Day 103: When is a book not a book?

Books have not always looked like books.

But we knew that, right?

We knew that in Egypt, their stories were written down on walls and in scrolls of papyrus with pictograms. Ancient civilizations wrote on clay and stone tablets, or in wax on wooden tablets. Eventually they wrote on some form of "paper", though maybe not the pulpy kind we use today. They wrote on vellum, which was paper but made of calf skin. They wrote on paper made of rags.

Books have looked like pillars. Books have looked like walls. Books have looked like tapestries. Books have looked like scrolls.

And finally, books started looking like books. That's the codex form of books. But that form didn't really start showing up until the 2nd century and didn't really catch on until the 5th century.

But how did we go from spooling whole books on scrolls and having to scroll through the whole thing to find what we're looking for to these bound piles of paper that we can open to any point? What other forms could books have taken?

Lesson 104: In Burma, they created "Palm Books".

Turns out they did them in other places too, but today in class we got to see some Burmese Palm Books.

Basically they'd take palm leaves and cut the writing into them, then dry them and rub ink on them to dye the cuts. Each leaf would be numbered and they'd be bound between wooden boards. The string binding it all together was left long enough that it would wrap around the book holding it closed. To read it, you'd untie it and the pages open by fanning out.

They're really beautiful.

There are just so many interesting little anecdotes and entrancing particulates of information in the history of books and bookbinding....

Books used to need straps and clasps to hold them closed because vellum would swell when it got humid and deform the book into a wedge; unless a clasp was keeping it boxy and rectangular.

Paper as we now know it was developed in China and used by Arabs in the 8th century and didn't catch on in Europe until later.

Independent of all of this, Meso-Americans made codex style books where they whitewashed the pages before writing on them.

This class just speaks so much to my nature as an encyclopedia of useless knowledge!

Day 101: Back to School!

So here we are... everyone else's "last first class" is my "first class" of the year. Creates kind of an odd disconnect, but there you have it.

Today was History of Books and Printing, and while I'm really not a fan of the standing-around-tables-for-two-hours format for a class, I can already tell I'm going to learn a lot from this class! A lot of really interesting and arcane factoids; my favourite flavour! Lets start this school year off with a bang, shall we? Multi-lesson first day post!

But where do we start with the numbering? It's such an arbitrary numbering system to begin with; do I continue and make this lesson 101? Or do I serialize and make it 2.1? Maybe just start straight from 1 all over again? Bah humbug, I hate decisions.

Lesson 101: Italics presuppose eyeglasses.

Kind of an odd, almost throw away line from my professor. Italics were developed by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, who was kind of a big deal. While we now use them to bring attention to important segments in a text, they were first used to fit more printed words onto a single page so you could have smaller, more compact volumes. However, since the type is so small, it assumes that anyone with less than stellar eyesight is having it corrected by lenses.

Lesson 102: Books printed as someone raised in a Western context expects them to look are printed in the Venetian style, that is: each page containing one column of full justified text, often filling the page to margins which are slightly larger at the bottom and outside edges

There's a long thread in the history of printing that leads back through a few idealistic revivals and notable presses, and when taken right back, it's those printers in Venice who printed books more or less as we now expect them to look.

I was trying to find a good picture to illustrate what I mean, and I found someone has written a great post about Aldus Manutius and his printing, and rather inexplicably taken a few pictures with one of his books in a bathtub. You can see that here.

Old books are just so cool!

Day 88: And breathe that sigh of relief...

After a lovely trip to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa with the ACA and CLA student chapters, I stayed on in Ottawa for a lovely weekend with my friend Sarah. She had to work a lot, but that just meant that I had an excuse to go eat at the pub she works at! Excellent place. If you're ever in Ottawa and want an excellent breakfast (or meal, period) you really should stop by The Lieutenant's Pump on Elgin.

And yes, you can quote me on that. I stake my vast and valuable reputation as a blogger on it. [/sarcastic self-aggrandizing] Seriously though, they're fantastic.

I mean, a burger with brie, mushrooms and bacon on it? Count me in!

Anyways, I digress.

Point is, I was back at school today. Though tomorrow I'm running off for a whirlwind trip to Toronto, during which I will ideally meet George R.R. Martin and get a book signed (for those who don't know, he is writing the series A Song of Ice and Fire, which has become the TV show Game of Thrones). But still...

Lesson 87: Professors are more aware of students' workloads then they are generally given credit for.

Or at least, I'll give my professor the benefit of the doubt and assume that's why she's given us the best gift she could have: a one week extension for all students on our collection development paper.

This week was going to be absolutely insane with the number of SIS events happening, my day in Toronto, completing a post-presentation write-up by Wednesday, the quiz in management, preparing my group presentation for next Monday, writing my evaluation of a research article for next Monday, spending and documenting 8000$ of imaginary money for our collection development paper due Monday as well, work, and the number of events I've been invited to for this weekend what with St Patrick's Day being so huge here in Montreal.

