Category Archives: Books

The Making of a Renaissance Book

1 Reply

After Professor Phillips mentioned the 20 minute documentary during our printing demonstration on friday I decided to take a look. Assuming you can look past the sometimes maddening soundtrack, I found it very interesting that only half of the 20 minutes were on what we did in class thursday. The first half of the documentary was about the craftsmen who physically make the letters that are assembled by the printer. A process that is seemingly more meticulous and time consuming than the demonstration we had (if you can believe it). Its hard to even imagine the amount of work and time that goes into printing just one letter, let alone an entire book. Before the advent of modern technology, printing must have been an incredibly long and time consuming process, more so than I could have imagined even after the printing demonstration. This documentary really makes you appreciate the rare books we have seen, the effort it must have taken to make just one of those books is astounding.

For those of you interested in viewing the documentary it can be found on our moodle page under Authorship and Book History.

Connections with TV

Leave a reply

Today while watchingg one of my favorite television shows, the British comedy “Peep Show”, I came across a scene which relates excellently with the main themes of the class. In this episode, one of the main characters, Mark, is offered the chance to have his book published by a shady publishing company. In the offer, the company wants Mark to give them a payment of 2000 pounds, promising him that they will sell many copies of the book and make him rich. Against the advice of his friend Jeremy, Mark takes the offer and makes the down payment. Unfortunately for Mark, he soon finds out he has been scammed. The copies of the book end up not being legitimate. Rather, they are produced cheaply through photocopying, with no effort done to make them look presentable. As a result, nobody buys the book. This scam illustrates the importance of copyright laws. The fake publishing company knew that Mark not only didn’t have a copyright on his work, but wasn’t very concerned with this aspect of the book selling industry. As a result, the people running the scam knew that they would be able to get away with their devious plot fairly easily.

Trip to EPI

1 Reply

One part of our class in the EPI building today that really struck me was when someone asked the professor, “why not just use a digital printer?” and while answering the question, the tone of her voice completely changed. In her answer you could really tell that the printing press meant a lot to her. Her words were not defensive of it, but rather were loving and sentimental. She emphasized how with the printing press you can really see all the work that is put into the process of printing, as opposed to the digital printer where you just press one button and you are done.

Just as I never thought of the book as evolving from stone tablets, I never really connected the modern digital printer to the much older printing press. In hindsight it seems stupid how I could not have made that connection sooner. But I think the fact that I was up close seeing exactly how a printing press worked today made me realize just how similar it actually is to digital printing. After reading some chapters in the book, Sound Recording, I found a metaphor connecting earlier music technology to CD’s that made me think about the connection between printing presses and digital printers. “The CD can be seen as offering merely incremental improvements over the previous generations of technology” (Morton 188). Now a days, most people view digital printing as such a novel phenomenon. Of course it is much easier and faster than using a printing press, however, when you think about it, how much thought was really put into the invention of the digital printer as opposed to the invention of the printing press? Just like the CD is the digital printer not just a “mere incremental improvement over previous generations of technology?”

Tuesday’s Class, but Online…

1 Reply

A hands on experience is the only true experience. Not until you see things in person or experience them first hand do you actually see the full picture. Take our time in the library on Tueday and imagine that being online. Imagine that we were told that we had to look at these rare books online for an hour and fifteen minutes; it would probably be the most boring assignment ever; and we would most likely just stare blankly at our computer screens, waiting for the time to pass. In all, we would most likely learn nothing and have a terrible time doing so.

In person, however, we are actually engaged in the histories of the books. We can see the craftsmanship put into every page and every line of text, like the Shakespeare folio. Had we viewed this as it is online, the fact that it was hand crafted would most likely be overlooked. And we would not have realized that the picture was pasted in. In addition to this, we can also feel the different materials of the paper and covers of each book. There is so much to explore. But this is all lost when we switch over to viewing these works online. The experience is stripped down to the bare minimum of sight; quite simply this is not enough. The internet is a powerful tool that provides us with immense amounts of information, but it can not compare with experiencing things first hand.

Copies vs. Real Life

1 Reply

There is definitely a difference in looking at rare books online vs. seeing and handling them in person. In viewing copies, there is a lot of the work that is overlooked. Looking at old texts online is a very informative thing to do. However, it should not be substituted in place of looking at such things in person. Although our society is very tech dependent, much is missed in the fast paced world. For example, just from class on Tuesday had we been shown the books online rather than in person we never would have noticed the parchment covers, the hand printed cover pages, the smaller vs larger paged books, or the immensity of the 13-pound book. Although those details may seem small, they are still part of the history that we would have missed by viewing such online.

Going along with the difference between viewing things in person versus looking at copies, what comes to my mind is pictures. Over the summer my family always goes to the beach. Of course I bring along my camera and end up taking a thousand pictures, to which I compile into a slideshow. This year my brother was unable to attend the family vacation due to work, so I showed him the slideshow. (Keep in mind, we always go to the same place, stay in the same house, and do relatively the same type of things when there). To my surprise, although he is extremely familiar with all the places we went, he had so many questions! It was mind blowing how much is lost just viewing the experience through pictures, rather than actually experiencing it first hand.

