Appropriate Energy Technology Library Bibliography

Author: Hannah R. Clark
Institution: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), University of California — Energy & Environment Division
Report number: LBL-9391
Date: August 1979
Pages: 90 (text pp. 1–77 + appendices)
Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, Building and Community Systems Division, Office of Conservation and Solar Applications
eScholarship permalink: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6c01h61h

Summary

A subject bibliography of approximately 200–250 books held in the LBL Appropriate Energy Technology (AET) library, compiled to support DOE’s AET Small Grants Awards Program in Region IX (1977–78). The library is organized by a custom “Rainbow Browsing System” of color-coded dot labels (not Dewey Decimal), designed for non-specialist borrowers. This bibliography reproduces that shelf order, annotated with quotations from each book.

The introduction by Clark frames the library’s purpose: to introduce researchers to “inventive and ecology-conscious thinking” and the social and cultural milieu of local self-reliance. The library covered appropriate technology broadly — energy, construction, food, water, forestry, ecology, alternative cultures — not solar exclusively.

Baer / Zomeworks entries

SUNSPOTS

Listed at p. 33, in the solar techniques section (color: light green/yellow). Entry:

SUNSPOTS “Collected Facts & Solar Fiction” by Steve Baer, 1977 (Zomeworks Corp., Albuquerque, N.M.) 146 pages.

Significance: Confirms a 1977 Zomeworks Corp. printing with the original subtitle “Collected Facts & Solar Fiction” and a page count of 146. This is distinct from the 1975 first edition (no page count known for the first) and the 1979 Cloudburst Press second edition (subtitle: “An Exploration of Solar Energy Through Fact and Fiction”). LBL acquired the 1977 printing, placing it in their library before the Cloudburst reissue.

Clark selected this quote from Sunspots p. 74 for the bibliography (design/solar section, p. 35):

“Gravity is the most beautiful of forces - it never sleeps; it never forgets you - it spends forever attempting to finally rank everything within its field - heavier down, lighter up. While it is slowly shifting mountains or bringing rotten branches to the ground, it is also shaping clouds in the sky above them. It takes on the shortest and the longest jobs, holding the moon forever in its orbit or bringing down another raindrop.”

ZOME PRIMER

Listed at p. 35, in the design section (color: light green/dark green checkerboard). Entry:

ZOME PRIMER “Elements of Zonohedra Geometry: Two & Three Dimensional Growth of Stars with Five Fold Symmetry” by Steve Baer, 1970 (Zomeworks Corp., Albuquerque, N.M.) 36 pages.

Significance: Confirms Zome Primer page count (36 pages) and publisher (Zomeworks Corp.). Clark selected this quote from Zome Primer p. 3 (p. 36 of bibliography):

“The geodesic dome, if it is large and composed of many edges and joints, has many different edge lengths. It is complicated in structure and complicated in shape. Zomes are simple in structure and simple in shape.”

Index entry (p. 64)

Baer, Steve: Sunspots; Zome Primer

Confirms both titles indexed, no additional Baer works in the library as of August 1979.

Context for the archive

This bibliography is the first documented federal-government institutional endorsement of both Baer’s solar work and his geometry work. LBL was acting as DOE’s technical assistant; their library choices directly shaped the AET grants program. Having Sunspots in the federal alternative-energy library by 1979 — alongside Buckminster Fuller’s The Dymaxion World (also listed) — places Baer’s work in the company of the canonical appropriate technology canon.

The bibliography as a whole documents the intellectual milieu surrounding Baer’s work in 1979: Whole Earth Catalog, Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, Amory Lovins’s Soft Energy Paths, Stewart Brand’s Soft-Tech, and the Worldwatch Papers sit alongside Baer on these shelves.

Rainbow Browsing System categories relevant to Baer

Category	Color	Pages	Baer coverage
Solar techniques	light green/yellow	33–35	Sunspots listed
Design	lt. green/dk. green checkerboard	35–36	Zome Primer listed
Passive & alternative energy houses	dark green	36–39	—
Alternative energy & appropriate technology	light green	28–33	—