(202) 319-5855 dalbello@cua.edu Office hours: Monday 2:00-6:00 (Marist Hall) Wednesday 6:30-7:30 (Library of Congress, 654 Madison)

course description  assignments  course objectives  grading policy  course outline   textbooks  readings

Course Description:

Focuses on the concept of information revolutions in order to integrate views of textual transmission in oral, manuscript, print and electronic communication environments. Presents how information is created, preserved and communicated in different social environments and historical periods. Deals with the nature of texts (print, non-print and digital) and their reception. Gives an overview of current scholarship in this interdisciplinary area and the implication of research for library and information professions and practice.

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Course Objectives:

At the end of this course, the students will be able to understand the intellectual and technological issues underlying the transmission and survival of information in different historical periods. They should be familiar with the issues and technologies of transmission of information in oral traditions, manuscript culture, print and electronic environment. They should acquire the strategies for understanding written communication in all its forms and be able to identify critical issues related to the production, distribution and use of paper and digital texts comparatively and contrastively.

Assignments

Each student will be graded on the presentation of readings, Net-watch, a final paper and constructive participation in seminar discussions.

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Critical Reading:
Each student will prepare a presentation of readings addressing selected topics from the list of assigned readings. Each presentation should be timed to last about 20 minutes. The student will also identify issues for class discussion and present an outline of the presentation to the instructor.

Net-Watch:
Students will be asked to follow developments in the net-community: bulletin boards, websites, digital library projects and web-collectives. Each student will prepare an evaluative report of a Net resource from the list of site(s) presented in the first class and present it in class. The presentation should not exceed 20 minutes. It should be structured according to the guidelines for the evaluation distributed in class. A brief outline should be submitted to the instructor.

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Research Paper
Each student should identify a topic addressing her/his special interests and submit a title with a brief proposal (200 words) to the instructor by October 1 (session 5). The topic should be approved by the instructor. Students are advised to schedule a meeting with the instructor to discuss the selected topic prior to making a final choice. They will also present their topics to the class in Session 6 (October 8). The paper is due on December 3.

Class Participation:
All participants in the seminar will be responsible for assigned readings and constructive participation in class discussion.

Grading:

Presentation: 30 %
Web-watch: 20 %
Final Paper: 40 %
Class Participation: 10 %

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Recommended Texts:

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. (1983). The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

Stefik, Mark. (1996). Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

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Week 1 Introduction to the Course

Burnett, Kathleen. 1991. "Multimedia and the Library and Information Studies Curriculum." In Sociomedia: Mul. ial Construction of Knowledge, 125-139. Ed. Edward Barrett. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Ch. 1: "Social Memory," pp. 6-40).

Fowler, Robert. 1994. "The Fate of the Notion of Canon in the Electronic Age." Paper Presented to the Spring 1994 Meeting of the Westar Institute. (http://www2.baldwinw.edu/~rfowler/pubs/canon/).

Gilster, Paul. 1996. "Content Evaluation." In Digital Literacy, pp. 87-123. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Neavill, Gordon B. 1984. "Electronic Publishing, Libraries, and the Survival of Information," Library Resources & Technical Services (January-March): 76-89.

Stefik, Mark. 1996. Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Editorial Problems: Computing the Edition: Problems in Editing for the Electronic Medium, Toronto, November 1997. (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/cep/index.html).

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Week 2 Historical and Philosophical Background:
Information Revolutions and the Transformation of Society/Person

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. "Old Languages, New Models." In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, pp. 67-82. London and New York: Verso.

Bolter, Jay David. 1987. "Text and Technology: Reading and Writing in the Electronic Age," Library Resources & Technical Services 31 (January-March): 12-23.

Goody, Jack. 1987. "Language and Writing." In The Interface Between the Written and the Oral, pp. 258-289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haas, Christina. 1996. "The Technology Question." In Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy, pp. 3-23. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Kaufer, David S., and Kathleen M. Carley. 1993. Communication at a Distance: The Influence of Print on Sociocultural Organization and Change. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlabum Associates, Publishers. (Ch. 2: "Written Content as Emergent Phenomena" and Ch. 3: "Contexts Sustaining Print Transactions," pp. 21-86).

Olson, David R. 1994. " The Making of the Literate Mind." In The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading, pp. 257-282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Week 3 Interaction with the Text and Text as Interaction: Orality and Written Communication

Cognitive Aspects of Skilled Typewriting. 1985. Ed. Cooper, William E. New York, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. (Ch. 1: "Introduction," Ch. 3: "Studies of Typing from the LNR Research Group", pp. 1-38, 45-65).

Goody, Jack, and Ian Watt. 1968. "The Consequences of Literacy." In Literacy in Traditional Societies, pp. 27-68. Ed. Jack Goody. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1968.

Havelock, Eric A. 1963. "The Image Thinkers." In Preface to Plato, pp. 1-193. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press.

Heim, Michael. 1987. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Ch. 4.: "The Psychic Framework of Word Processing" and Ch. 5: "The Phenomenon of Word Procesing," pp. 97-164.

Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London and New York: Routledge.

Week 4 Literacy Revolution I
The Rise of Silent Reading and the Invention of Printing

Clanchy, M.T. 1995. "The Literate Mentality." In From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1300. 2nd ed. Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. (Pt. II: The Literate Mentality, pp. 185-334).

