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| chained books, |
this aspiration of fixity was realized in many Cambridge college libraries, which still as had been common in the 16 century parish churches, chained their books to shelves. the last colleges in oxford unchained in 1799.
conflicting aims,
the library aims to make knowledge more available, caveated by the contradictory impulse of the library-as-archive; a place that because it preserves, restricts its contents from external influence and decay.
shelf lives and migrations
“the expanding collection caused books to move between shelves to make room for new ones. The movement is still legible in the erased shelf-marks which preserve the memories of these book’s successive positions as they took up new homes, shuffled up and down shelves.”
connections and space in shelves
“as paper and books take up new positions alongside and within other texts, their semiotic environments invite new connections and new forms of intertextuality.”
Sophistication:
“Sophistication of books is the practice of making a book complete by replacing missing leaves with leaves from another copy.”
(Inferring things through finding which pages are removed from a book.)
relationship of paper with water, restoring books
“the problem with preservation is that it destroys what it saves”
“early modern paper depends on water for production. paper makers depended on paper mills sprung along the river valleys. they needed to be near towns for supply of rags, and ports where cordage and sails from ships contributed to make the stuff. yet too much water renders paper useless. entire libraries have been wiped out by floods. paper which absorbs water is useless as a writing surface. the “washing of books by 18th and 19th century book deals used water and bleaching chems to remove readers marks and restore the book to pristine condition.
“the last word lies not with the author, but with paper”
I’m thinking of books as the flow of their parts, the vegetable/plant/organic source of the pages how they end up. A distributed forest.
in 1600s a professors private collection of books would often outnumber that of the university itself, often double or triple in size.
Library of Alexandria had 200,000 to 500,000 scrolls. Being papyrus, they were able to be stored but suseptible to damp. The sheer size of the library militated against its survival. “Neglect was a much more potent enemy than war or malice”
As the safe harbour of books monasteries were also responsible for the survival of libraries. Scripture was copied over and over as an act of pious devotion. Roman culture was salvaged by this, copying maniscripts of classical text by which means we have them today.
the popularity of the codex came after the papyrus, though parchment codices had been in existance. Codicies could be open to any location with ease, unlike the unraveling of scrolls. They could be stacked and had a sturdy individuality with leather or wooden covers.
The scriptorium or writing room. They were not always silent rooms with hushed monks but general workspaces. Some scribes would write for six hours a day. We find marginalia that attests to this workload “st patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing” “O that a glass of good wine were by my side”
The cloister where supervised reading could take place, could hold a chest or cabinet of books, the armarium, the keys to which were in the possession by librarian.
Colleges would acquire books as unredeemed securities when they loaned money to indebted scholars. By 1338 over 300 of the 2,000 volumes in possession by the library of Sorbonne had already disappeared. We see chaining of books after this.
Chaining has disadvantages: what if one wants to consult multiple texts that were not chained to the same lectern.
stationer (seller of parchment, papers, pens inks and books. quires (four sheets of paper folded to form eight leaves)
“keep books free of [dust]”
printing press - books would be done in pages, with the final book done months after when the last page was complete all at once. spaces would be left for filling in, like initials and text decorations and illuminations, all done by hand.
the rule of silence, by Bodley. “here its the dead who speak to them who work”
books were recycled, wallpaper, bookbinding supports, wrapping paper or toilerpaper. misprinted and obsolete books were found on butcher counters to wrap meat. Book lotteries where enormous quanities of unwanted books and old paper were disposed of wholesale
those engaged in the hunt for manuscripts.
IncunableAn incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand.
bibliomania - frantic competitive bidding for the best and rarest copies of early printed books. it was denounced as a moral disease and a siren call to young aristocrats who would squander family estate on books they could not even read.
Richard Herber, owner of eight houses full of books states “No man can comfortably do without three copies of each book. One he must have a show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country-house; another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, he must have a third at the service of his friends.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/victorian-romantic-rituals-and-charms
The setting is Christmas Eve, after a rollicking holiday party in North Yorkshire. While the rest of the family retires, the young woman of the house sets to work. She pulls a single mistletoe berry and leaf from the pocket where it has been stowed since her beloved kissed her under the bunch hung from the ceiling. (It was customary for couples kissing under the mistletoe in the 19th century to remove a berry each time a kiss was had. Once the berries were gone, no more kisses.) After locking the door she swallows the berry and works by candlelight to complete the charm. She pricks the initials of ‘him her heart loves best’ into the mistletoe leaf and then stitches it to the inside of her corset near her heart, where it would ‘bind his love to her so long as there it remains’.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgpjpr35nko On his 1938 Austin Cambridge which can barely hit 50mph “It’s great to drive, there’s always a clear road ahead but behind a sea of traffic.” I was expecting to hate the kid, but he has me in stitches.
Looking at Uranus, it is one of the classical planets that is visible by the naked eye. There were folks looking at the night sky and seeing it in the past, prior to it being confirmed as a planet. Now, we look at the James Webb Uranus picture or any other astronomical observation. This observation is an inward type of observation. Previously it was an outward observation, the eyes looking at the stars compared to deeper, introverted observation of a screen. Though, in the past - say that I am looking at a lens through a telescope, I am still fixating on that lens and it is providing the information. The screen, with the array of numbers and readings of luminosities, is the lens. I sometimes think of the surfaces of these planets at night, or when I am taking the garbage out to be collected the next morning. How I can place myself, in this imagined fully inward way, onto the surface.
Have an art exhibit where there’s a bookworm that is eating a book that is the encylopedic entry of itself.
Libricide - as a means of destroying history. As a means of fighting back virulent growth, or unsanctioned copies.
packhorse librarians and the bookmobile
censored, book section - too foul and dangerous. alchemical just by their nature and producing fumes
library fires
space for book removal? a large waste chute where books are destroyed. Copied and remade before being cast into refuse stack
room with computer that is incongrous to the surrounding, it feeds and scans and consumes the library - digital archival that is deemed hazardous to original library group
a room that is a massive book, a space for large books and the characters.