Book power and the things that it makes possible

Assorted books on view from this "little free library" at street corner 

The city planners who build and repair water and sewer lines depend on reading and writing for their own design, record-keeping, and follow-up monitoring of projects. Likewise, the people who operate the heavy equipment rely on the written language, as do the creators of the tools and vehicles being used in this photo. All of this attention to written English starts with an ability to identify a relevant source book, open it and find the right page, then to read and retain what is there. This photo nicely juxtaposes books on the left and the infrastructure project on the right that printed words make possible.

The extended history of little sidewalk free books protected from the weather is probably chronicled on Wikipedia or another place online, but anecdotally in Michigan it was around 2014 that the first ones began to sprout here and there. It is impossible to know the change in book behavior as a result of free books positioned for "impulse reading" (unplanned, emotionally sparked appetite to hold and to own a book of one's own). Perhaps the total pages or number of titles being read across all demographic segments increased. Perhaps interest in print books, new or used, also increased.

In any case, although the relationship is not direct between the pages in this little library and the habits of reading and the day to day writing on-the-job by workmen, still the connection is there: once literacy is established, then a person can make use of it for personal or professional purposes. Perhaps there is an inverse expression of these outdoor book spots, a project not based on literacy but instead centered on orality; that is, appreciating and refining the spoken word. A few cities have experimented with "living books" in which volunteers show up for the appointed place and time to make themselves available to be "borrowed" and "opened up" by the library patrons. The volunteer invites listeners to hear the person's life story or episodes to pass down to the next generation.

This photo is a reminder of the importance of reading and the printed word, even in a time of online videos and text messages, where attention spans are limited to a screenful or two of letters and numbers. Without a system of written notation to capture knowledge and then distill wisdom, the oral-only life of many people would be much narrower than it is today, thanks to books and the ability to read and write them.

A life put into words - histories and memoirs on the library shelf

 

library titles for history (Dewey 940s) rotated to make titles easy to read

At the branch library there is a bookcase filled with a variety of histories and memoirs to browse. Considering that each title is a self-contained work of one or more authors, almost always drawing on published work of others and interviews and other primary source material, as well, the true scope of page counts implicated in this modest collection is staggering, representing a volume of writings maybe 20 or 50 times as big as the space of this one bookcase.

The relationship of a book to its subject matter is similar to the classic illustration of an iceberg: the part that is visible (the individual book) is only a small fraction of the whole thing (cumulative mass of all the books and research sources used to create the one book that is visible on the shelf). Besides this compressed form of knowledge that the photo displays, there are other ways that the set of printed pages bound into book form are remarkable.

Asking a fish to describe the sea that it swims in leaves many important dimensions untold, since so much is taken for granted. The same is true in certain ways for a historian writing about the present day and the historical antecedents to it. Unlike the fish, though, a trained reader and writer of history can consult outside perspectives, cite documents, and study records for clues to bias and omissions. The books in this photo each represent many hours of drafting, then editing the books (not forgetting the shoulders that an author stands on and those many hours to author the earlier books on which the present-day books depend). Each title gives a representation of earlier people, places, and events. Necessarily, the process of telling about events requires "selective memory," leaving aside some parts in order to focus on other parts. That filtering effect probably owes something to the writer's personality and experiences, training and area of expertise, and current events and preoccupations around the time of composing the first draft. Having access to certain sources, but not to others, will play a part in the resulting book, too.

So much for the remarkable things going into this line-up of printed pages and the topics present (and by contrast the many other subjects that are absent). Another dimension of this library bookcase photo is the readership. It would be interesting to know what the lending patterns pre-pandemic and during the pandemic have been, either matched to demographic segments (male vs. female, retiree v. teen v. working age) or simply in the aggregate to discover which books are most and least circulated during their service life (until relegated to storage or sold). After all, the books in this photo appeal to certain sorts of people but not to others. Some readers are voracious in their appetite for the printed word (leaving aside the universe of ebooks offered to borrowers, too, as well as downloaded audio books or the audio CDs on a separate shelf), but others just read one book at a time and only a few per year. However, the usage patterns and sociological profiles may turn out, though, it is remarkable that busy residents of the city, surrounded by the "too much information" of 100s of cable TV shows, and the bottomless reserves ancient and modern discoverable online, still hunger for the people and places and events found on the books classified under the Dewey Decimal System under the history label.

Thanks to the Internet, such things as     archives of images, moving pictures, primary sources, and public domain books and music are only a few clicks away. It is getting easier than ever to travel in time or place by using these traces of earlier times and places. And yet, some readers eagerly browse the authors on this shelf to discover those worlds glimpsed through the mists of time in the words of delightful authors in well-organized chapters and paragraphs. It is hard to know exactly, according to the person or more generally for most readers of histories, what reasons attract people to the ink on these pages. Perhaps it is a desire to fill in hazy outlines of a particular time or place in the reader's mind; maybe there are personal or genealogical connections to the subject matter; or possibly the reader is hungry for escape from modern times and finds a sense of order and certainty that hindsight projects onto things. In any case, the books on these shelves - indeed on the shelves for all the other categories of publications recognized by the library system of classification - speak to certain readers and not to others, they reveal truths, and teach those searching for answers a few of the pieces to the puzzle that forms in the person's mind, one book at a time. Generations from now some of the same motivations will be there to write and to read history, although in that time maybe the idea of printing with ink on paper will be antiquated.

books, beaches, imaginary worlds

¨Books can take you places¨ used to be a catch phrase at libraries, Public Service Announcements, summer reading programs, GED and alternative education promotional posters, and so on. It is still true today, but the phrase is not so much in circulation these days.

[click for full size image: display top of cabinets on 2nd floor of Traverse Area District Library to promote reading at the beach: 6 July 2016]

Whether the printed page appears in pocket-size, magazine size, serial or all in one edition hardback or softcover the cultural significance is the same: one or more authors, and likely one or more editors pored over the manuscript (seldom written by hand; so more true-to-say typescript) and then a chain of technical experts and logistical processes connect the finished work with the final distribution in print or electronically for reading on portable electronic device. There is the technology of inks, papers, the graphic design to interpret the title and story inside, the pricing and promotional efforts by marketing specialists. There may be price points for book launch, then the rates at brick-and-mortar retail sellers, a 2ndary market for used books online and at stores, and the tertiary market of yard sales, free boxes and donations.

So when faced with an impressive collection of books like this, it is worth remembering what is implicated far in the past when author(s) cherished an inkling of a story and finally months or decades of life experience later produce a draft to work its way to the printing and distribution stages. And the implication stretches equally far in the opposite direction, too; toward an indefinite future in the life cycle of a particular edition, or maybe extended with multiple reprintings, as well. But in the release of the camera's shutter, that long timeline from conception to final disposition of a book is frozen momentarily to display the impressive cumulative result of many hands and minds.