Eight Things…
August 4, 2010 at 2:48 pm | Posted in Books, Movies, Technology, thoughts | 1 CommentToday I spent a significant amount of time watching old Vlog Brothers’ videos on YouTube. For those of you who don’t know, the Vlog Brothers consist of Hank and John Green, and they make fun, funny, entertaining and sometimes educational videos. Watching this one got me thinking, what am I grateful for today? Go, watch, then come back.
You watched it? Good. So, what am I thankful for today, Wednesday August 4, 2010? Let me tell you.
Computer Labs
My computer is currently broken. For about two hours this was a huge disaster and I panicked, but then I realized that it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Since I’ve been having so many computer problems I’ve been storing more and more of my homework on gmail, and all my bookmarks are on Delicious, not my computer. I need the internet much more than I need a computer, and thanks to nice things like computer labs, I have the internet. So thanks, University of Illinois GSLIS building, I’m super happy that you have a nice computer lab for me to hang out in for 10 hours today.
Air Conditioning
It is hot here. Really, really hot here. I’m pretty sure Central Illinois in the middle of summer with no ac is one of the most godforsaken things. Last night my friend and I spent some time being old ladies and doing laps around the mall because it was too damn hot to do anything else. I don’t know how people handled the heat before ac, and I am super grateful that I’m going home tomorrow to houses and apartments and other places that are full of air conditioning.
August 5, 2010
THAT’S RIGHT! I’m super grateful for TOMORROW. Because you know what tomorrow is!? Tomorrow is the day I move back to Pennsylvania. Gooooooodbye to the midwest!
LEEP
And why am I lucky enough that I get to move home despite only being halfway through the program? LEEP! Online education is awesome. I get to live in the comfort of my own state, a mere 45 minutes from my boyfriend and even closer to most of the other people I care a lot about while still attending the number one library school in the country. LEEP, you make me happy.
Indexers
Indexers are awesome and amazing, and I have so much respect for them. I could not be an indexer. Frankly, this summer was full of more indexing than I’m really comfortable with! But now I can say that I do understand what they do, and why they are important to our society. They are unsung heroes of patience. They sit down and index tons of articles and books and… everything every day, just so we can find things. And why do they have to do this? Because of…
Aboutness
Aboutness is basically what it sounds like–what something is about. And computers, for all the wonderful and amazing things they can do, still can’t figure this out. And I’m pretty grateful for that. I’m excited that we live in a time when computers are so powerful and can help us so much and yet… our brains are still better. A computer may be able to do more math than I can (because I can pretty much only do math at the 5th grade level…) but a computer could not index this blog and you know what? I totally could.
Books
Surprise, surprise, books made the list of things I’m grateful for. I love that despite living in an age where digital media is quickly overtaking every other kind, people are still fighting for normal, physical books. Yes, I’m also excited about e-books and I’m interested to see how society accepts them and how they change us, but despite that I am deeply, deeply in love with real books. I’m grateful that I live in a time and place where I can have a huge collection of books to call my own. And! As of next week my book collection will be reunited under one roof for the first time in years.
Fake Movie Trailers
I love movie trailers in general, but lately it seems like there are so many good fake movie trailers out there and I am super grateful that they exist because they make me laugh. The most recent one to make me giggle?
Burning lamps to be ever held in the hand
June 23, 2010 at 8:57 pm | Posted in Book Arts, Books, Libraries, Technology | 1 CommentTags: Books, ebooks, letterpress printing, Paper
“You, O Books, are the golden vessels of the temple, the arms of the clerical militia with which the missiles of the most wicked are destroyed; fruitful olives, vines of Engaddi, fig trees knowing no sterility; burning lamps to be ever held in the hand.”
Richard Aungervyle
We take our books for granted. We take our information for granted. As a society, we’re so used to books and information being readily available that we forget that there was a time when it wasn’t that way. I’ll admit, I do it too, but this week I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about information and books, and realizing just how much I take it all for granted. When I want to know something I don’t even need computer! I press less than ten buttons on my iPod and the answer is at my fingertips in seconds. It’s a technological miracle that happens all around us every day! Let’s celebrate it, embrace it, and for once really think about it and be grateful for the time we live in.
