I’m so happy that I attended the Zine workshop hosted by Vide. He did a great job bringing people together in a purposeful way to spread his knowledge on making zines and memes. I had a great time sitting with fellow students, crafting together in a collaborative environment. We would ask each other for opinions and share crafting materials. Although im not necessarily a crafty person, it was so cool to go through magazines and newspapers, collecting what I thought would serve me in my zine. I learned that zines are excellent ways to share information and spread messages. They are a form of storytelling and learning how to fold paper to make a book, connected to our class. I ended up making a goofy little book about my best friend/bandmate, and I gave it to her as a silly gift. Thank you, Vide, for putting on a cool event and bringing people together!
The night before, I was sifting through my closet looking for ideas for my halloween costume. My original idea was to dress up as Dr. Pressman, but my wardrobe is not nearly as exciting as hers. I then began to sift through my notes and pictures of books that we have examined in our Special Collections Lab. I came across Liber de arte distulandi [sic] simplicia et composita: Das nüv Bůch der rechten Kunst zů distillieren is a collection of scientific work in German by Hieronymus Brunschwig. This old text had deep wormholes throughout the spine, both through the cover and the pages in between. I decided to recreate the wormholes with an old shirt that I had lying around. By cutting holes in the front and back of the shirt, I was able to mimic the wormholes in the pigskin cover of the Liber de arte distulandi [sic] simplicia et composita: Das nüv Bůch der rechten Kunst zů distillieren.
After our visit to special collections last week and our class conversation about book call numbers and library exploration, I decided that for this blog post, and out of my own interest I would visit our library again.
I have been to our campus library many times, either to find a place to study or to find books, usually at the beginning of the semester when book lists are assigned I will look for access to books through the local libraries of San Diego/Chula Vista/National City or here at our school library. The book stacks are somewhat familiar to me, I know how to look at each books’ spine to find the right call number and locate each book, but to know that call number I always visit the library’s website first.
Located on the Fourth Floor with the call number; PR28131. R64 2001 found online after searching for “Romeo and Juliet,” on the Library website and filtering for books.
On each floor the library has a map of the floor and stacks, the fourth floor has its books with a PG-PZ call number behind the elevators.
Usually when I search the library for a book I try to find the book quickly and then leave, but what I recently noticed at my local library, South Chula Vista Library, 389 Orange Ave, Chula Vista, CA 91911, is that when looking for a specific book on a shelf it will also be surrounded by not only other books by the same author, but the same by books by a similar genre or, if the book is by a prominent author, then surrounded by essays and other books about that author and their books. Today at the SDSU library I intentionally wanted to look around the book I was searching for, I picked Romeo and Juliet intentionally, assuming that because of it’s popularity that there must be much about it and about Shakespeare on the shelves. When I found the book in stack PR 2807 to PR 2920 I was overwhelmed, there Romeo and Juliet wasn’t just a book, but a topic.
There were multiple copies of Romeo and Juliet as well as collections of essays about it taking up a large part of the shelf, and next to it there were the other works of Shakespeare, Othello, The taming of The Shrew, and The Tempest.
Not only that shelf had works of and about Shakespeare, but seventeen others in that space did as well, Eighteen Shelves!!
Works of and about Shakespeare between stack of call numbers between PR 2474 to 2920 until stack of call numbers PR 3012 to PR 3353
I used to wonder how before today’s internet students might have gotten research projects done without the easier access that we have today. I imagined that it might have been stressful having to scour the library, hoping to find a relevant book on a topic, but now I realize that it must have been at least a little simpler than I had imagined. If I were to do a research project on one of Shakespeare’s works I’d be able to visit the stacks on the 4th floor and know that I wouldn’t only find the book, but and entire world around it, full of different essays, research books, and perspectives to help my understanding, appreciation, and reading of any book. Going to the library is not just a visit, but an exploration.
