The E-Book Effect

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The E-Book Effect Rob Cagna, Library Director West Virginia University Charleston Health Sciences Library www.twitter.com/rcagna www.slideshare.net/cagna

Transcript of The E-Book Effect

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!)

But now, new access points…

E-book readers

Desktop computers

Laptops

Tablets

Smartphones

Some benefits of e-books

• Portability

• Access

• Price

• Adaptability (font size, speaking ability, etc.)

• Multimedia content

• Interactive, assessed reading with title recommendations (ex: myON)

Closer than we think!

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

500th Anniversary Edition

www.vesaliusfabrica.com

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

Basel University, Switzerland

http://www.erara.ch/bau_1/content/

The Epitome Edition

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30027161

Fabrica and the Epitome

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30027161

Supported by

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30027161

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5LGCCjZcCo

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhnDcPdS4NA

vesalius.com

www.vesalius.com

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/

Dead for 450 years…but on Facebook

Vesalius on Twitter

Vesalius Conference 2015http://vesalius.wustl.edu/schedule.html

De Humani Google Images

Map the book: Google Maps

French translation in progresshttp://www3.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/vesale/debut.htm

The Vesalius Project

www.ospfe.it

Vesalius on the TV News

http://www.brusselnieuws.be/en/video/tvbrussel

Vesalius Anatomy Card Gamehttp://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/vesalius-card-game/

Vesalius College

www.vesalius.edu

The 21st century is awesome!

What do we lose with e-books?

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

[email protected]

Twitter www.twitter.com/rcagna

Facebook www.facebook.com/robertcagna

slideshare www.slideshare.net/cagna