for the benefit of Burners everywhere.

What The BPL Doesn't Need

Vox Ignis is very grateful for anything Burneresque you care to contribute, but there are a few items the library can do without for various and usually obvious reasons:

• Anything containing information about the private inner workings of the Burning Man Festival or the Burning Man Organization, LLC.
• Personal blogs or tweets. The Burner Public Library will not attempt to collect the thousands of Burner related tid-bits posted every minute in blogs and on Twitter.
• Professional articles produced by the mainstream (default world) media
• Professional articles hosted on mainstream (default world) media websites
• A copy of a copy of a copy. If you are not the author (or don't know the name of the author) of a particualar Burner related document, please do not attempt to donate it. All BPL materials must be credited properly.
• If you have a masterwork on "The Meaning of Burner Life" and it simply must be included in the Burner Public Library but the author is anonymous or cannot be contacted, please do not upload a copy. Again, All BPL materials must be credited properly.
• Transcriptions of conversations (usually list scrapes) where the contributors use full or actual names
• Pornography by any common definition. Off-color or blue language has its place and is just fine, but blatant pornography will not be entered into this collection. There are many other places for that style of expression.

Donate Materials To the Burner Public Library

Burner document donation is accomplished in two steps:

• Step 1: File Upload
• Step 2: Describe Your Donation

Click this button to begin:

All donations are checked for viruses. Authorship, ownership, and other facts may need to be checked by a BPL Librarian.

• If your donation file is huge (over 4 GB), please Message The Burner Public Library and other arrangements will be made.
• If your donation is a collection of related documents, please zip or rar them into a single file before donating.

Project Phases

The Burner Public Library project follows a phase-based methodology similar to most other IT projects.

No project timeline is being used due to the overlapping and simultaneous nature of the sub-projects (the programmers are unwilling to work within a schedule). Bottom line: it gets done when it gets done.

	Phase Description	Phase Status
1. Pre-plan	Gather all work from two previous project versions. Create Brainstorming Team to evaluate user needs, coding methods, project direction, and tone. Look for similar projects already online. Run the project concept by BROF (Burning Ring Of Fire, Yahoo Group) members. Gather and evaluate workable responses. Repeat this process with the Vox Ignis Think Tank group.
2. Plan	Investigate web hosting. Consider various models of project operation. Select the first BPL librarian and define duties.
3. Design	Purchase unlimited web space. Document Librarian/Contributor information flow.
4. Develop	Code this project to tie into Vox Ignis. Unify and reduce graphics. Leave (secured) hooks in background programming for Phase 8.
5. Test	Test functionality and layout on multiple computers, web browsers, and operating systems. Do not test on web browsers released before 2008.
6. Implement (Put Online / Final Testing)	The Burner Public Library will go online when version 7 of Vox Ignis goes live, 4th Quarter, 2010. Begin work on Phase 8.
7. Collect Donated Materials	Current Phase. Two year duration. Ends 4th Quarter, 2012.
8. Implement Full Text Search Engine	Install full text document search functionality, with weighted tag values based on categorical knowledge acquired from one year of collecting donated library materials.
9. Maintenance	Continue collecting new materials and upgrade software as necessary.

Point The Library Staff In The Right Direction

You know where some obviously important Burner-type information is on the Internet. You didn't write it but the author is listed. You can tell that other Burners would be interested in this information. It's really useful stuff. What do you do?

Message The Burner Public Library

Tell the librarians what you've found, the web address (URL), and anything else you care to add. The BPL Librarians will investigate and take it from there. If your message results in new data being added to the library, your name (or Burner name) will be known for all time as that item's contributor. Anonymous contributions are not allowed.

Coming In 2012: Full Text Search

The Burner Public Library uses a version of the Dewey Decimal System to organize items in its collection. This organization style will be used during 2011 in order to make certain determinations about data needs and usage.

In 2012 the library will receive a "full text search" upgrade, with a new public interface similar to the familiar Google search. Searching the BPL by keyword will yield results not just from document titles, but also from text contained inside the documents themselves.

Implementation of this functionality will mark the end of this project's Phase 8.

Data Backups

Vox Ignis (and therefore the Burner Public Library) is hosted on a commercial web service which was specifically chosen for its professional data backup practices. A picture of the data center where Vox Ignis is hosted is shown at right.

Vox Ignis, the Burner Public Library, and every file that comprises them are automatically backed up to off-location web servers every night by our web hosting service. In addition, the web hosting service also backs up that same data to physical media every week, 52 times a year. And if that weren't enough, the BPL Librarians back up all files to physical media every quarter.

The Help Desk

If the Burner Public Library were well funded it might have a nice Help Desk like the one pictured at right. This is not the case. The best we can do at the moment is anticipate your needs and make it easy to communicate with the right BPL librarian.

Send A Message To The Burner Public Library

What Ever Happened To That Other Project?

The How To Throw A Successful Regional Burn (HTTASRB) project is a major sub-project of the Burner Public Library. It was present during previous versions of Vox Ignis and it stirred up an unusual amount of interest, communication, and participation - even before it went online! This important project will return but it is currently on hold.

It was suggested by the Vox Ignis Think Tank group in 2008 that the HTTASRB project be delayed while the BPL gathered at least 20% of the Regional Burn materials necessary to begin the sub-project with a reasonable probability of success. Put simply, we can't run a project without first having something to work with.

The How To Throw A Successful Regional Burn project will return in 2012.