Musings on the Wikipedia articles...

Wikipedia is a great thing. The fact that anyone can contribute to an article is one of its best features. Besides making philosophical claims about Wikipedia being a collective project that anyone with internet access can share their knowledge and be a part of, there is a more practical reason why this is a good feature. Wikipedia is a continually growing project with millions of entries, while according to the Runciman article, Encyclopedia Britannica managed to add only 300,000 entries (for a total of 700,000) in the eighteen years between 1989 and 2007.

Wikipedia’s egalitarian policy toward editing allows for it to grow exponentially. Even if a more traditional encyclopedia had many more scholars working on the project, they would not be able to keep up with Wikipedia’s growth. Scholarly articles, where all the facts are checked, take a lot longer to write. Also, there is no way that a set of books could be big enough to hold all the entries that Wikipedia does. And as new editions of a set of encyclopedias are produced yearly at most, it is not possible for scholars to keep up with the change of information the way an online encyclopedia can.

At the same time, Wikipedia is not written by scholars. I would never personally use it for a report or research paper. Not only do I mean to say I would not cite a Wikipedia article (because one shouldn’t be citing any encyclopedic entry), I would not trust the information that I found on Wikipedia. This is especially true if it was something that I was unsure enough about to have to be looking the information up in the first place. Scrutinizing the quality of information available on the internet is important to remember, whether one is writing a report or not. This is why more scholarly sources like Encyclopedia Britannica will continue to be important in the future. I use Wikipedia all the time, like if I happen to be curious where Belarus is, but I would not trust most of the facts I read there without double checking them. A traditional encyclopedia may be more selective about its entries, but one can be reasonably sure that the information they read is of a good quality.

I think this relates to some of the other ideas I have been formulating this semester. I think there is a lot to be said for newer technologies, like EBooks. But for now at least, I do not think they are going to completely obsolete the older, more reliable technologies.

Darnton article and research paper ideas...

I have decided to do my research project on the technological changes in libraries. I feel like this is an easier subject to research than my other ideas and that it is more directly related to the subject matter of the class. I am not one hundred percent sure what my thesis will be though, because I still have a lot more research to do over the next couple of days. I am thinking of concentrating more on academic libraries, and how new technologies like the Google Book Search may virtually make books obsolete.

I found some of this week's readings to be related to this topic. "The Library in the New Age" by Robert Darnton was especially relevant. His eight point argument for the continued relevancy of traditional libraries (ones which contain actual books)was very interesting; it raised several issues that had not occured to me previously. For example, it is likely that Google Book Search and similiar tools would miss editions of books, or even some books entirely. It would certainly be very helpful, but it would take decades before it could be thorough, if this ever happened. And of course the issues of copyright involved with more recently published books also pose a problem for this type of technology. Darnton's arguments, that libraries should continue to purchase books, certainly makes a lot of sense in this context.

On the other end of the spectrum I found a Boston Globe article on the Delicious part of the course website called "A library without the books." This article is about Cushing Academy in Boston, which has recently donated nearly all of it's books to make room for a $500,000 "learning center." Proponents of the "bookless library" see this as the way of the future, and view traditional libraries as outdated.

I am sure I will have to read many more articles on the subject before I write my paper. But the problem that I am having is not so much whether or not libraries are going to be changed by newer technologies, that much is obvious, but just how large these changes will be. Is the library of the future more like Darnton's or more like the one at Cushing Academy? Are research books clunky relics of the past? Or will they continue to be relevant as they have for the past several centuries?

I don't know, but I better do some more research and come up with a thesis. :)

Cat People -- don't take me too seriously

Did anyone else find Louis Menard’s article “Cat People” extremely weird? Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were really interesting. And it definitely was amusing. But it was also really weird.

