Hi all,
Really interesting discussion here...i was lucky enuf to go to the
Conference on the Book" in oct 07--and read a little paper I wrote on why we
still , here, at least, use books in the study of art history--the many
tentacles of this topic seem to appear all the time--the book about art AS a
work of art, the tactile quality, how we learn if we use our hands, eyes and
sense of touch, how looking at a screen uses a different part of the brain
than if we write and listen and look/ another guy and I wished we were
privy to the new research on brain chemistry!! I mean, what happens to the
brain over time, if we don't use some parts of it?? We all know the answer
to that..
The questions of moving things off site, or getting rid of journals we have
duplicated online, etc, are big questions, and should consider more than
space, though we are all at the mercy of that space issue...
As usual, peter, you brought up something that simmers just below the
surface for many....
anne
On 3/30/09 1:04 PM, "Mo Dawley" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Peter,
> I'm not sure this is what you mean, but here's my take on this off the
> top --
> Browsing books in-body here continues to be a vigorous activity. For
> example, photography classes come as a group to Hunt Library to peruse
> the photography books knowing that experiencing them is a more sensuous
> way to immerse in the image. Faculty are increasingly telling their
> students to research in print only (absolutely no web, whether it's a
> database or not) as evidenced with a design class just a few weeks ago.
> A few years ago we retired a costume collection on "permanent reserve"
> because of space considerations, but what was lost and what the
> professor intended was that the students could be able to experience the
> vintage of the books and put costume history in context easily.
> Another thing that's happened here is that we're shipping thousands
> books to an offsite facility - again space considerations,
> but many students will less and less be able to run across some strange
> and wondrous book that might inspire.
> Artists books are another great way to experience cultural artifacts
> (but alas they're locked up in our fine and rare book room, and the ones
> that circulate have been destroyed by commercial binding). Another
> example of exisiting history and wildly popular are some old Sears and
> Roebuck's catalogs that are in our reference collection. But, they've
> been rebound and the wonders are not met with oohs and ahs unless
> they're pointed out and opened.
>
> One of the ways to retain some the history of a book is to circulate
> them with book covers-- what else?......
>
> My additional question to your fascinating query is the question of
> ...how are we using our bodies in looking for information?
> Are we connecting? And how?
>
> Much to think about..
>
> Mo
>
> Mo Dawley
> Senior Librarian
> Art and Drama Librarian
> Carnegie Mellon University
> [log in to unmask]
> 412-268-6625
> http://eps.library.cmu.edu/rooms/portal/page/21347_Art
> http://eps.library.cmu.edu/rooms/portal/page/21349_Drama
> http://eps.library.cmu.edu/rooms/portal/page/23254_Environment
> http://www.greenarts.org/
>
> Mo
>
>
>
>
> Peter Blank wrote:
>> Greetings colleagues,
>>
>> Please post your responses to the list(s). This is a bit long-winded.
>> No surprise to those of you who know me. I encourage similar excess on
>> your parts.
>>
>> How do we recover what Bourdieu refers to as the lost sense of
>> original possibles? Or to speak more practically, how do we begin to
>> acclimatize students (or anyone for that matter) to the realization
>> that cultural information does not travel well? That what is lost over
>> time likely exceeds what is transfered? That their paltry attempts at
>> research (using Google Scholar, Wikipedia, BHA, ABM -- does it
>> matter?) are likely doomed to mere academicism. From Bourdieu's/ The
>> Field of Cultural Production/ (1993), speaking of fields of cultural
>> production as spaces composed of institutions, memberships, etc.:
>>
>> ³One of the major difficulties of the social history of philosophy,
>> art, or literature is that is has to reconstruct these spaces of
>> original possibles which, because they were part of the self-evident
>> givens of the situation, remain unremarked and are therefore unlikely
>> to be mentioned in contemporary accounts, chronicles or memoirs. It is
>> difficult to conceive of the vast amount of information which is
>> linked to membership of a field and which all contemporaries
>> immediately invest in their reading of works: information about
>> institutions e.g. academies, journals, magazines, galleries,
>> publishers, etc. and about persons, their relationships, liaisons
>> and quarrels, information about the ideas and problems which are in
>> the air¹ and circulate orally in gossip and rumor. . . Ignorance of
>> everything which goes to make up the mood of the age¹ produces a
>> derealization of works: stripped of everything which attached them to
>> the most concrete debates of their time ..., they are transformed in
>> the direction of intellectualism or an empty humanism.² (33)**
>>
>> I work with a number of photography classes here at Stanford: history
>> of photography, view camera, photobook making, etc. The primary means
>> by which I try to suggest to students what photographers and those who
>> looked at photographs /might have been thinking/ is by examining the
>> photobook and photo magazine productions of that era, treating these
>> artifacts as the cultural detritus of a bygone era. This often
>> involves using items that in other collections would be treated merely
>> as secondary sources, but for such an investigation are now primary
>> materials. Of course, if the publications are lacking dust jackets,
>> trimmed and bound in buckram, they lose that fragile linkage to their
>> moment of origin. As culturally expressive materials they are
>> flattened, steam rolled. We face a similar problem with the digitizing
>> of books. Another cultural flattening occurs. I suspect many of us
>> would argue that this flattening is ideally pierced by a return to the
>> original. If one follows Bourdieu's argument and appreciates the value
>> of conjectural cultural analysis, there are profound implications for
>> collection development, processing, storage, preservation, and
>> instruction.
>>
>> **My question has, for the moment, a specific and more practical
>> trajectory. Who among you also uses library materials in a similar
>> fashion, as the mute archaeological fragments of a bygone culture? How
>> do foreground your intercessions between the student and the piece?
>> What sort of responses do you get from students and faculty? What
>> collections do you use? Anyone who has followed the marked increase in
>> books about photobooks knows of the shift in scholarly focus towards
>> the photobook. The same can be said for the ephemeral materials of
>> contemporary art practice from the 1960s on. Probably also 19th
>> century materials such as Harper's, or trade catalogs. I'm especially
>> interested not just in what collections you use, but the how and why.
>>
>> Best to all,
>>
>> Peter Blank
>>
>> -----------------------------
>> Peter P. Blank
>> Head Librarian
>> Art & Architecture Library
>> 102 Cummings Art Bldg.
>> Stanford University
>> Stanford, CA 94305-2018
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Voice (650) 725-1038
>> FAX (650) 725-0140
>>
>>
>>
>>
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