But now, I don't have to have completed the spending of the imaginary cash for another week.

And I feel like I can breathe again...

So lets see... if I can just get this write-up done now,
study for that quiz and finish readings tomorrow
evaluate a research article Thursday,
then I can maybe go to Gerts Friday,
do more collection development Sat+Sun
hand stuff in + present Mon and work on research proposal
train for the new job Wednesday, complete Collection Development
play soccer, work an 8hr shift, hang with Kristie
complete two essays and a research paper
Enjoy Easter? Go to Music Moot?
Seriously though, are you actually reading this?
It gets tiny like this so you can't actually read it.
This is an aesthetic representation of me losing my mind
Slowly becoming more and more helpless
As library school eats my brain like some zombie
Seriously, stop reading...



....Help me....

Day 40: 3 days in, 300 words behind.

Ya, I'm already falling behind in NaNoWriMo. Maybe I can catch up after I've finished all my researching and annotating and presenting. Maybe not. We shall see.

I'm hesitant to use the lesson I had decided upon today, at the risk of speaking too soon. But then again, I said that I liked cataloguing, and that has stayed true enough. Consider this as an extension of that lesson.

Lesson 40: Designating subject headings is not as difficult or daunting as I was afraid it would be.

It feels very logical to me, and it just makes sense. I imagine it will be harder when I'm trying to do it from a hard copy list in the quiz than it is when I'm using the fully searchable LC subject headings catalog, but I rather like it.

It's like compromising a need to complete a search. It's something my brain does automatically. I look at a title, I have a question, and I immediately break them down into their component parts. In some ways it just allows me to classify them in my memory and remember them better; "Oh yes, that book! The one about women's psychology and its application to healthcare, it's right over here..." or "I have often wondered that myself! Why just the other day...". But it also allows me to optimize a google search at lightning speed, and apparently, to divine subject headings with relative ease.

Although, why isn't it more helpful with Dialog?

Ugh, Dialog. The love-hate relationship I have with that thing.

There's a lesson for another day. "Be Careful What You Wish For".

Day 31: Stuff just got real.

Today's lesson is a little more intense than the usual. But today we were learning about the history of libraries, archives, literacy and publishing, so that's a pretty hefty topic to cover.

The Chinese invented movable type. This much I already knew. 

They had it made of clay, wood and finally metal before Gutenberg was even a glint in anyone's eye. But a very eurocentric lecture about library and archive history made me wonder about this original iteration of movable type. 

While it is undeniable that while the Chinese did it first, it didn't explicitly create the massive waves that affected the very structure of the society we are currently living in the way Gutenberg's press did. 

But why didn't it? What social effects did it have? 

So that's what I started looking into... It's hard to find reference to the Chinese invention, and subsequent Korean attempts, beyond "Gutenberg did it, but the Chinese did it first". But my extensive research (by which I of course mean, Googling till I got what I was looking for) gave me my answer.

Lesson 31: The Chinese invention of the printing press did not have the same impact as Gutenberg's printing press, and is therefore rarely mentioned and often overlooked, because the Confucians (aka, the group in charge of China at the time) actively prohibited the commercialization of printing and the invention was restricted to governmental use. 

So while the Chinese (and Koreans using Chinese characters) had been using movable type for centuries before Gutenberg, the citizenry at large had never encountered, used or benefited from it, so its impact was limited to the scholarly. For instance, we are grateful to it today, because it saved, recreated and revived a lot of pre-3rd century (A.D.) Confucian learning.... which likely had a profound, but subtle, influence on the Enlightenment, rise of humanist thought and by extension the society we are currently living in. But it didn't seem to create any grandiose, "first great ideological revolution" like Gutenberg's press allowed in Europe. It created no wave of skyrocketing literacy rates, or increase in public education,  or emergence of the middle class the way Gutenberg's press paved the way for.

Well, and also: racism, colonialism and eurocentrism. But despite those things, we still attribute the invention of gunpowder to the Chinese, so it was obviously something extra keeping it quiet when it came to the printing press.

Day 10: and I can finally buy my books!

The last first of the semester: my first Bibliographic and Factual Sources class. Because our year started on a Thursday, and the intervening Monday was labour day, we're in our third week of classes, and just now starting one of our classes. Today's lesson is one I had already learned in undergrad, but that really proved its importance today.

Lesson 12: Never buy your textbooks for a course until you've had at least one class. You never know when the edition switch will make a world of difference. For instance, the latest edition of our primary book for Bibliographic and Factual Sources was basically a complete revamp; a nasty situation for everyone who already bought the previous edition!

Also, buying textbooks should be preceded, or followed, by a stiff drink. You need something to soften the blow of that price tag... yikes!

Day 3: Libraries Libraries Libraries!

First day of lectures! First day of work! Phew!

Lesson 4) The solitude of the stacks is inner calm like nothing else.