Wednesday, December17, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Generic distinctions between a screen and paper display (of the same image) include the recto/verso (duplex) and left/right (spread) attributes of paper and the persistence and accuracy of navigation of those features. Further complexity of the multiple display navigation is presented in book format (again same content for both paper and screen display). In books navigation of expositions and discovery are eased in paper with haptic manipulation and in screen with dexterity of touch. A contended factor in book format is cognitive navigation and mapping attributes as used in reading where studies favor paper. Continue reading “Book Readers’ Intermingling Paper and Screen” →

Monday, October 27, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

The making of printed books has continued quietly across each turn of each century since the fifteenth …except for one. With the turn of the twenty-first century a sudden displacement has taken place. Thereafter books need not be something somewhere; books could be effervescent, appearing and disappearing, on a screen display. The text is scrolled over the screen, displacing text paging. Another way of considering this sudden bibliographical significance is that prior to the twenty-first century almost all books were not produced digitally and following the turn of the century almost all books were.

Continue reading “Books of the 21st Century” →

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

We have recently added an important reference for our wide study of resilience of book transmission. This is philology[1] and the legacy of comparative study of texts. We can extend this reference to include currently studied “comparative textual media”[2] as we expand philology to include screen and audio transmissions of texts. Our philology frame can also be extended if we add library science to engage books or bibliographic units and their arrangements into libraries. We could call the extension “philology of comparative libraries” and such projections could be extended to include audio and screen media.

Continue reading “Library Science” →

Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

As we arrive at the cognitive sciences we find a pivot in our studies of resilience in book transmission. This is a pivot from givens to potentials as we consider our bionic constraints and embodied cognitions and consider their amazing adaptabilities for uses such as book writing and reading.

Continue reading “Cognitive Factors” →

Friday, September 26, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

We have a favorite dictum as we study and manipulate the experience of media. This is “don’t be the bunny” or otherwise fall victim to contending polarities. Such binary decoys provoke inconclusive debate and displace us from study of the wide territory exactly between simple contrasts.

Continue reading “Don’t Be the Bunny” →

Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

There can be confusion regarding description of paper books; the given book needs description of how it was initially made as well as how it appears. Either perspective can unfairly dominate. Makers best describe their own work, but, perhaps, they cannot. Papermakers, printers and bookbinders would also prefer their own exclusive explanations. Bibliographers and book conservators can bring the description up to date but some estimation will be needed for missing production information. And the later encounters with the surviving book bring other surprises and descriptive challenges.

Continue reading “Imposition and Format for Book Description” →

Friday, August 29, 2014
By Gary Frost

The UI Libraries Preservation & Conservation Department continues assistance of the celebration of 300 years of book printing in the Amana Church community. The retrospective exhibit of the imprints, from 1714 to 2014, has been arranged and installed with the help of the conservation staff. Now we are printing the commemorative keepsakes for the various celebration dinners and conferences.

Printing of the keepsakes is underway at the Homestead Print Shop and Post Office. The Print Shop and Post Office is itself a historical exhibit. The recreation depicts printing and communication methods of the 1950’s in the Amana Colonies. The relatively late period depiction enables the inclusion of the Linotype composing machine; not until the mid-twentieth century did the German printers finally accept keyboard composition, modern types and English language.

The keepsake items feature proofs from the stereo-plates of the 1854 setting of the Psalter-Spiel. This hymnal and recitation book was produced from the beginning of the Church of True Inspirationists with the last edition from the 1854 plates printed in 1910. The plates appear to have been cast in Buffalo, New York replicating hand-set composition prepared just prior to relocation of the villages from Ebenezer, New York to the Amana Colonies.

Printing in the Inspirationist community has a long and impressive legacy of book printing. The UI Libraries Preservation & Conservation Department is proud to contribute the persistence of the craft of printing from metal type in the Amanas.