ENGLISH 241: Archeology of Text:

Archival Research Methods and “the Book” in the Internet, Print, and Manuscript Eras

                     Manuscript leaf from a Book of Hours    A printer working a wooden hand press    1st Google server (Takuya Oikawa, Flickr "Computer History Museum")        

Fall 2011 MWF 2:30-3:20 Athenaeum Room 435 (Special Collections and Archives, 4th floor)

Instructor: Arnie Sanders,  English Department, with the assistance of guests Nancy Magnuson (College Librarian), Tara Olivero (Curator of Special Collections and Archives), Bill Leimbach (VP for Information Technology), Melissa Straw (Joseph Ruzicka and Marie Ruzicka Feldmann Director of Library Preservation) (Last edited: 12/21/2011 10:33)

Office Hours, Fall '11, MWF 11:30-12:30 and by appointment

Site News: 12/21/11--If you want copies of your final research projects, please contact Arnie by email.  I will be asking some of you to consider applying for Peirce Center Fellowships to continue your research, but remember that anyone is free to apply, though fellowships are limited.  Also, if you like John Stewart's Daily Show, you might also like this 2009 commentary about the U.C. Santa Cruz job opening for a Grateful Dead archivist.  He just doesn't get what we do, but he does have some fun with the concept.

Final Research Project Topics--Fall 2011  Please help each other as you work.  Remember the rule about "more eyes on the same document see it better."  Keep trying to redefine your project's main agendas. Make sure your report clearly identifies your methodologies and explains what you are discovering with them.

        Some things we have learned to do this semester include:

        These tools can be combined with historical, sociological, political, aesthetic, and linguistic research to help you interpret both the document as an object and its texts' meanings.

English 241 Individual Research Projects: a guide to resources: new resource imaging--See this link to digital imaging to support study of the Peruvian MS (1630/1636)

Keep reviewing this list as you read for class and prepare for your next encounter with your cadaver book: Maxims for Special Collections and Archives Research.  Some basic book-construction vocabulary.

“There is no ignorance more shameful than to admit as true that which one does not understand: and there is no advantage so great as that of being set free from error.” Xenophon, quoting Socrates, translated by F.J. Furnivall, a great and influential editor, shortly before his death on 2 July 1910.

Internship and Fellowship Opportunities for Qualified English 241 Graduates

Online Exhibits of Past and Present Research Projects

 Our motto: tolerate mystery as a precondition to discovery.

Summary

        This interdisciplinary English course will introduce students to archival research techniques using Goucher’s Rare Book Collection and online digital archives, including cached web history like the Internet Archive. Working backward in time, from the present to the Medieval period, the course will survey some important ways people have packaged and used written/visual information, from digital media to early printed pamphlets or books to manuscripts. Students who have completed the course will be equipped to do additional archival research in Goucher's archives for 200- and 300-level courses, and to work as “archival assistants” in the Special Collections division of the Julia Rogers Library.  Students with English 241 experience, and who have suitable proposals and letters of introduction from Goucher's librarians and a faculty member in the field, usually can get access to rare books and manuscripts in archives and special collections around the world.  Students who successfully complete the course are strong candidates for Peirce Center Fellowships which pay stipends to support research in Special Collections during any semester, in January, or during the summer.  Previous years' 241 students have won internships at the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the archive of the Johns Hopkins Art as Applied to Medicine Department.

 "Academic Honor Code: Reference to the academic honor code is required of all course syllabi as a reminder to students.  Suggested wording includes: Reminder: All students are bound by the standards of the Academic Honor Code, found at www.goucher.edu/documents/General/AcademicHonorCode.pdf."  I distinguish between accidental forms of plagiarism, in which the author obviously intended to cite sources but cited them at the wrong place, from pure carelessness (no citations, even if sources are listed at the back) and outright theft of intellectual property intentionally passed off as one's own.  The first type of cases usually are opportunities to teach and learn.  The second type are more troubling and may go to the Honor Board if they happen late in the semester, after we have discussed source use and its importance to your readers.  The last will be sent to the Honor Board without hesitation.  Students also are increasingly content to cite sources long after their prose has begun to borrow ideas from those sources.  That is technically plagiarism, too, but it has become so common that I must spend gallons of ink and hundreds of keystrokes un-teaching it.  Never make me guess whose ideas I'm reading.  Cite sources when you first depend on them.  I want to know how well you can think, not how well your sources can think, which is a matter of historical record for anyone who reads them.  Let there be a bright line of fire between ideas that are originally yours and those of other writers to which you refer. 

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