We've spent a lot of time this semester thinking about what makes a book a book (cf. Howard), what makes a reader a reader (cf. Cavallo and Chartier), and why people study this constellation of interests (cf. Howsam). We've traversed the history of scripted language from incised stones to wax tablets to papyrus scrolls to the early codex to medieval manuscript books to Gutenberg and to mechanized printing, and onward to the relative cacophony of today's textual environments.
The "electronic" or "digital" book is no longer a novelty, no longer a contested form. Whether it be a brand-name product such as a Kindle, Nook, or iPad, (or the yet to be invented ones), these devices confound the traditional notions of book, text, and library. These complications might also turn out to be clarifications, but for now it's a dizzying landscape. The Internet itself is really just a massive unkempt library that is constantly growing, changing, and mutating. I find this fascinating, thrilling, and also a little bit unnerving. A traditional library, even a major national library such as the Library of Congress, is potentially knowable. Librarians, catalogers, and curators have arranged textual objects according to agreed-upon principles. It's true that these principles are in constant negotiation and change, but they do coalesce into a system.
One of the countless online projects that engages with these ideas is The Serving Library. Click on the outline of the orange book in the middle of the page and click on the text that reads "in other words". Read the brief essay. Is this a library, a publishing enterprise, an art project? All of the above? None?
Here are only a few of the other interesting articles, websites, and projects that I dredged up in my desultory search:
books as souvenirs
digital reading spaces
notes on paul virilio's "open sky"
the atavist
johanna drucker on e-books back in 2003
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