Yesterday my Letterpress Printing class went to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library here. I got to see the of Genesis from the Gutenberg Bible–again! This time around I learned that the copy the University of Illinois has is even more special. Gutenberg attempted to print 2 colors on a few pages of Genesis. Printing two colors on a printing press isn’t a very easy thing to do, and imagine doing it for the first time ever! Looking at the pages this time it really struck me just how monumental it was. Movable type! The ability to make copies quickly! I remember reading about it in school when I was a kid and thinking nothing of it, not even comprehending a world without an abundance of books. I still can’t really imagine it. I deal with books every day. I think about them constantly.
A few weeks ago I had a class on paper, another aspect of the modern world that I had completely taken for granted. We’re supposed to live in a “paperless world” but look around you, there is paper EVERYWHERE. Paper, like movable type, changed the rules of the game when it came to information. The two combined changed Western civilization forever, and here we are disregarding them and pretending they aren’t a vital part of our lives! Even those of you who don’t regularly read books can read, and I bet you learned on paper! After having that class I find myself paying more attention to the paper in my life. I like to touch it, examine it, and try to figure out which way the grain is going.
Today I spent three hours setting type for a letterpress print job. I don’t think I ever really had an appreciation of what goes in to making a book before. Yes, today there are much easier ways of printing a book and letterpress is mostly used for artists books or by people into the book arts. Even around the turn of the last century they had slightly easier ways of setting type. But for centuries they did it by hand. It takes a long time and it is a dirty job. The type is cleaned after every use, but the lead is still dirty! Handling the type at all gets you filthy! There’s ink under my fingernails still! The type is heavy and it isn’t arranged in alphabetical order. The order of the California Job Case isn’t alphabetical, but after a while it starts to make sense. The i’s are next to the t’s and f’s, and the infrequently used letters are off to the side in smaller enclosures. The letters, of course, are all backwards, so if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to mix up your p’s and q’s (mind your p’s and q’s anyone?). I learned that the hard way when I tried to spell green and instead got greeu!
Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to form an opinion on e-books and whether I think physical books will soon be a thing of the past. I honestly don’t think physical books will disappear in my lifetime. Most people who grew up with books cannot bear to see them go and have such an emotional attachment to the tactile experience of reading a book that they could never fully switch over to e-books. The next generation, or perhaps the one after that, will not feel the same. Computers and the internet are taking over how we learn, how we communicate with the world, and how we entertain ourselves. E-Books are going to take over, it’s just a matter of time. But does it really matter if the form of the book changes? It will still be “a burning lamp to be ever held in the hand” whether it’s made of paper and ink or wires and plastic.
During the past few weeks I’ve been reading two books on my iPod. I started reading Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau which is not actually pornography, although some of it does get a little too graphic for my taste, hence, why I stopped reading. I’ve also been reading Wuthering Heights. I picked Ms. Bronte’s work because I’ve read it about 15 times before in physical form and it’s one of my all time favorites. I figured if I could read anything on a screen, that would be it. So far I’ve been enjoying the experience! It isn’t the same–at all–but it is very convenient. I walk to and from class every day and lugging around more books does not appeal to my back! My iPod however, is always with me and very light! While waiting for class to start I’ve been enjoying the convenience of it. I’m not willing to buy new books for my iPod, but I’ve already downloaded some of my other favorite (free) classics and I fully intend to keep them on there and use them frequently. I will never be without a book again! I still haven’t tried a Kindle, Sony Reader, or any other e-reader, so I can’t have an opinion on them… perhaps they’re easier to use or more friendly.
Books are amazing. They are beautiful works of art, and the information they contain changes lives every day. I owe my entire lifestyle, my career choice, my education and almost all of the passions in my life to one simple invention: The book. So thanks Gutenberg and thanks all you librarians and book lovers throughout history!