An example of this is as simple as typing in the words sunset pictures on google, to which a whole stream of pictures appears in front of you. However what are you missing by having not been there when the pictures were taken. All you can do is look at their beauty, but you can not connect with them unless you were actually there.

 

Print vs. Digital Media

4 Replies

I have always been supportive of print books over ebooks for many reasons, despite their growing popularity.  Over this past interim, I decided to finally give ebooks a try.  I was going on one of the interim trips and thought it would be more convenient for travel to use an iPad for both textbooks and internet.  Along with the required texts for the class, I downloaded a free book for the (incredibly long) plane ride.  It was a book I had read about six years ago and thought it would be nice to reread it on the iPad.  I soon found that the experience I had reading on the iPad was very different than reading a print book.  The intellectual dimension was the same, but the affective dimension was not.  I often annotate my books when I read to highlight important or meaningful passages, make connections to other texts, or even write in reminders for myself unrelated to the text.  I felt that, while reading on the iPad, I was missing out on re-experiencing the text by not re-reading in the format I originally used.  I’m not sure if this was simply because it was a different format, or if it was because the format was an ebook.  Has anyone else had similar experiences with print and digital media?

internet and books

3 Replies

I am unsure of whether what I am writing makes sense because my thoughts are currently all jumbled in my head, but one thing I have noticed with our generation is that books seem to get lost in the age of the internet.  With the internet there to provide answers to questions and to provide reading material, at least among many people I know, the library is no longer a place to actually borrow books, but rather one for quiet studying. Granted, I have friends who still frequent the library for its books but that does not account for the majority of the people I know.  In regards to rare books and the questions, where do we find information on them and where do we find images of them, a reasonable answer could be the internet. However, I think many people fail to notice that there are also many libraries that specialize in such books.  After viewing in class the different texts, I think it is most beneficial to see these books in person so that one can fully appreciate their qualities.  Is the internet taking away from the unique qualities rare books posses?

When studying historic, rare books

3 Replies

A quick note: when I write “text” in this post, imagine simultaneously a book, a painting, or a sculpture.

With today’s technology, we can easily admire a beautiful painting through a computer screen, and even analyze it to a great degree; however, it still does not compare to looking at it in person. There is, first, a sense of distance from the subject. When looking online we know of course what we are looking at is no where near us; it could be anywhere in the world. Though this physical distance may afford the critical distance so important in textual analysis, it nonetheless provokes an emotional sense of detachment. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, when one views a text through the internet or computer, the text itself is not there. What we see is an image of the text; a visual copy. Rationally, how can you say you’ve seen something if the actual thing, the original, is not in front of you? Think of a Polaroid.  No one goes around saying “Yes, I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower” after looking at a photograph of it in their hand. However, this causes more serious consequences: without the whole text in front of you, it is impossible to truly analyze it. Though you can see it, and use all the historic and theoretical  context you can, you cannot engage the text with all senses. This information is relegated to a caption: The book is printed on animal skin, it feels like soft paper, it smells rotten. These senses, when actually experienced, enhance learning.

Tuesday’s Class

4 Replies

When I first learned we were going to have class in the library on Tuesday to look at old texts, I think it is safe to say that I was not amused.  I went into the class with little to no enthusiasm. After having read all about the infancy period of books, looking at them just seemed like such a dull activity.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by Tuesday’s class. I ended up really enjoying seeing the different texts and comparing them in real life to the imagines I had imagined.  As people have previously stated, the egyptian scroll was definitely very cool, as were seeing texts that were printed next to texts that were handwritten.

Reaction to Howard Readings

2 Replies

After reading the two chapters in Howard, I realized just how lucky I was to be reading from a one pound or less book with a binding and cover. Previously, I never thought of a book as evolving from something else, as a means of technology. Thinking about the future it is sad to imagine the disappearance of books. Growing up, I assumed that books would be around forever; How could you improve a book? But I guess that is how people way back when felt about writings on papyrus, parchment, stone, and clay. Recently, the new craze of e-books has popped up and dented the sales of actual books. Call me old fashioned, but I can not wrap my head around that yet. Even reading short pieces online bothers me. In fact most of the time I choose to print out what I am reading no matter how short, or long for that matter. There is something about the book that is lost when switched over electronically. To me, at least, just having the physical book in front of me with pages that I can highlight, annotate, or even just feel it is there, is important to me. It is scary to think that one day everything may work electronically. Will people even leave their dwellings? What will happen to human interaction- will it all be over a computer? Will we be able to document our writings to display like those we saw on Tuesday? Or will none of it mean very much considering everyone will have access to the internet to view it? Will important things be lost in the presence of too much information?