It was interesting to learn how influential and revolutionary The Cat in the Hat was when it was published. I found Flesch’s theory about phonics incredibly interesting. Unlike Menard, I cannot remember reading my first word. (How the heck old was he to remember something like that? I can remember knowing how to read simple words when I was four, and my memory doesn’t really go back farther than that. Was this kid eight before he learned how to read?) And yet though I don’t remember learning the very basic aspects of reading, I do remember sounding out words in elementary school. Once I was able to figure out how a word might sound, I could connect it to a word that I had heard. Although perhaps the first words must come from memorization, I think that Flesch is right that later words are mostly learned through phonics. I think to some degree we still do this as adults when we see an unfamiliar word. In contrast, when I studied French in college I had to memorize words. Not being familiar with oral French, I had no idea what “est-ce que” or “les petits pois” meant, unless I looked it up and memorized it. Although in some ways this is a very effective way of learning, it’s also kind of boring and it does take a lot longer to learn that way. I don’t really care about “the sad sad cat”anymore than Flesch did, though I do remember reading books like that as a child.

But I must repeat myself; this article was really weird. I was never personally a big fan of Dr. Seuss as a child, in fact I think I like him better as an adult. You might say I was suspicious of all the strange rhyming words, and weird characters doing absurd things. What was with the king's obsession with stilts anyways? Didn’t he have a country to be running? If he was the king he was presumably rich, why not commission some new stilits? I'm sure the stilt industry could use a boost anyways. And why did the Sneetchs care so much about stars anyways? (Obviously I hadn’t quite grasped the concept of metaphor.) But worst of all were those green pants that walked around by themselves, scaring that naked yellow animal that looked like a cross between a lamb and a bear. Damn did those pants piss me off sometimes. And yet… I’m not sure if I really buy into the Cold War conspiracy theories about pink stains. Maybe the cat was just doing what he did best; causing chaos. Maybe he never washed his hat before, and the red dye bled. And though I agree that the mother was sort of unstable, or at least neglectful, to leave her children in the care of a fish for the day, we don’t really know that she was having an affair. Neither does calling the bed "Dad’s bed." The kids may have said that for the sake of simplicity. And maybe she was just going shopping, or having tea, or doing whatever house wives did in the fifties.







P.s. Those pants are still stupid.

research project ideas...still very vague. Help!

When I tell people that I am almost finished with my undergraduate degree, they often ask me what I plan to do after graduation. Often I tell them that I am considering library school. This usually gets one of two reactions. “You have to have a master’s degree to be a librarian?” (I frequently agree that this seems sort of surprising.) Or “wow, I didn’t really know that they still had librarians.”

The second reaction is an exaggeration, but only slightly. Frequently at work I hear about the new technologies that are altering not only book history, but libraries. Will there be libraries in a couple of decades? Probably, but it is likely they will be very different from the one’s that exist today. Basically, I was thinking it would be interesting to look at how new technologies are changing libraries, as sort of an extension of how they are changing literacy. I know I have to be more specific than “new technologies,” so I was thinking of looking at one particular technology, perhaps the E-book.

I’m not exactly sure which direction I would go in with such a project. It would be interesting to look at the differences between various types of books. Like is it more likely that academic books would be replaced by newer forms of technology than fiction books that are read for pleasure? Obviously I would need a more concrete angle at which to look at this subject, and…a thesis.

The other idea that I thought might be sort of interesting is not nearly as relevant to this course. It sort of has more to do with sociology than book history, but as I just thought of it this morning, there might still be a way to connect it to the class. I believe it was in the Diebert readings that we learned how the development of silent reading changed mans relationship with himself and the world around him. This was a topic that I found especially interesting, because it was something that had never occurred to me before. My second idea kind of relates to this idea. How have modern technologies such as web 2.0 changed modern people? In class we talked jokingly about how much more self-center people seem to be on their blogs and facebooks, and at times it certainly seems to be true. But is there truth to this? Also I remember reading in a magazine about a year ago that 2007 (or 2008) was the first year that more people reported meeting their significant other online than the old-fashioned way. Certainly this is a large change. Also, we have all seen a group of friends (or been in a group of friends) that go out somewhere, sit at a table, and promptly ignore one another to text message other friends. What the heck does that say about new technologies?
But as on the previous idea, I’m not sure exactly what position I would take in this sort of project.

