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Strange Book View

Collecting Objects, Collecting Concepts

Susan M. Pearce, professor at the University of Leicester has established an academic program for the study of the behavior of collecting. The behavior of systematic collecting of objects is very common and evident in one out of three persons. But, as professor Pearce explains, an obstacle to its academic study is its extremely interdisciplinary scope. Psychology, sociology, history, economics and archeology are all relevant as is an increasing academic focus on material culture and consumerism. These issues are discussed further in a piece in the New York Times by Lawrence Zuckerman, "Studying the Ageless Need to Amass Collections", January 22, 2000, pages A15-17. The discussion offers some immediate parallels with the obstacles and appeals of the study of the book.

The study of the book, considering topics as wide as as technologies for the storage of knowledge, the behavior of authors and readers, or history of cultural transmission, is obviously extremely interdisciplinary as well. What theme of the study of the book can possibly hover over all its component disciplines and also provide a practical course of investigation?

If a counterpart of collecting objects is collecting concepts, then perhaps the theme of the study of the book is the study of the activity of collecting concepts in objects. That theme does extricate itself from the numerous source disciplines. It also brings a priority interest to concept collection activities and stored knowledge transactions. For example, the role of oral transmission contrasted with print transmission, a sub-theme that is persistent and contemporary, is crucial to the study of the book. Likewise the role and current transformations of the library are crucial to the definition of the study of the book.

Is there any evidence that suggests that this line of thought, study of the collecting of concepts in objects, is serviceable? For one thing this idea encompasses E-books as a sub-set of books in general. Perhaps a more revealing indication of the idea's serviceability is presented by the advent of the codex format in western culture.

It is considered something of a coincidence that book use during the period of late Antiquity involved different formats and that established institutions predominately utilized the scroll while emergent institutions predominately adopted the codex. Why would fringe sectarians consistently adopt a divergent, new technology for their books? Was it possibly a reflection of new cultural dimension that was being expressed in which the collection of concepts took precedence over the collection of physical goods? Did the codex somehow appeal to impoverished sectarian communities who had nothing more than concepts? In other words was the codex format a physical expression of a cultural behavior compulsive over the collection and transmission of abstractions?

There is a vast matrix for the explanation of the adoption of the codex, but, perhaps, an omission of the composite perspective of the study of the book obscures the obvious; that the adoption of the codex format was linked to a spreading compulsion to collect and transmit concepts.

The Library Model

It is a weird fact that some of the most interesting qualities of collected items is their juxtaposition. Here the model of the library appears central to the study of the book. From the library perspective, the book can be studied in its interrelationships and in a context of use that is extracted from numerous source disciplines. In the library we engage the paradox of why conceptual works are transmitted by physical objects at all. Today, in libraries we also encounter an even stranger interaction. This is the on-line transmission of concepts detached from physical media and so, evidently, accessed from a different consciousness.

The reader in the library stacks or holding a traditional, paper book has a grasp of the scope of the concepts contained. This particular augmentation of concept transmission is assimilated automatically as a heritage that goes all the way back to primate dexterity and primate investigation of objects. On-line readership has an old heritage as well, from oral transmission and from radio and television transmission to conventions of our current, multiple format digital communications. But with concept transmission detached from physical media the user is more detached from the scope and structure of the content. This contrast is heightened in on-line navigation and search where the process of access itself is not managed by the reader.

In the on-line library we now collect concepts within concepts. On-line navigation is a carefully built conceptual system almost approaching a consciousness. Perhaps the library model is moving from collection of concepts in physical objects to collection of concepts within conceptual access systems. A keyword search tends to dissolve the bibliographic unit of the book. More likely, the library model is not superseding one concept handler with another. Instead the library is mediating the two modes of transmission and providing a continuing role of physical sources in the context of digital delivery.

A Discovery in Coralville Public Library

While browsing in the Coralville Iowa Public Library I found a shelve of books on libraries. There I found a thin book with a red cover with a futuristic scene of the city of the future. The book is "The Library of the Future, Alternative Scenarios for the Information Profession", by Bruce A. Shuman, 1989. I immediately recognized that this book must already be an antique. I was sure it would provide an insight into our consciousness of the Web as a consciousness, and it did.

"The Library of the Future" offers eight scenarios of the future of libraries, none of which even vaguely resembles current library developments. The scenarios are loaded with robotics, cold war cataclysms and extinctions of community support. Also included are other earlier library scenarios including the Vannevar Bush vision of Memex published in 1945. We now know that this particular vision of globally stored text and images accessed by keyword search is very prescient. Yet, and this is the strange part, the Bush vision is discounted because, according to the author, it has already come to pass! "... from our current perspective, we realize that what Bush foresaw was little more than a present-day microcomputer with modem, database supplier, telephone connection , and printer."

We now know that both the vision of Memex and the current Web have been much more transforming than their supposed fulfillment even nine years ago. The Web has taken on a life of its own. What the author of "The Future of the Library" missed is that the interaction of two distribution and reading modes of the traditional book and on-line access would transform each other. Already, neither the traditional book or the on-line library can be understood in terms of their previous, independent identities.The interaction of physical object based and software access based transmission of abstractions also has taken on a life of its own.

The Future of the Study of the Book

The interplay of attributes and disattributes of both modes can eventually produce an integrated, comprehensive mode for the transmission of concepts. But such a momentous effect will need some management as advocates and specialists, of both transmission modes, engage each other.

In our current enthusiasm, advocates and specialists in programming for on-line navigation have the advantage of resource and recognition. This imbalance should be considered if we intend an healthy, continuing, and productive interaction of the two transmission modes.

So there is an obvious, hidden agenda to sustain and invigorate the larger role of traditional book studies programs such as those in the Center for the Book at the University of Iowa. The book studies constituency must project itself among those now dominating the agenda for collection and transmission of concepts. This is an obvious, hidden agenda of the future of the book.

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