Discards - IndustriScope and the Daily Stock Price Record

No big whoop here -- just two multivolume series that probably should have gone years ago. The biggest news with these was my frustrations over the crooked carts -- I ran over my toe with one. (OUCH!) We can put a man on the moon but we can't get a book cart to roll straight. That and the dust from IndustriScope, which was aggravating to my conjunctivitis :( Lots of dust on those floppy, long, horizontal beasts.

Bye bye, outdated print business sources!

Coptic Bookbinding

The idea of a book serving as a companion -- a humane presence in whose company one takes nourishment, a trustworthy guide on pilgrimage or expendition, a close associate whose society one prizes -- dates back to the classical world.
-- The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2010, p. xi

Over the course of the month of April I took the Bookbinding Core Certificate Program at the San Francisco Center for the Book. During the first weekend class, on Saturday April 4, we executed a Coptic stitched book. The program increased in complexity each consecutive week, so this first week was an introduction to the tools, vocabulary, and materials in addition to being an introduction to one of the oldest methods of binding, coptic bookbinding.

Although some Coptic bound codices from Ancient Egypt were made from wooden boards covered in leather and sometimes had a wrapper attached to the spine (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 65), the book we made has an exposed spine and covers composed of contemporary (paper) bookboard that are covered with paper. The exposed spine of the product of this workshop is great for showing off the chain stitch, that typical Coptic braid. Additionally, a signature touch of the Coptic binding style was the inclusion of headbands that extend to the boards (Greenfield, 1998, p. 81), but since this workshop started with the basics, we did not include headbands or tailbands.

For this workshop we were supplied with pre-cut pages to make the signatures, as well as bookboards that had roughly been cut to size. We choose and cut paper for the covers ourselves, as well as trimmed the fore-edge of the signatures once we folded them and trimmed the bookboards. We learned how to use the large paper cutter this week! The sewing of the actual coptic stitch through the sewing stations in the signatures was fun, except for the complicated punctures that were required through the book boards (four punctures with a thin awl, two being diagonal coming through the spine to either of the closest front and back holes). I think this was especially difficult because I did not have a thimble or needle gripping tool, and because I was using the same hooked needles that make the looping of the coptic stitched braid easy (it's hard to poke a curved needle through a diagonal burrow in the spine of the cover!). Out of all the bindings I learned in this program, this is the only one that does not use all along stitching -- we used two pieces of thread and four sewing stations.

Hook needle on one end of a piece of still-attached thread.
Yes that's my blood on the cover! (Happy Easter) 

Workstation towards the very end of the workshop.
Threads just waiting to be tied off.

Finished view of the spine. That crooked stitch on the right could use some improvement! 

To discuss the Coptic method of stitching or binding is to dive into the history of writing and the genesis of what can be defined as a book. Historically, as humans developed methods of organizing data that their minds alone could not hold, they used scripts on tablets made of stone or clay, then they used scrolls often made from papyrus or parchment, and finally leaves often made of papyrus that needed to be bound together to maintain order and portability, which brings us to the period of the codex. We have evidence of the existence of codices as early as the 1st Century A.D. (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 60). The Oxford English Dictionary defines codex as, "A manuscript volume: e.g. one of the ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures (as the Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, etc.), or of the ancient classics" (OED Online). At this contemporary point in history, codex refers to the most ancient form of what we now consider a bound book, but within the book worker culture, codex can be a broader term that takes on connotations of artistry, handy work, and a specific subculture (see the Codex Symposium and Book Fair).

As with many things, religion was the catalyst for the development of codices and the Coptic method of stitching, as "Copts are native Egyptian Christians [whose] bindings are the earliest known bindings of the codex format" (Greenfield, 1998, p. 81). The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices in Egypt in 1945 was a special insight to evidence of this method of binding, not to mention a discovery that provided primary sources of the Gnostics. While later development of the codex showed a preference for vellum or parchment as materials, these early examples of of Coptic-stitched codices show the use of papyrus for leaves (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 60) and leather for covers.