So basically the point of this blog is to ask you guys what you think of these two ideas? Which idea seems more interesting to you? Which project do you think it would be easier to find credible sources for? Can I even tie the second one to the class closely enough, or do you think I’ll be stretching it? I’ll attempt to figure some of this stuff out myself and update in a few days with my clarifications, but any suggestions would be much appreciated. Incidentally, I will probably be writing a traditional research paper because I don’t have internet access at home, so if you think one works better as a paper than the other let me know that, too.

copyright....

“Some contemporary commentators incline to the view that the long history of the copyright may be coming to an end. That will be a question for the twenty-first century.” This quotation comes from the end of the John Feather reading, but I think it is also a good summary of the film we watched in class, and much of this week’s readings. It is an intriguing question, and at this point it is impossible to answer.
Personally, I’m pretty divided on the issue. The Internet is so vast I’m not really sure how anyone could hope to police the issue of copyright. And laws lose validity when people start ignoring them. At the same time, there is a lot of money in book (and film, and album) sales. I find it hard to believe that the twenty-first century is going to usher in an age of completely free information and artistic expression. Lars Ulrich of Metallica is kind of a jerk, but I agree with him that someone is going to be making money off of these products, somehow. As I said, I’m pretty divided on the issue, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

The belated library report

“Survivor: History of the Library” is not an actual website, but an article on the larger History Magazine website. This magazine was created in 1999, and is now published bimonthly by Moorshead Magazine Ltd. It is available on newsstands, at genealogical supply stores, and by subscription. The website was established to provide information about the magazine, and to help promote sales. One of the ways this latter goal is accomplished is by the inclusion of the “preview an issue” link on the website. Someone interested in perusing a sample issue may click on a tab on the left side of the home page, which leads to a selection of articles. One of the choices is “Survivor: History of the Library.” It was written by Barbara Krasner-Khait, and originally published in the October/November issue of 2001. Because the article is adapted from a magazine it is not very visually interesting. It does include pictures, and it is easy enough to read, but it is basically just a block of text that is rarely broken up by anything else of interest.

Krasner-Khait attempts to present the entire history of the library in a few pages, which is no easy task. Libraries have existed in some form for nearly as long as civilization has existed. Though outwardly the first libraries only bare a marginal resemblance to today’s familiar public libraries, the basic idea of a place existing to store a culture’s combine knowledge (what Krasner-Khait calls a “repository for knowledge”) is much the same. In Mesopotamia, for example, archeologists have discovered a “library” that contains 30,000 clay tablets and is over 5,000 years old!

There were other early “libraries” in ancient Egypt and Assyria, but it was not until the time of the ancient Greeks that they became more prevalent. The appearance of libraries was mostly a result of the Greek interest in a flourishing cultural and intellectual life. The Library of Alexandria was established around 300 BC for many of the same reasons. King Ptolemy I and his successors had many goals for the library, including a desire to obtain half a million scrolls. One of the most interesting things about the Library of Alexandria section of the article, was the supposition that the Ptolemies “engaged in unorthodox…methods” when acquiring scrolls for the library. This contrasts interestingly with the more traditional view of the Library of Alexandria as a beacon of almost utopian enlightenment in an otherwise ignorant world. It does not take away from the accomplishment that the Library of Alexandria certainly was, it just makes the story slightly more plausible and a lot more human.

After the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, libraries were reborn in Rome where they again flourished for a time. Though there were certainly “scholarly” libraries in Rome, it was here that the first libraries for the masses appeared. By the year 350 AD, there were at least twenty-nine of these libraries in Rome, and it was considered a great honor to serve as a library director. But despite this widespread interest, when Roman society declined, its libraries were quick to follow the same path.

But all hope was not lost; libraries were reborn yet again. First this happened in the monasteries of Europe, and then again in the Renaissance. The final section of Krasner-Khait’s article is sub-titled “The Golden Age.” This part of the article begins in the1600’s and leads nearly to the present day. She briefly discusses the establishment of some of Europe’s most famous libraries, such as the one at Oxford University, before skipping across an ocean and a few hundred years to talk about the first American libraries. This part of the article seems decidedly rushed; there is no mention of Dewey, the Library of Congress, or the technological changes of the modern library. The Carnegie Libraries are mentioned, but they are dealt with in a single sentence.