Eisenstein, Elizabeth. 1983. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goldberg, P.J.P. 1994. "Lay Book Ownership in Late Medieval York: The Evidence of Wills." The Library 16 (September): 181-189.

Petrucci, Armando. 1995. Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Saenger, Paul. 1989. "Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages." In The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, pp. 141-173. Ed. Roger Chartier. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Week 5 Literacy Revolution II
Mass Media; The Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution and the Birth of the Newspaper

Altick, Richard. 1957. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Anderson, Patricia. 1991. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790-1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gilmore, William J. 1989. Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780-1835. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Stieg, Margaret F. 1980. "The Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution," Journal of Library History 15 (Winter): 22-49.

Week 6 The Information Age: Myths and Realities

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994.

Carey, James, and John J. Quirk. 1989. "The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution." In Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, pp. 113-141. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Stefik, Mark. 1996. Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Stephenson, Neal. 1992. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books.

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Week 7 Structure of the Text I
The Articulation of the Text in a Historical Perspective (Typography, Punctuation)

Bolter, David Jay. 1991. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gray, Nicolette. 1960. Lettering on Buildings. New York: Reinhold Pub. Corp.

Johnson, A.F. 1951. "Title Pages: Their Forms and Development." In Books and Printing: A Treasury for Typophiles, pp. 52-65. Ed. Paul A. Bennett. Savannah: Frederic C. Beil.

Laufer, Roger. 1982. "L'espace visuel du livre ancien." In Histoire de l'édition française. Le livre conquérant.: du Moyen Age au milieu du XVIIe siècle, pp. 479-497. Paris: Promodis.

Olson, David R. 1994. "Representing the World in Maps, Diagrams, Formulas, Pictures and Texts." In The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading, pp. 195-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parkes, M.B. 1992. Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West. Aldershot: Scolar Press. (Introduction, pp. 1-6)

Tebeaux, Elizabeth. 1991. "Ramus, Visual Rhetoric, and the Emergence of Page Design in Medical Writing of the English Renaissance: Tracking the Evolution of Readable Documents." Written Communication 8 (4): 411-445.

Tribble, Evelyn B. 1993. Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England.

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Week 8 Structure of the Text II
Digital Text and Textuality

Landow, George P. 1994. Hyper/Text/Theory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 1993. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Week 9 Production and Authorship: A Historical Overview and Current Trends

Chartier, Roger. 1994. "Figures of the Author." In The Order of Books, pp. 25-59. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Haas, Christina. 1996. Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy . Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. (Ch. 3: "Reading On-Line," Ch. 4: "Materiality and Thinking: The Effects of Computer Technology on Writers' Planning" and Ch. 5: "Text Sense and Writers' Materially Based Representations of Text," pp. 51-135).

Howard, Gerald. 1996. "Slouching Towards Grubnet: The Author in the Age of Publicity." Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse, pp. 102-119. Ed. Sven Birkerts. Saint Paul: Graywolf Press.

Minnis, A.J. 1988. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Midle Ages. 2nd ed. Aldershot: Scolar.

Douglas Wood, Ann. 1977. "'The Scribbling Women' and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote," American Quarterly 23: 3-24.

Wall, Wendy. 1993. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

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Week 10 Distribution, Transmission: The Agents and Constraints, Access; Representations of Space

An Atlas of Cyberspaces (http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/atlas/atlas.html) and The Geography of Cyberspace (http://www.geog.ac.ucl.uk/casa/martin/geography_of_cyberspace.html).

Barnes, James J. 1974. Authors, Publishers and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement, 1815-1854. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Borges, Jorge Luis. 1962. "The Library of Babel." In Ficciones. New York: Grove Press.

Carey, James W. 1989. "Space, Time, and Communications." In Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, pp. 142-172. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

Mitchell, William J. 1995. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Week 11

Use I
Genres of Print and Digital Documents

Brown, John Seely, and Paul Duguid. 1996. The Social Life of Documents. (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue1/documents/)

Davidson, Cathy. 1986. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Fulton, Alice. 1996. "Screens: An Alchemical Scrapbook." In Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Technology and the Muse, pp. 102-119. Ed. Sven Birkerts. Saint Paul: Graywolf Press.

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Week 12 Use II
Readers -- Individuals and Representatives of Social Groups; Reading as Social Action

Cherny, Lynn, et al., ed. 1996. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Ed. Cherny, Lynn, et al. Seattle: Seal Press.

Gilster, Paul. "An Internet Day." 1996. In Digital Literacy, pp. 49-85. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Gross, Robert A. 1996. "Reading Culture, Reading Books." In Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Soceity: A Journal of American History and Culture through 1876. 106 (1): 59-78.

Long, Elizabeth. 1992. "Textual Interpretation as Collective Action." In The Ethnography of Reading, pp. 180-211. Ed. Jonathan Boyarin. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Radway, Janice A. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.

Week 13 Use III
Communities of Readers, Textual Communities

Chartier, Roger. 1994. "Communities of Readers." In The Order of Books, pp. 1-23. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Stock, Brian. 1990. Listening for the Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Ch. 7: "Textual Communities: Judaism, Christianity, and the Definitional Problem," pp. 140-158).

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