Visit to Special Collections

Well I did a post earlier on about money and print and I have already done our field trip post as well as the annotated bibliography so I wasn't sure exactly what I would post on this week. After an enjoyable thanksgiving up in Canada with lots of great things that occurred, it was great to come back to calls on tuesday to such a great lecture. So I feel that it is appropriate and I would be amiss if I didn't focus on the things that Royal Skousen explained to us Tuesday morning.

Print in 16th to 17th Century Asia--

I took a little trip over to the library earlier this week. I didn't really realize how amazing the services were at the HBLL until finishing this assignment - there's really so much to look for, so many things to keep an eye out for. Google translate helped me out some also, as many of the books I found were not written in English. While I could kind of pick up what they said from cognates and the 3 languages I had exposure to shortly in school (French, Spanish, German), it was still nice to get a full picture through the modern wonders of the internet.

I chose to focus on non-European printing, specifically in the areas of China, Korea, and Japan.

Rabbi Dan Levin of Temple Beth El - Why we celebrate Chanukah

Since I have done a post on the Jewish equivalent to Thanksgiving it would be fitting if my next post was about Hanukkah which seems to be the Jewish equivalent of Christmas.

Hanukakah is also known as the Festival of the Lights, is an eight-day Jewish Holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jersalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calender, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calender.

The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a unique candelabrum, the nine-branched Menorah or Hanukiah, one additional light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on the final night. The typical Menorah consists of eight branches with an additional raised branch. The extra light is called a Shamash and is given a distinct location, usually above or below the rest. The purpose of the shamash is to have a light available for use, as using the Hanukkah lights themselves is forbidden.

This video clip is of a rabbi who very concisely explain the background of the holiday as well how it is celebrated now. I chuckled a bit when I found this clip because I think of a rabbi as an old, wise-looking man with a white beard. He looks like a bishop from the LDS church.

Acid Paper and Preservation

I decided I wanted to do a little more in the vein of preservation that I spoke about in my last post, so I decided to do my bibliography on the topic of paper history in general, and acid paper in specific. Wood pulp is naturally acidic, and if the pH of paper isn't neutralized, the paper will turn yellow when exposed to light. However, people only figured this out around 80 years ago, so everything printed before then was printed on acidic paper.

King James Bible Exhibit

When I went to the Bible exhibit the most interesting thing to me was the time-lines they had there. I love maps and graphs and I love to analyze them. the time-line was very illuminating. So much effort and time has gone into the publication of the Bible. It's crazy how many people have sacrificed everything including their lives for it. The devil has worked so hard to stop the Lord's work. I also enjoyed looking at the old Bibles. It's amazing to me how these very old artifacts have survived in such good condition.

That's really all I have to say. I really enjoyed the exhibit especially the time-lines. There have been blogs about the lighting and the way books are preserved so there really isn't a lot for me to talk about. It was definitely worth my while to go and I would recommend it to anyone to go.

Typography Bibliography

I wasn't planning to do my post on typography but I had a writing class on type and how it should be used I decided to do that. I always thought type was interesting. I mean, who as a little kid hasn't gone on to Microsoft Word or some equivalent and messed around with the font and size of the letters. I remember making very complicated titles for stories I never even started to write. I would just dream up an awesome sounding title and make it look cool. Now, all my brothers and sisters do this back home.

Roberts, W. Printers' marks : A chapter in the history of typography. London, England: George Bell & Sons,1893.

Gives some general aspects of printer's marks. Goes through the printer's marks of England, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Dutch and Flemish and then gives some modern examples. Has a lot of info. Sidenote: W. Roberts was nicknamed "the bookworm." [Found this on the BYU library website.]

Goudy, Frederick W. Typologia : studies in type design & type making with comments on the invention of typography, the first types, legibility and fine printing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940.

Typologia presents more or less graphically Frederic Goudy's work in type design and describes his own methods of type production. His remarks on type legibility and fine printing, as presented in the body of the book, present the conclusions of a craftsman intensely interested in every phase of typography. [Found this on the fifth floor of the library.]

Hoe, Richard March. The literature of printing. A catalogue of the library illustrative of the history and art of typography. London, England: Chiswick Press, 1877.

Richard Hoe was something of an expert in the world of printing. He invented the rotary printing press which could fold newsprint as fast as the eye could follow. The title basically explains the book: history and typography and a how-to type of instruction for it. [Found it near Typologia.]