I felt the rushed quality of the last section was sort of indicative of one of the issues I had with the article overall. Although the article attempted to be an overview of the entire history of the library, this is not practically possible when you are covering some 7,000 years in roughly five pages. Because of limitations of space, some parts of the article had to be less in depth than others. In this case the final 500 years or so were especially briefly discussed, and no section was incredibly thorough. In addition, it would have been interesting to read about libraries in the present. The present, after all, is the continuation of history. And though I realize this would have been impossible in the original History Magazine article, I think that it would have been interesting to update the article by taking advantage of some of the internet’s capabilities. Perhaps links could have been added to each sub-section of the article, to allow people to learn more about specific sections they found interesting. I am certainly not claiming that Krasner-Khait’s article is insufficient or factually flawed, but it is prudent to say it would only be truly helpful for a general population with a casual interest in libraries. For example, I have worked in a library for nearly seven years, which is why I wanted to present on this website. But if I had to write a research paper on the subject of libraries, I certainly would use other websites.

Finally, there are two interesting themes that the article raises. The overall thesis of the article is that libraries, though perhaps not universal, have great staying power. Though they have changed dramatically, and though they have gone in and out of fashion, libraries have survived. 30,000 clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia may not seem to have a lot in common with the Undergraduate Library, but they have much the same purpose. The other theme is related to this idea, but it is more subtle. Krasner-Khait implies that the creation of libraries is intimately connected to the quality of a society. Libraries seem to be linked to civilization itself. Though this may at first seem to be overstepping a bit, it is really not that far-fetched. The acquisition and sharing of knowledge, literacy, and intellectual interests are all linked to the creation and support of libraries. And as we have been learning this semester, these are things that are capable of altering man’s relationship with God, government, his neighbors, and himself. Certainly an intellectual life, and by extension libraries, are essential to any developed civilization.

Kastan---Week seven

“The material form and location in which we encounter the written word are active contributors to the meaning of what is read” (Kastan 2.) Perhaps this statement is self-evident, but I think it feels counter intuitive to many modern people who have come to understand literature in terms of “The Great Books.” Especially, with someone like Shakespeare this seems to be true. Shakespeare’s works seem to exist on their own; it is almost as though they are outside of the actual act of creation. They just are. How could there be a copy of Hamlet in which his most famous soliloquy is altered: “To be, or not to be, I there’s the point” (Kastan 26). What the heck is that?!
My point is basically that this article sort of brought me down to earth a little bit. Of course it is impossible that any text could be exactly what was in the author’s mind. And certainly texts are going to have variations, specifically in the 1600’s. I also think Kastan is completely right in saying that a written text and the actual production of a play are two different things. Much of a play’s production does depend on the actors’ improvisations and non-verbal communications. Therefore, it is impossible for any written copy to claim it is “exactly as it was preformed on such and such a date.”
At the same time I do not know if I am in complete agreement with Kastan. Maybe I just don’t quite understand his argument, but I really don’t think that the way my copy of Hamlet is produced is really going to alter my feelings for the play. Sure, if it were 1650 and I had never heard of Shakespeare it would make a difference if it was printed on expensive paper. But at this point, when I’ve read Hamlet about five times, and am already well acquainted with “the bard” is it really going to matter if I’m reading a dog-eared paperback, or a leather bound edition with gold seal? I seriously doubt it; at least not once I get into the play. Partially this is my recognition of Shakespeare’s reputation, but I think that it would be true to some degree even if I’d somehow never heard of him. Quality of a work is more important than its presentation. But perhaps, as I said, I am missing part of Kastan’s argument?
Also, I found it pretty amazing that Shakespeare never profited from his printed plays, never attempted to publish them, and didn’t seem to care that other people were publishing them! How is that for irony?