In honour of this open-ended blog question, I thought I’d
use the opportunity to bring in some ideas that I’ve been thinking about in
another class. I’m in the book history
and print culture collaborative program, and the other day in our ‘Intro to
Book History’ class, we went to the Fisher Library to learn about some of the
interesting old volumes that they have there.
The librarian led us around the room as we looked at books laid out on
the tables, and we had the chance to touch and smell the books, in addition to
hearing about them. I had the urge to
take notes, because I wanted to remember the amazing facts about the books that
we were learning, but only had my laptop with me and wouldn’t have been able to
type as we moved around the room. About
ten hours later, I got home and tried to type out what I remembered from the
class, and to my surprise I wrote out about ten pages of text, repeating almost
verbatim what had been told to us by the librarian. I’m not usually able to retain and recall
this kind of detail, no matter what I’m learning about, so the fact that I was
able to in this case got me thinking about the nature of books as historical
artifacts (in addition to the text that they carry) and about so-called “embodied
learning.” I’m toying with the idea of
writing about this for the final paper in the Book History class, and I’m also
thinking that an extension of this idea would make for a great future research
project, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to explore the idea a little
further.
So I would first need to make clear the distinction between
the idea of the book as a text, and the book as an object. Understanding the historical book as an
object leads to the notion of the “book as
history,” (Pearson, 2008) or of the book as a physical manifestation of the
conditions of a specific historical period, and as a vessel that, in addition
to its text, carries non-textual information about its historical period forward
into future generations to be studied.
In understanding books as historical artifacts, I would be further
interested in exploring how, as Karin Littau puts it, “material production
impinges on meaning production,” (2006, p.2) and as such, how interaction with
the materiality of historical books effect the present-day reader or student.
As a relatively recent development in the fields of
psychology and pedagogy, “embodied learning” has emerged as a concept based on
the observation that “comprehension and retention are affected by sensory
motoric input” (Johnson-Glenberg,
2012). For the present-day reader, how
does physical interaction with historical book objects lead to an embodied form
of learning? With the exception of some
buildings and monuments, books remain one of the few ancient historical
artifacts that non-specialists are permitted to explore and learn about through
touch and smell. As I discovered during
my visit to the rare books library, it is even possible to learn a significant
amount about a particular historical period through interacting with the
physical structure of a book whose text is presented in a language that I don’t
understand. Indeed, physically
interacting with, for example, a thousand-year-old book object enables the
student to establish a direct and visceral dialogue with the individuals who
manually constructed the object, and with the material conditions of the labour
they performed, as well as with those who have handled and used it since its
creation. This connection with the past
far exceeds the potential for knowledge transmission and understanding that one
could gain from the detached reading of a reprinted text, or even through the
viewing (but not the touching) of a painting, or listening to a lecture about
an historical period or event.
I’m intrigued by
this area in which a variety of fields seem to converge: the understanding of
the book artifact as a witness to history and as a conduit for the transmission
of non-textual information; the notion put forward by D.F. McKenzie and others
that the material form in which texts are transmitted influences their meaning;
embodied theories of reading; and the potential for tactile interaction with
historical books to provide an entry point toward a more embodied form of
learning about the past. I also think
that this could make for an interesting research project, and could be
approached from a quantitative standpoint.
I haven’t completely thought this through, but I’d imagine that an
experiment of some kind could be devised where perhaps different groups of high
school students could be brought through the rare books library. One group would be sat down and could be
shown the books and given a lecture about them, but not allowed to touch them. Then another group would be led about the
room and encouraged to touch and interact with the books. And then each group could be tested a few
hours later to determine how much information they’d retained.
It might seem a
little simplistic, but considering the movement in libraries away from physical
volumes and toward electronic resources, I think that it might strengthen the
case for allocating resources toward the preservation and maintenance of
physical special collections.
Works Cited
Johnson-Glenberg, M. (n.d.). How Can
Embodied Learning Help Students? - Getting Smart by Guest Author - edchat,
edreform, EdTech. Getting Smart. Retrieved November 6, 2013, from http://gettingsmart.com/2012/05/how-can-embodied-learning-help-students/
Littau, K. (2006). Theories of reading : books, bodies, and bibliomania. Cambridge: Polity.
McKenzie, D. F. (1999). Bibliography and
the sociology of texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pearson, D. (2011). Books as history : the importance of books beyond
their texts. London: British
Library.
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