Paper
May 28, 2010 at 6:38 pm | Posted in Books, Libraries, Technology | 3 CommentsTags: Paper
I’m currently in the middle of taking a two week intensive special collections class devoted entirely to paper. It’s so much fun and I’ve already learned so much! Paper isn’t something I typically thought about before this class, but now I’m probably going to think about it all the time. It seems that the classes I take here are completely changing my worldview!
So today my class was lucky enough to go to a house that has a small paper mill set up in the garage! We got to make paper and see how it was done properly, instead of just hearing about it. It was such a great experience, and as soon as I have the money/space I’m totally going to make some of my own paper!
Before I get into the actual papermaking process, there are some things you should know about paper. Paper is anything made of matted fibers. The quality of the paper will be changed depending on what you do to the fibers and what you mix in with them before making the paper. You can make paper out of ANYTHING with fibers. The guy who owned the equipment we worked with was in the middle of making paper out of the plants in his yard. That’s right, he took the scraps from when he was gardening last year, and this year he’s making them into paper. How fantastic is that? You can make paper out of dryer lint (although it won’t be very strong since the fibers are so small!) or out of flowers, or even vegetables! Get the point? You can make paper from anything.
Today we made two different kinds of paper: Western style and Japanese style. I’ll go through each one separately so you don’t get confused!
Japanese Style Paper
The first thing you need to make Japanese style paper is the Kozo plant. You soak the plant in water and then remove the outer bark and beat it with a either a special tool, or a stick. You know, whatever you have around that’s good for beating! We used fibers that were already beaten and ready to go, but the unbeaten plant looks something like this:
We were lucky enough to use fibers that were grown in Japan and beaten by a master Japanese paper maker! After the fibers are beaten you put them in the vat (a large tub) with a formation aid. Traditionally the Japanese use the root of the hyacinth plant and call it the Tororo Aoi, but we used some kind of synthetic substitute. The formation helps the paper form and makes it so you can write on the paper without the ink feathering.
So, you’ve got your vat full of furnish (or “stuff” as the very technical papermakers call it :p) what else do you need? Well, you need a paper mold! The Japanese mold is typically made of bamboo (ours was made of wood and mesh) and is called a sugeta. The su is the screen part, and the geta is the wooden frame part. Here’s a picture of a more traditional one than the one we used!
So once you have your furnish in the vat you agitate it either with a tool or your fingers. We used our fingers because it was nice and hot out and the water felt good! The formation aid makes the furnish feel different than normal water… It’s heavier and slimier, almost like you mixed in egg whites. You take the mold and put it straight down vertically into the vat, and then bring it up at an angle. After that you shake it a few times up and down until the fibers begin to settle. The kozo fibers are very fine and much longer than western fibers, and it’s just beautiful to watch them settle! With Japanese papermaking you are dip the mold into the vat as many times as you want and make as thick or thin a sheet of paper as you want! I dipped mine in three times and it turned out pretty nice!
After creating the sheet we took the screen (su) out of the mold (geta) and used a home rigged air suction system to dry the paper a little. We then peeled the sheet off the the screen and put in on a board. Once on the board we used a brush to clear out any air bubbles and flatten it. I was actually kind of surprised at just how strong the matted fibers were when I peeled the sheet off the screen! It wasn’t super-strong, and I could have easily torn the page, but I also didn’t have to be super careful as I walked across the garage.
This is my sheet of paper! Isn’t it beautiful? The Kozo paper is a beautiful tanish color and you can clearly see the long fibers in it. Sorry for the slightly blurry picture! The papermakers showed us some dried pieces and they were not only beautiful, but soft! They almost felt like fabric.
Our papers were being dried in the garage, but traditionally they’re dried outside more like this:
Western Style Paper
Ok, so on to Western paper! Western paper is similar to Japanese paper, but the mold is different and you also don’t use the formation aid. This means that you need to size the paper so you can write it, but that’s whole story and we didn’t do that.
