Books: August 2008 Archive Page

From a recent study of university libraries. There's plenty in this report on digital scholarship, print journals, and comparative approaches of the various disciplines.

Neither faculty members nor librarians expect e-books to constitute a viable substitute for print books; they are more generally seen as complementary.

Somewhat oddly given this low level of faculty interest in e-books, many librarians consider the provisioning of e-books an important role, and substantially more expect it to be one in five years (see Figure 16). This enthusiasm is notably higher at the largest institutions, with one-quarter of librarians anticipating a transformative role and two-thirds believing that licensing and making available e-books is an important library function, both numbers well above those of smaller schools. Librarians' enthusiasm in the face of a relative lack of interest from faculty may indicate that librarians are responding to student demand or expecting future faculty demand.

It is also possible that librarians believe wider use of e-books will improve their ability to provide library services in a cost-effective manner, and are interested in driving the transformation of the book medium.

Our provost sent this link to English faculty members this morning.

One of my recent juniors was particularly eloquent on the subject. After having sat in my classroom for a year forcefully projecting his boredom, he started an e-mail dialogue with me over the summer. "The reason for studying fiction escapes me," he wrote. "Why waste time thinking about fabricated situations when there are plenty of real situations that need solutions? Cloning, ozone depletion, and alternate fuels are a few of the countless problems that need to be addressed by the next generation, my generation."

Okay, you may think, this is a kid geared to excel in history and science, not literature. But read his closing words: "Granted fiction has a place in this world, but it is not in the classroom. It is beside the night lamp next to your bed, the car ride to the beach, the soft glow of a fireplace. Fiction is about spending beautiful days indoors because you can't wait to get to the next page. Because I like science fiction, my Shakespeare, my Fitzgerald, my Dickinson are Haldeman, Asimov, Herbert. They dare me to think and question my beliefs."

So there you have it: A smart teen and motivated reader goes to high-school English class and discovers that the classics have nothing to offer him. "The reason I did not participate in class," he admitted, "was that I found the reading a chore." -- Nancy Schnog, The Washington Post

While I think it's an important part of a liberal arts education that a student know something about the great, formative stories of his or her nation and/or tongue, I can sympathize with Schnog. Several students in my "History and Future of the Book" course last term reported that school made them fall out of love with reading. And I'm not surprised, when I see how many English majors arrive on campus with the idea that studying a work means memorizing the contents of the Big Dusty Book of Literary Meanings (you know, the one that says blue symbolizes peace, and that if you can match up a detail in the story with a detail from what Wikipedia says about the author's life, then your job interpreting the text is done).  I realize that high school students generally aren't ready for college-level critical thinking, but I'm still surprised at how tightly some students cling to the expectation that my job is to tell them what a passage means, and that their job is to memorize what I say and spit it back.

I enjoy teaching "Introduction to Literary Study" and "Writing about Literature" because I'm free to sample different time periods, genres, and geographical zones.  Likewise, I get a lot of flexibility when I teach "Drama as Literature" -- I can cover anything that counts as drama.  I always hope that somewhere along the way students will encounter a text that inspires them to dig beneath the surface. 

If my old shoebox of Meego Star Trek action figures turns up, I'll consider myself very happy. Seton Hill's librarian, David Stanley, reports an even more significant historical find. From the Reeves Library blog.

Kelly Addleman, our public services librarian, received an email from a researcher in Germany who has been making a survey of the illumination appearing in early bibles published by Anton Koberger. Well, it turns out that we have one in our possession. We own a Biblia Latina which was published in 1478. The illuminations are so beautiful that I thought I would share some with you. I am also including a letter that establishes its provenance.

I've cropped part of the letter (apparently written about 60 years ago).  Click the image for a slight enlargement, or see the full original.