One of the neat things about the Coptic bound codex is how it contains most of the major trends in bookbinding in its compressed history. With its development we see the innovation of style, form, and materials that have become typical in later eras and regional trends of bookbinding.

References

Codex. (2015). In OED Online. Retrieved from http://0-www.oed.com.ignacio.usfca.edu/view/Entry/35593?redirectedFrom=codex

Greenfield, J. (1998). ABC of bookbinding: a unique glossary with over 700 illustrations for collectors & librarians. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; New York, NY: Lyons Press.

Roberts, M., & Etherington, D. (1982). Bookbinding and the conservation of books : a dictionary of descriptive terminology. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.

Suarez, M. F., & Woudhuysen, H. R. (2010). Introduction. In M. F. Suarez & H. R. Woudhuysen (Eds.), The Oxford companion to the book (ix - xiii). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Discards HQ1180 W66 1989 - HG4057 A4324 1995

This week I put Women's Studies Index (14 volumes) and the American Public Opinion Index (22 volumes) on my discard cart, as they were large sets leftover from my work in these areas from the past couple weeks (too big to fit on my cart those weeks).

Then I moved on to business reference books. Which made me think, "Penny Penny Penny!" Because Penny's nimble business librarian fingers had been all over these.

To be clear I have no emotional attachments to any of these stocks and bonds historical numbers ;-) I am not sure exactly what database these are in (perhaps even freely available on the web... wonder how far back a freely available archive would go) but if I am confident that if there is any dataset not necessitating print, it's this one!

As for the funny, outdated cover of this week's batch, here you go. While I admire the colorful cover and nice outer glow block style lettering, there is something eternally hilarious about print reference books instructing on computers/the internet from the late 90s/early aughts. Well it does have a section on E-Trade (the company) so it can't be too out of date :-P

Discards JF11 B53 V. 1-20 thru HG4930 M8

I knew there was a reason I couldn't fall asleep last night, too excited about the week to come.

Today we get rid of all 20 binders of Constitutions of the Countries of the World! Today is the best day of my life!

Man oh man, do these hail the high life of loose leaf filings. Indeed I used to brag about the war wounds these binders inflicted on me to the student assistants as I passed the loose leaf filings torch -- a prong punctured my palm one time, and I was proud to slap a bandaid on that bad boy.

If memory serves, this was one of the more obnoxious, but not difficult, loose leaf filings because if only one country got a new constitution, you had to replace the table of contents in all 20 volumes, and the binder mechanism for these was a particular pain in the ass (the three prongs would be consumed by an encompassing clip that was very difficult to latch and unlatch with the binder prongs consumed correctly). I remember after a particularly productive constitution producing period, there would be a couple of these stacked up, and at that point you had to remind yourself to only put in the most recent ToC in the front of the 20 binders!

Another stalwart loose leaf was the good old Morningstar binder, which was one of the easier ones from all sides. The method of filing was easy once you learned the rules, and the mechanism for the binder was easy to navigate as well.

Well, good bye old loose leaf buddies! I would say I will miss you, but I won't. Not a bit :)

ACRL 2015 Wrap Up

Here is my ACRL wrap up!

Let me record the sessions and panels I attended and then give some brief thoughts on the conference.

This is what the end of a conference looks like

Schedule Made through my Google Calendar

Wednesday, March 25

• Opening Keynote with G. Willow Wilson
• Opening Exhibits Reception (I did the hard work of talking to vendors in preparation for my product review blog post this night)

Thursday, March 26

• Paving a Two-Way Street: The Rewards and Challenges of Archival Projects with Community Partners
• Contributed Papers 9: Successful Student Advisory Boards: Best Practices; Unleash your library's HIPster: Transforming student library jobs into high impact practices; Design-Model-Build: Leveraging a library remodeling project to engage students and promote sustainability on campus.
• ACRL 75th Anniversary Invited Panel - New Roles for the Road Ahead (note: the "online monograph" put together for this panel is available here)
• Keynote Session - Jad Abumrad

