Week 1 and 2: Getting My Feet Wet

To being with I thought that it might be appropriate to discuss the purpose of this blog. Beyond what the title (that might be changed) says right now I plan to use this blog as a way to introduce the history of the book, and the digital book to me. I have, for as long as I can remember loved reading, and I plan to take my love and take it to the world of publishing. I want to help the book world add more magic to it.

My plan for this independent study is to research the broad history of book publishing, and then to take a close look at the impact of the new digital age since the ereader hit the market in 2007. To start this research project out, I have started to read the introduction to “An Introduction to Book History” written by David Finelstien and Alistair McCleery.

The first thing that I noticed about the Introduction was that it discussed “Guttenberg gap” which I had heard previously in Oral Traditions with Professor Minton. However, the term described was the “Guttenberg Parenthesis” and it was referring to Gutenberg’s “first publication and the contemporary move from print to online and onscreen” (Finelstien & McCleery vii). This discussion about Guttenberg is brought full circle when the text says “The disruption and untimate absorption into society that marketed shifts from oral to written forms, and then to printi

ng, seems today to be replicated in the technological shift of print to online screen based media” (viii). As denoted, I will be looking out for more statements about technological advances and how they relate to the Gutenberg Parenthesis.

Another fun little side note on something I discovered from the introduction is that there is a professional organization called SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing). People have been studying the book for ages, I am not the only one interested in the history of the book, and even on MSU campus. What I mean is that since I have proposed this Independent Study, I have noticed that there a few professor that have either researched it, or have topics that circle or influence publishing.  

The questions that I am asking right now are the same type that book historians are asking:

• What is a text? Does it have to have a physical form (a wide range of media: books magazines, newspapers to online web pages).
• If we define a text…what is a book? Is it “tree flakes encased in dead cow” (Mitchell 1995).  is it bound together? If it’s an illegal photocopy, then it’s not really the bound book anymore.                The introduction goes on to state that the book that I am now reading (and paraphrasing) is a book, unless I am reading it online, then I am not reading a book as traditionally defined. I think that my research project is going to have to spend a majority of the time trying to redefine what a book really should be considered.
• The next question the introduction raises is: what is a medium? This is a question that I believe I have spent a little time with if I redefine medium as “genre”. Last semester in Literature Unbound and Digital Rhetoric I spent time looking at what it meant to be “a book… website…a screenplay” etc. Different Modes of writing, rhetoric, composition, and trying to define the multi-modal compositions—I still don’t have a definition. (I am looking forward to what F&M have to say)

Essentially Week Two will be diving further into this book, but now I have a good frame to answer some of my questions about book history.