Frederic Nelson Phillips, inc. (firm). Phillips' Old-fashioned type book : showings, alphabetical and otherwise, of approximately one thousand odd fonts of old-fashioned, exotic, ancient and antique type faces; old-time printers' ornaments, borders, cuts, &c.; many old specimens of printing, advertisements, bills, labels, &c.; old reprints of history & other interesting data on printing & typography of long ago. New York: Grederic Nelson Phillips, inc., 1945.

Are you out of breath from reading the title. I got out of breath and I was reading it in my mind! Goes through a lot of old fonts (about a thousand), what types were used with advertisements, bills etc. [I so the super long title and I pick it up and it turned out to be about typography.]

Reed, Talbot Baines. A history of the old English letter foundries; with notes, historical and bibliographical, on the rise and progress of English typography. London, England: Faber and Faber, 1952.

A History of the Old English Letter Foundries was first published in 1887. Writing as an enthusiastic amateur historian, and wholly incorporating Edward Rowe Mores' classic 1778 Dissertation on English Typographical Founders and Foundries, Reed inspected a multitude of type specimens to supplement the veracity of his mostly bibliographical presentation.

All of these books can be found on Amazon and Google Books.

Rosetta Project- Part 2 Eqyptian to Arabic

So this is what we needed to translate: Eqyptian Hieroglyphics. At first I thought that this would be pretty easy. Check out some books from the library, locate the glyphs, find the English meaning, then translate that in Hebrew and Arabic. Boy, was I wrong.

So my group reserved a room at the library and we checked out a bunch of books about Egyptian Hieroglyphics with their English meanings. No big, right? Well, it turns out Egyptian Hieroglyphics are way more complicated than that. It turns out there are several way to read them. You basically read them left to right, but then it gets tricky if there are some glyphs that are stacked. Some stacked glyphs equal a word or they could be a phrase.

It gets even harder because of the dynasties. I have never thought about it but the hieroglyphics changed over time, especially when new families or dynasties took over.

THE PRINTING PRESS AND READING

"Using a book, not reading it, makes us wise."

-Geffrey Whitney (1586)

Two men demonstrating new ways of using a book:

One actively reading, engaged with the text (look, his hand is on it!) 

and the other standing, ready to act on the gained knowledge.

      As we've discussed in class, medieval reading was communal, out-loud, dogmatic.... very different from the silent reading we're used to today. The printing press had a big impact on reading, according to A History of Reading by Steven Roger Fischer. "With Gutenberg's inaugural tug on the screw press, reading's material, matter, language and practice began to change." Yes, the printing press changed a lot of things in European society, but I want to focus on the impact the printing press had on reading.

Sukkot- The Jewish Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is over and it's almost time to return to college and homework. I'm just waiting for my flight and I decided I might as well do a blog post. Since Thanksgiving is so recent and my civilization I decided to look at some Jewish thanksgiving holidays. I found Sukkot, an agricultural thanksgiving holiday.


Sukkot is agricultural in origin. This is evident from the biblical name "The Feast of Ingathering," from the ceremonies accompanying it, from the season – "The festival of the seventh month"– and occasion of its celebration: "At the end of the year when you gather in your labors out of the field" (Ex. 23:16); "after you have gathered in from your threshing-floor and from your winepress" (Deut. 16:13). It was a thanksgiving for the fruit harvest. Coming as it did at the completion of the harvest, Sukkot was regarded as a general thanksgiving for the bounty of nature in the year that had passed.

It is interesting how similar the Jews celebrate this holdiay compared to us. Originally the Jews had feasts and special prayers given. In modern times, they do this on top of parades and other modern ways of celebrating such as fireworks.

Longevity of the Torah

How do we know that the Torah we have today is the same text given on Mount Sinai?
The Torah was originally dictated from God to Moses, letter for letter. From there, the Midrash (Devarim Rabba 9:4) tells us:

Before his death, Moses wrote 13 Torah Scrolls. Twelve of these were distributed to each of the 12 Tribes. The 13th was placed in the Ark of the Covenant (with the Tablets). If anyone would come and attempt to rewrite or falsify the Torah, the one in the Ark would “testify” against him. (Likewise, if he had access to the scroll in the Ark and tried to falsify it, the distributed copies would “testify” against him.)

Typography according to the University of Lethbridge

U of L campus. Basically one big building built into the side of a hill.