Friday, March 27

• Invited Paper - Searching for Girls: Identity for Sale in the Age of Google
• Contributed Papers 19: They'’ve Found It. Can They Read It? Adding Academic Reading Strategies to Your IL Toolkit (the presenters set up a blog with strategies); Blurred Lines: Tying Recreational Reading to Research in an Academic Library;  Children's Books in the Digital World: The Bigger Picture for Our Graduates
• Contributed Papers 23: Seeing the Forest and the Trees: The Integrated Digital Scholarship Ecosystem Project; Seeking Sustainable Solutions to 21st Century News: A Case Study of Born-Digital Preservation; Revolutionary by Design: HathiTrust, Digital Learning and the Future of Information Provision

Saturday, March 28

• Contributed Papers 26: Making Sense: Can Makerspaces Work in Academic Libraries? [I asked a question about Makerspaces contributing to academic coursework; a really nice person gave me her business card with the url to the UTC Studio written on the back]; Library Learning Spaces: Investigating Libraries and Investing in Student Feedback; Implementing a Culture of Creativity & Making: The Rutgers University Art Library Lego Playing Station
• Contributed Papers 30: Assessing Library Internationalization Efforts and Impacts: Tools and Strategies; Looking Through Their Eyes: Improving Library Services for English as a Second Language Learners by Exploring Their Experiences and Perceptions of Academic Libraries Abroad and in the United States; You’re No Fun Anymore: The Ethics of Acquiring Electronic Devices in Light of E-Waste, Sweatshops, and Globalization
• Closing Keynote - Lawrence Lessig

Obviously, one of the best parts of a conference is that you can select what sessions and panels to attend based on your interests, job description, aspirations, goals, etc. I did that a lot, especially with the Contributed Papers 19 (more of my interest) and Contributed Papers 9 (my job duties). I also tried to tap into the pulse of the formal body of the professional association by attending the 75th Anniversary: New Roles panel. I have to admit, this panel left a very bad taste in my mouth. I actually panicked for a moment, thinking I was in the wrong place; I had chosen the wrong career. I examined my reaction later, and observed I can be inflexible in continuously applying what a "library" is to me, historically, to what it should be in the future. However, I also feel resistant to putting what libraries do in economic terms, by using the words "value added" and "return on investment," which turns libraries into another cog in the capitalism gear. I also feel resistant to the idea that we have to prove our value as librarians, but that is more of an idealogical issue for me -- I feel that libraries and librarians are inherently valuable, and if folks don't recognize that, it's a reflection of their stupidity. What other profession has to deal with remaining "relevant" and all the anxiety that brings the way we do? I just get fed up with it. And here my aggression is aimed more at academic institution administrators who may be too short sighted to see the inherent value we possess.

And, as usual, I deeply enjoyed the ACRL keynotes because they are wider and more entertaining than real, applicable panels, but they get me thinking about big picture issues, and often inspire me. I particularly took Jad Abumrad's keynote as a call to creative arms, which spoke to me as an artist/writer and a liver of life. Lawrence Lessig's keynote was also inspiring, but in a political and economic way that seemed to call for the unburdening of information from out beneath the chains of profits and capitalism. I appreciate that idealism.

Ultimately I am glad I went to this conference as it helps me navigate the development of my professional career, but next time I will remember to be more relaxed -- I stressed too hard about proving my professionalism, and it had adverse effects on my health.

**Edited to add (5/5/2015)
Today I discovered the ACRL 2015 Virtual Conference Web site!
You can view the keynotes without a login, and you can view the other presentations as screencasts using your login.

But most importantly, I also discovered the closing highlights montage, and briefly at 1:04 someone you may recognize is grabbing a beer for her coworkers from Gale in the exhibit hall!