A Western Style paper mold is similar to the sugeta, but the screen is attached to the mold instead of a completely separate piece. The top part of the mold comes off, and is called a deckle. Here’s a picture I found online to give you more an idea…
The furnish for western style paper is different from the Japanese style. Before wood pulp was used, papermakers used cotton and linen fibers, usually from old rags. Ours was mostly made up of lintels, a kind of cotton fiber you can buy partially beaten. In order to beat them more you need to boil them up and put them into a beater. Smaller papermakers use a blender, but we got to see a small Hollander Beater! I forgot to take a picture of the one we saw, but this one is pretty similar:
Ok, so you beat your pulp and make it into furnish and you’re ready to go! You dip the mold in and then you do the “vatman’s shake” which is a fun little series of shakes to get the fibers to lay different ways and mesh together nicely. After carefully taking off the deckle and draining some of the excess water you couch (pronounced coo-ch) the paper onto the post. Here’s my paper!
The paper is a gray color, and a lot thicker than the Japanese paper. Couching it was fun!
Here’s a picture of the vat and post from the papermakers yard-stuff paper!
You couch the paper onto felts. The felts soak up some of the water, and prevent the post form becoming just a giant block of paper! It also usually gives them a nice texture 
Once you have a large enough post you need to press it. This can be done by putting a lot of pressure on it with either a mechanical press or even just having a lot of people stand on some boards. This gets out a lot of the excess water and really forms the paper and mats the fibers together tightly. After drying you’ve got a perfectly usable piece of paper! The papermaker was going to dry ours for us and get them to us before class ends next week, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep my paper!
Papermaking is messy, wet, and very fun and relaxing. It’s calming to dip the mold into the vat, and it’s so awesome to be able to look at the final product and say ” I did that”. Here you can see the fibers that dried on my hand after I made my paper:
So, dear readers, that is how paper is made! There is so much about paper that I never knew that I’m finding is important. I’m so excited to be taking this class and learning about it! Despite moving towards a paperless world, paper is still a vitally important part of our society. Knowing about paper and its properties will hopefully help me repair books and take care them for future generations. Later this summer I’m taking letterpress printing, and in the fall I’m taking Bookbinding, so by the time I graduate I should know all about how to make a book!
Anyone who has any questions feel free to ask me! I don’t know a lot, but by being in this class I probably know more than most people about paper!
EDIT:
My friend Jess is in my class and she got some good pictures of the set up for those of you who are interested! http://argyleincident.blogspot.com/2010/05/papermaking.html
Love Letter to my iPod
April 27, 2010 at 11:44 pm | Posted in Books, Technology, thoughts | 2 CommentsTags: Books, iPod, Technology
I love my iPod Touch. I have never been more satisfied with a purchase. Like I mentioned in a post earlier today, I really do feel like it has changed the way I connect with the world.
Originally, I wasn’t going to get an iPod Touch. I thought they were an interesting gadget, but nothing a poor college student like me should be spending money on! And then Steve got one. He was so enthralled with it, and I borrowed it constantly to check things online or play games… I had to change my mind and think about getting one. So one fateful day last June with a fresh paycheck burning in my pocket, I got one. The Radio Shack guy tried so hard to talk me out of it, but I was set in my ways. I haven’t looked back since.
How can a silly gadget change your life, you might ask. Well dear readers, if you’ve ever listened to me before… well, now would also be a good time.* Let me tell you how my iPod has changed my life.
I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who keeps up with the news. Since middle school I’ve gone through periods where I’m very in tune with what is going on, and periods where I ignore everything news related. I think my main problem was always that I couldn’t find a way of getting the news that I really enjoyed. Television news is a joke, newspapers are large and at times physically uncomfortable to read, and reading the news on the computer always felt more like work than anything else. None of these problems exist with my iPod. I can pick the news sources I read (I have apps for USA Today, Time, and The Huffington Post and I also usually see what’s on Google News) and the format is very comfortable. Now checking up on the news is the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, and the second to last thing I do before I go to sleep. I don’t have to have my glasses on to read it, and I only need one hand. I also love reading comics on my iPod. Most, like my favorite, are the perfect size for the iPod. Overall, it is just so much nicer than using the computer.