Well I hadn't intially planned on doing my bibliography on Typography but there were a few circumstances that weren't exactly in my control that led me to it. I came up to Canada for Thanksgiving (Yes, Canadian Thanksgiving was a month and a half ago :)..but I still welcomed the break from school). I knew that I would need to do this bibliography but i wasn't exactly sure where I would be able to. Just with the fact that books were going to be needed and a fairly large variety as well. You would think that would be easy but I come from a town of 2500 people so there really isn't all that much when it comes to resources and things such as big libraries.
My sister goes to the University which is 45 mins away and the next university after that is 2 and a half hours away so I saw that as my only option as far as being able to find the right books. So that's what I ended up doing.
So I went to the University of Lethbridge and spent a couple of hours on campus there browsing the library. The campus had a completely different feel compared to BYU and it was a fun/different experience just being there and seeing how things were.
There services proved well though and I was able to accomplish what needed to be done.

Rosetta Project- Part 1

Koran in Arabic.

Torah in Hebrew.

This project gave me a greater appreciation and understanding of the different writing mediums and languages of the world. I have always thought "the Egyptians carved in stone because that what was available to them and they were good at it, it was probably a breeze for them." Now, I can imagine some tired stone-cutter thinking "man, I hate this job, why can't the gods have been more merciful and given mankind an easier writing medium?"

Preserving Bibles

I went to the King James Bible display this week. I wanted to go to the printing museum as well, but it didn’t work out, which was too bad. Last week, Alyssa did a lovely post on this same display and talked about the idea of putting books on display as a sort of sculpture. Her post has pictures of very many of the books that were shown, so look at it if you want to see them.

I would like to expand a little bit on her ideas by talking about the practical side of displaying books like this. When my Mother was in library science school, she took a class about book preservation, and so I learned a bunch about it (I swear, having a parent in grad school is like taking a college class. I learned so much). The thing about displaying a book, especially a historical book, is that books are very sensitive to light. Books are also very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Because of this, when someone sets up a display of books, preservation is a very important thing for them to think about.

Office Hours

Does anyone Pro. Burton's or Pro. Peterson's office hours?

Bibliography: Fonts and Typefaces (between 1450-1700)

Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed. London Writers Ltd., 1985. Burke describes the life of Gutenberg and his printing press then the development of standardized print type that followed. The humanist influences on style are described and the creation of "italic." I found this book in the bibliography of the Wikipedia article History of Western Typography.

Hidden Treasures- Crandall Print Museum

I can already tell that this will probably be one the harder posts for me to write but that's not because I have a lack on things to say or that I'm stumped or anything like that. It's actually more of the opposite, there are so many things that i'd like to be able to effectively portray and express through my post but I feel as though I won't be able to accomplish this quite like i'd prefer.
So yet again, I had the opportunity to do something that was completely out of the ordinary this semester but it followed suit along with the other things I have done and it was a great experience.
I was taken back to the my elementary years as I joined an AP History class from Spanish Fork at the Crandall Print Museum right here in our very own backyard.

Of Ogham and Rocks--

I ended up being assigned to the miscellaneous group for our writing unit final. As a group we chose to work in the Ogham language, which was cool because it's a predecessor of the Brythonic and Goidelic languages that I researched this unit.

Dictionaries!

I was one of those kids in elementary school who liked to read dictionaries. Not all the time, but every once in a while. My family had a big one open on a table in our living room, and I would look up words just for the fun of it (this is, incidentally, how I know the definitions of all the swear words I know, but that is beside the point). And it didn't just stop at Elementary school. I remember going to a party maybe a year ago, and being completely unsociable all evening simply because I found a Chinese character dictionary and just had to look through it and see which ones I could recognize. Just this last summer I discovered a new kind of dictionary--a usage dictionary. These things don't give simple definitions, they explain debates over words that have confused you for your entire life (affect/effect), or grammar "rules" that you learned in Junior High, then promptly forgot because they weren't important (I am firm in claiming my right to end a sentence in a preposition, and fortunately the usage dictionaries back me up).

And That's a Wrap- Rosetta Stone

When I considered "Reinventing Knowledge" as part of my class schedule this semester I felt like I had some idea of the typical things that I would be asked to do. You know, the usual readings and some reports and other regular assignments. I can say almost with ease that most of the things that we have been asked to do this semester have been quite the complete opposite than what I had imagined. Starting with blogging on a regular basis all the way to scribing Cuneiform. That's a great thing! I feel that just as we have been and are studying and researching transitions within knowledge and mediums and languages, at the same time we ourselves are going through a transition of sorts in how we go about learning. At least that's how I feel about the recent events and things that have been done.

