The E-Book Effect
Rob Cagna, Library DirectorWest Virginia University
Charleston Health Sciences Librarywww.twitter.com/rcagna
www.slideshare.net/cagna
What we’ll examine
• Old ways of how students gathered material
• New ways; new formats
• What’s good
• What may be problematic
“Old” ways of getting a book
• From teacher/school
• School library
• Public library
• Interlibrary loan
• Local bookstore
• Scholastic Reading Club (book orders)
• Book Fairs
(All still in use!)
Some benefits of e-books
• Portability
• Access
• Price
• Adaptability (font size, speaking ability, etc.)
• Multimedia content
• Interactive, assessed reading with title recommendations (ex: myON)
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• "The Fabrica"
• by Andreas Vesalius
• How has this author and book influenced online content, and how have others interpreted the original content?
Vesalius’s life
• 1514-1564
• Born in Brussels to a health sciences family
• Studied at the University of Louvain, the University of Paris, and the University of Padua
• Was a professor at the University of Padua; occasionally at Pisa and Bologna
• Studied Galen's teachings
Vesalius’s life (continued)
Broke with tradition; did showcase dissection
demonstrations by himself rather than telling someone
else what to do while he lectured; started to notice Galen was wrong in many
points of his writings, perhaps because Galen primarily used non-human animals to learn
about anatomic structure
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/vesaliusgallery.htm
Vesalius’s masterpiece: the Fabrica
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Published in 1543 by Johannes Oporinus; text and drawings were clear and sharp
• The drawings are believed to have been done by Titian’s school (van Calcar), perhaps some by Titian himself, and are amazing even today
• Text was in Latin and instructed readers how to do their own dissections
• It revolutionized anatomy and physiology
Free versions of “The Fabrica”
• A free scan of the book is available at Google Books via Google Play
• A free preview of an English translation is available via Google Books, too
NLM (National Library of Med.)
Turning the Pages Onlinehttp://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/tt
p/flash/vesalius/vesalius.html
University of Glasgow
Online exhibit with selected images and general information
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/sep2002.htm
Becker Library, St. Louis University
http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/vesalius/index.html
The Epitome Edition
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30027161
Fabrica and the Epitome
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30027161
Poetry (and Sound)
De Humani Corporis Fabrica (John Burnside)
after Vesalius
I know the names of almostnothing...
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/de-humani-corporis-fabrica
Plays
Vesalius: A Requiem (London, 1996)
http://variouspeople.com.au/productions/vesalius-a-requiem/
Vesalius Conference 2015http://vesalius.wustl.edu/schedule.html
French translation in progresshttp://www3.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/vesale/debut.htm
Vesalius Anatomy Card Gamehttp://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/vesalius-card-game/
What do we lose with e-books?
• Sense of size
• Sense of weight, heft, gravitas
• Books as architecture (William Morris)
• Page turning (noise, crinkling of pages, type of paper and its feel)
• Marginalia and fingerprints (possibly)
• Texture, binding, tobacco-whiskey smell
• Expressive, haptic nature (possibly)
What do we lose? (continued)
• Concrete poetry may lose its font type, font size, ink, kerning, layout, white space, page size, paper type, etc. when being reformatted as an e-book and/or when the end user manipulates the settings
• Possible loss of some content recall ability?
Encourage students to enter the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest
http://www.abaa.org/ncbcc/the-national-collegiate-book-collecting-contest
Enter by the end of May!
Questions?
Rob Cagna, Library Director
West Virginia University
Charleston Health Sciences Library
Twitter www.twitter.com/rcagna
Facebook www.facebook.com/robertcagna
slideshare www.slideshare.net/cagna
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