Let’s talk about my computer for a moment, shall we? I have a serious love/hate relationship with my computer. Lately it has had all kinds of problems, but even beyond that, using my computer too often feels like work. It’s hard for me to separate work from play when I do it on the same screen, often in the same window! So if I can avoid turning on my computer, I want to avoid it. Thanks to my iPod I have that option. I can keep the computer off while still staying in touch with the world! Living here, it’s rare that I go a day without my computer, but at home it’s pretty common for me to only use the computer for work and to go days without touching it.
The games are fun, and I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent playing Scrabble (ahem, Words With Friends). Lately I’ve been trying to teach myself chess using a few different apps, and who doesn’t love a good puzzle game? My iPod is my calculator, my back up alarm, and my weatherman. My iPod is fun and really, that’s why I like it so much. I don’t get bored with it because it’s always changing.
I have not tried reading any e-books on my iPod, although I may try it over the summer. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about e-books and what their role will be in the libraries of the future. In high school I read a few books online using my computer, and I hated it. After a while it hurt my eyes and it did not have the same relaxing feel of holding a book. I’m interested to see if my negative feelings towards e-books are still true, or if technology has caught up. One day I would love to try a Kindle (or some such device) but I don’t think a machine could ever completely replace a physical book for me. I love books. I love how they smell, how they feel, how they look… Picking up a book is so comforting. Opening up a familiar old book is like going home. The way the text looks on the page, the little imperfections that you have memorized after reading a book 10 times… These are aspects of reading that I don’t think an e-book could ever replicate. Like I said, over the summer I’ll probably try reading a book on my iPod, so I’ll let you know what I think of that, and hopefully at some point in the future I’ll have the opportunity to try out another kind if e-reader to form a solid opinion on them.
So dear readers, that is why I love my iPod.
*”dear readers” quote stolen from Brad Neely’s Wizard People Dear Readers
The Cylons Look Like Us Now.
April 27, 2010 at 11:59 am | Posted in Libraries, Technology | 1 CommentTags: libraries, Technology
We watched this video in class last night, and I thought it was worth sharing with you all. I’m interested in what you think of it, especially those of you who are older or younger than me! I’ve been around technology my whole life, and I can’t imagine life without computers. Writing a paper without a computer would be a daunting task for me. So much of my life is tied to computers, especially now. I wake up in the morning and check Facebook, the news, and my email on my iPod Touch. Then I usually turn on my computer and do some reading for class, or catch up comics and blogs. All of my classes have online components, and there are plenty of days I don’t look at anything that is physically printed.
Even as I write this, I’m reminded of how easily things on the computer can be lost. I had just finished writing this post when Safari decided it didn’t like WordPress, so it closed the window. Although it autosaves the draft every few minutes, I guess something went wrong and my draft disappeared. So here I am, writing it again. That post might be out there somewhere on the internet, but it isn’t somewhere I know how to get to!
In the video, the idea of “the machine is using us/is us” fills me with a strange mix of fear and thrill. The future is here. Being a Sci Fi fan, the first thing I think about when seeing that is Cylons and Replicants. Where is this technology going to take us? I don’t think remains of the human race will be fleeing a radical group of humaniod robots across space, but who knows? Or will we one day have an Ender’s Game situation where the internet becomes “alive” and starts having feelings (Jane? Anyone remember Jane? Cmon, there’s gotta be some Orson Scott Card fans out there!) When will we reach the technological singularity, and will humans become obsolete? It’s scary/exciting to think about!
I’ve always had something of a love/hate relationship with technology. I fear it, and what it does to our society and social connections, but at this same time it’s just… so cool! There’s so much you can do with computers or iPods or whatever your gadget of choice is. My iPod Touch was one of the best things I ever bought, and I’m not joking when I say it changed the way I get the news and stay connected to the world. But that’s a post for another day.
My friend Jess did a great post about our class last night and technology education (or lack of, in our case). Like her, I’m focusing on Special Collections, so most of my classes won’t give me any kind of technological skills. I know a few basic things, but I don’t have any kind of web design skills beyond filling out WordPress’ easy to use template. I am willing to learn, though. It’s really just a matter of only being here for a year, and having so many other classes that I need/want to take. Sometimes I wish Library School would last longer, and then other times I just want it to be over with so I can get a job and start getting some practical experience!
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