Ogham Stone: Part 2

Translation: Mayan-English

(first of all, sorry group members that this is long. Feel free to only read as much as interests you)

Here is the writing that we received (image courtesy of group 6's blog):

It is written in ancient Mayan hieroglyphs. I volunteered to do the translation of the sentence for our group, so I got to learn a little bit about Mayan writing. Each of those symbols, as you can probably see, is made up of several different parts. Some of the parts are phonetic, while others of the parts contain meaning. This actually reminded me somewhat of the Chinese characters I have studied, which also are part phonetic and part meaning, although the two cultures put their meaning and phonetic parts together in a slightly different way. I think the term "Mayan characters" is probably more accurate than "hieroglyphs." Mayan characters are read left to right and top to bottom, but not in as simple of a way as English. The characters are organized in a grid, but you don't just go down the line. You first read the top left corner, then the one directly to the right of it, then the character below the first one, then the one directly to the right of that, then two below the first, and so on and so forth.

Thank you, Dr. Ricks!

   Thanks to this man, the Roman group was able to translate their scroll. This Blog is dedicated to him because if it weren't for him, we would have never figured this thing out.
    I went to the JFSB knocking on every Hebrew or Arabic professor's door because, well.... I'm embarrassed to say they wouldn't answer my desperate emails.... So I became frantic. But thanks to this man, who graciously opened his door and let me into his office, our group has a translation! He said the Arabic was illegible... but he Hebrew he read just fine! He insisted that the direct translation was this: "When his Lord hear the words of his wife saying something like 'make me your servant or slave' he became angry." As I was writing his translation down I asked, "Something like?" and he said "Yes. Something like." So I wrote that down! Straight from the authority himself!
     Now, all that needs to be done is to carve it into our wax tablet! You'll see the final product tomorrow!

3 New Friends!

Ni Hao!
That was the extent of my Chinese abilities and I guess i can't say "was" because that it still the extent of my abilities. So it wasn't much help when we needed to translate this:

Happy 400th, KJB!

    Let me tell you about my experience at The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible exhibit in the HBLL!



Latin Bible (Vulgate).

Vellum manuscript from France, 13th century

     Can I just say that of ALL the ways you can use a book, perhaps the oddest is to put it on display? I like art museums, but art is specifically designed to be viewed. Looking at paintings and sculptures isn't weird to me, but as we begin our study of print knowledge and as I thought about books and went to this exhibit, I thought about how funny it was to look at an exhibit of books. Libraries facilitate the discovery of books by making them available to the public, but sometimes when I'm in the HBLL I see some books that make me wonder if anyone has even opened them before! Putting books on display certainly makes them visible, but the book also becomes inaccessible to someone who may want to reference it. After all, you can only open up a book so  that two pages are displayed (when they are in their original form, of course). The "interactive tool" we talk about in lecture that is a book becomes a piece of sculpture when you put it on diplay like that!
       So I guess I want to address the value of putting books on display, especially these ones. A library would have to have good reason to take books out of circulation and exhibit them (though I doubt these books have been accessible to the public for a long time, if they ever were.)

Ogham Stone: Part 1

Background Information

I happen to be in the miscellaneous group, meaning we had several different languages to choose from when making our artifact. I'll admit, I was in favor of choosing a simpler option, but was outvoted. We ended up choosing to write in Ogham (pronounced oh-um. The "g" is silent for some reason). I had not studied this writing system previously, so I did a little bit of research on it before meeting with my group to make our artifact.

Hand me a Q-Tip, We're making Diptychs!

  
diptych:  device with two flat plates attached at a hinge
Plus, let me explain my awesome joke in the title:  Q-tips....ear wax... wax tablets.... 

A Riddle

   "Of honey-laden bees I first was born,  
     But in the forest grew my outer coat;  
     My shoes from tough hides came.  An iron point   
     In artful windings cuts a fair design, 
     And leaves long, twisted furrows, like a plow...." 
                    (Riddle 32:  Pitman 18-19)

Money, Money, Money.....MONEY!

In our class discussion today when printed knowledge was introduced we discussed a lot of aspects of it. I had never heard the background concerning how the first printing press started or any of that information so there was lots to be gleaned by me.

One thing that was raised which sparked particular interest and curiosity was the question about printed money and when about it originated and how it came to be. I don't think i'm too abnormal to be fascinated by money and have an affinity for it, so that's why opted to learn a bit more about it's background and history. I can tell you now, it definitely didn't begin like I had imagined..

