Joan Vinall-Cox at WebToolsforLearners links to a very interesting essay in the University of Toronto magazine: “The Infinite Library.” Joan’s blog entry sums the piece up very well. My postcript is this little pull quote:
As UTL boosts its technological capabilities, Moore [Carole Moore, the chief librarian] likens the direction that the library is heading to a much earlier forebear – a medieval library. These institutions of the Middle Ages were not only book storehouses but places where manuscripts were rewritten and information was combined and republished in new ways, she says.
That’s a remix culture I can get behind. It’s also a little vindication for my oft-stated position that the online revolution reveals to us truths that have been hidden in plain sight for a long time.
I find the analogy between the modern and medieval libraries fascinating and attractive; however, the following caveat must be remembered (online or not), that much of the medieval library depended on the partial, the partial text, the odd leaves pulled from a larger manuscript to support a narrow range of research. Chaucer illustrates this beautifully in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue–the dangers of the partial, and the dangers of the truncated quote. More to the point, it is always difficult to know what texts the medievals read in their entirety and which were limited to a few fragments. Lucretius’ De Rerum is a famous example. So, how to keep vigilant with undergraduates constantly looking for the short cut? I depend heavily on the hyper link in e-texts, but suggestions to maintain the rigor students work so diligently to avoid wouold be welcome. Once again, Gardner, congratulations on a provocative post. The question of remix, of course, is the basis of creativity, and perhaps all to the good–Bloom’s
‘anxiety of influence’ theory often provides an insidious justification for the ‘remix’ that I’m not sure I buy. Just a few random thoughts from a less than technologically gifted colleague.
Same library that’s part of Yahoo’s OCA project?
Terry,
Yes indeed to all. Brilliant comment. That’s the chief danger of remix, it seems to me: selective quoting invites distortion. Some would insist that all quoting is distortion, but that’s a very lazy argument, in my view, and also a convenient one. The great achievement of post-medieval scholarship is the rigor of exact (i.e., easily verifiable) quotation within the context of easily accessible, authoritative, complete sources. Your comment has got me thinking hard about this fact. Thanks.
Bryan,
I believe this is the one. Interesting that the Yahoo project focuses on out-of-copyright books, and that Brewster Kahle is behind it. I support the idea that the latest isn’t necessarily the greatest, though the public domain is perhaps of more enduring relevance in the humanities–or am I mistaken there?
I had an attendee at the latest delivery of “Been Digital…” suggest that the proper historical analogue for emerging digital culture was not oral culture (as McLuhan might suggest), but “manuscript culture” (the attendee’s term). This post (and comments) fleshes that assertion out for me a bit… I hadn’t quite known where to begin with it.
And thanks once again for posting a critical, yet open-minded post on remix from an academic perspective. Not enough that buzzing around in my newsreader.