Woodblock Printing

We briefly discussed the history of movable type in class today, but, in celebration of our new unit, I would like to dedicate my post to a different piece of the history of printing, known as woodblock printing.

Although the idea of movable type is relatively new, the idea of printing isn't. Some of the very first types of writing that we have found are stamps and seals that were designed to make an imprint on clay tablets. People used these all over the world from China to Mesopotamia. Stamps started out small, but larger brick-stamps were also developed for marking things. It is a natural transition from making stamps in clay to making stamps that work on fabric (paper came later). The earliest printing of this sort is from China before 220 AD, and was in the form of fabrics printed with designs, rather than words. The designs were carved onto wooden blocks and transferred onto the fabric. Later, the designs were passed onto paper and became a great art form all over the world, most especially in China and Japan, but also in Europe. (The following picture is from the 1800s, so it isn't ancient, but it shows woodblock pictures as an art form. And I like it.)

The Greatest Treasure

      The TV show Meet the Anscestors had a special episode (yah, it was on BBC Television... a favorite cable channel of mine...) called "Our Top Ten Treasures"--British experts voted on the most important treasures found in Britain. Among the top ten treasures  was a chess set from around 1150 A.D., a solid ceremonial gold cape from 1900-1600 B.C., and a gold cup from about 1700-1500 B.C. 



 Some of the Vindolanda Tablets--Britain's Greatest Treasure

   
    The Greatest treasure, however, was the Vindolanda Tablets--they are estimated to have been written in the late first century A.D. They are considered the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are wooden tablets with ink on them. They were made from birch, alder, and oak--there are nearly 500 of these, though most of them are broken and somewhat indecipherable.

      So, basically, I just want to highlight some of the most interesting tablets found in the Vindalonda Tablets and what we learn from them.

Veterinary Medicine- From Cows to Pets

I really enjoyed the post by Kody on medicine. I learned quite a bit from it. For my post I have decided to branch off a little from his topic and talk about one of my favorite subjects: veterinary medicine. I am a biology major and I want to be veterinarian.

Treatment of animals in ancient Epgyt.

Veterinary medicine has been around for a long as humans and animals have been together. The first documentation known for recipes to cure animal illnesses is in 2500 B.C in China. Some 4,000 years old Indian art show men caring for horses and elephants. The Ancient Egyptian art shows how men checking the health of their cattle and dogs.

It is interesting to see the change in veterinary medicine over history. Back then, animals that were cared for were farm animals cattle, sheep, horses etc. The latin root for veterinarian is veterinae, which means "cattle". Now, at least in U.S. most animals treated are pets.

Though it is not known exactly when published a Roman scholar named Columella wrote 12 volumes on the topic of animals and agriculture. He wrote about breeding, livestock health, and animal care and treatment. Columella was the first to use the "veterianarius" to describe a doctor who treats animals.

Living the High Life of a....Scribe?

A lot of times when I speak to certain doctors or dentists, especially those that have been in practice for a while it seems as though I always walk away thinking to myself, "That sure would be the life...Setting your own hours, vacations when desired, typically not heavy intensive labor, and not to mention a hefty paycheque to end things off nicely..." 

So it has often seemed like an ideal job in my mind,but in the recent while as i've become more acquainted and familiar I  have realized that how I pictured earlier on wasn't exactly precise.

Well there is a similar type of field that existed many, many years ago. To those that held this position there often were many perks and entitlements that came along with the job. BUT, it wasn't without pay some prices or sacrifices early on. This choice of career (if we could say choice) is that of a Scribe.

To my dearest...

To my Dearest and most illustrious group members and readers, my fondest affection and greetings.

Like many other people who have grown up in the age of computers, I can probably count on both hands the number of handwritten letters I've written and sent. Of course I write things to people, but it is all over email or facebook. When I all of a sudden had friends on missions who I am not allowed to email, I had to delve into the strange world of lick-and-seal envelopes and the US postal system, on the way asking my mother many questions that for some reason she found incredibly funny (It turns out that one of the things that a return address on an envelope is good for is it lets you know the other person's address in case you want to write them back. I always just assumed it was so that the postal service could return it to you in case they couldn't reach the recipient or something). Last week I had to ask a girl sitting next to me whether the stamp went on the upper right or upper left corner of an envelope. It made me feel very smart and educated.