Against the Grain
Volume 22 | Issue 6 Article 38
December 2010 Acquisitiong Archaeology-Competing Interest Jesse Holden Millersville University, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Holden, Jesse (2010) "Acquisitiong Archaeology-Competing Interest," Against the Grain: Vol. 22: Iss. 6, Article 38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.5716
This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. For example, I highlighted page 116, where itself, the physical book I mean, is a token of Vendor Library Relations Kluger recorded, in the course of writing about that, a sign that it might be true; my copy of from page 77 the social background to the case, that when the Simple Justice, for me, but books more gener- Lincoln Memorial was dedicated, black people ally too, for many people. A shelf of books, or piles on the floor, or for the books more active had to stand in a special section, far away from a wall of books, can be a hopeful sight, possible at any moment, smaller piles on a table, within the platform and across a road. But I really evidence that there’s much about the world we reach. When I bought it for the class, that’s didn’t write much in the book, since Simple could figure out, if we just took the time. what I must have done with Simple Justice. Justice wasn’t a dense scholarly work where Also a pleasing and even a beautiful sight, Ever since Charlottesville, though, it’s had a you had to take a lot of notes to make sense with textures, colors, and shapes coming place, and has held its place, on a bookshelf. It of it. Instead, it was a narrative, the kind to together into a pattern imposed by the shelf. was always easy to visualize the book because which the words “sweeping” or “magisterial” A few bars and restaurants have always used of the cobalt blue cover I’ve been looking at for are sometimes applied. I am sure I was too furnished bookshelves to decorate their din- some thirty years now, even though I doubt I’ve engaged with Kluger’s story to bother with ing rooms, so that they resemble libraries or picked it up (other than on moving day) until note-taking. studies. Now, in an ironic decor turn, libraries now. It’s the spine I’ve seen all those years, “From the start,” he wrote in his first sen- themselves do the same thing — even as their but as I handle the book today I see the cover tence, “the United States aspired to far more services become more and more electronic and I recall from reading it. The cover features a than its own survival.” From there he told the as books, so many of them seldom used, are photograph of the nine justices of the Warren story of how our nation was brought closer digitized, de-accessioned, compacted, sent to Court on which is superimposed a photograph to its aspirations, in the area of race relations storage — the newest buildings sometimes are of one of the school children from Topeka, where it had fallen so far short, thanks, and designed to highlight rows of books in specially Kansas who were the principals of the case, against all odds, to a group of families in lit arrays presented from behind windows or a girl in her best white coat, which contrasts Topeka, and to a corps of black attorneys led walls of glass, showpieces visible from the with the justices’ black robes. She’s standing at by Thurgood Marshall who beyond winning sidewalk or from the building’s ground floor, near attention, hands behind her back, looking their own personal battles for dignity, brought as if to say, “You know, it wasn’t always all straight ahead with a determined but slightly the Topeka cases forward and changed the about Websites in here.” anxious look, waiting. course of American history. On the book’s When I spot my blue copy of Simple Jus- It’s a Vintage Books paperback, priced back cover, review excerpts from The Nation, tice, I might recall what an heroic achievement then at $6.95. With 778 pages of text — not New York Times, and Harvard Law Review Brown v. Board of Education was. Or, what to mention appendix, notes, bibliography, and attested to an “extraordinary research effort,” an heroic achievement the book itself was, on index — it must have taken me a little while to a “thought-provoking work,” and a “definitive Richard Kluger’s part. Or, I might remember read. The book’s still in good shape, although account.” Simple Justice is still in print, in a Charlottesville in 1980, or my apartment, or the pages have turned slightly brown and the 2004 edition which Random House brought what grad school was like, or where I went paper has a faint smell of must to it. I inscribed out on the 50th anniversary of the case. from there. I am sure at some point not far off my name, address, and phone number inside I’ll probably never read the book again, but it will be more rule than exception that even the front cover, and so could not have trusted I’m glad I kept it on my bookshelf all these a book like Kluger’s will be experienced as myself to hang onto the book and not misplace years. I think when we read a book that’s meant an eBook. If I had read Simple Justice that it somewhere around campus. I’m sure I didn’t something to us, we like to believe we know way, though, I can’t help wondering how want to spend the $6.95 a second time. something we didn’t before, and maybe have much harder it would be, today, to remember I also wrote a few notes inside the book. been changed a little because of that. The book anything at all.
Acquisitions Archaeology — Competing Interests Column Editor: Jesse Holden (Coordinator of Technical Services, Millersville University)
fter wandering around ATG volumes So after a strong start, CD-ROMs have format immediately recognizable as a profes- 2 and 3 in search of CD-ROMs, I was somewhat faded into the background as the sional journal. Aforced to arrive at the conclusion that the 1990s start to unfold. Presumably, we are in the Keeping in mind the possible — and entirely trail, though not stone cold, had indeed grown process of moving from revolution to workflow. unexpected — relationship between the develop- faint. I found signs throughout the volumes that As practicality starts to temper potentiality, CDs ment of CD-ROMs and the emerging functional- CD-ROMs were sill insinuating themselves in fade from the literature. This is probably not ity of the Internet, the fact that CD-ROMs are the background, but for the most part it was busi- such a daring conjecture, but as far as I need taking off in parallel with the Internet is a curi- ness as usual. This actually surprised me. One go at this point: I am not so interested in where ous coincidence indeed. Here in June 1992, it vendor — Compact Cambridge — informs us, the CD-ROMs have gone as where they are is “Rumored” on the front page that Blackwell for example, that databases distributed on CD- going. Their momentary absence is just that, will start providing title and TOC service through ROMs are “revolutionizing information access” regardless of why they have all but vanished the Internet. At the same time (and on the same and are a technology “winning overwhelming for the moment. front page), it is likewise rumored that EBSCO approval from patrons and library personnel When I finally recover the trail, it is in the has released a new Serials Directory on CD. alike.”1 In another instance, conversation is middle of Volume 4 (June 1992, to be exact). The changing nature of information is clear: the “dominated” by talk of electronic publishing2 The changing times are perhaps discussion of “full text online to take the place — and in this pre-Web world, CD- best shown in the new look for of hardcopy was under much discussion” at a ROMs are obviously a significant ATG in this volume — some- recent conference. component of this emerging e- thing very close to its present Sandra K. Paul’s column addresses “Multi- publishing regime. Discourse look. After several years of media Chaos” — especially that brought about about CD-ROMs, though, is not evolution and refinement, by CD-ROMs.3 It is strange to see CDs suddenly so “revolutionary” or “over- the graphic header is erupting onto the acquisitions scene once again. whelming” that it dominates very similar to the one Beneath the relatively placid waters (placid but the broader discourse of we see today. It has left not still, of course), complications with and publishing, vending, and behind its newsletter around CDs have been multiplying. Paul traces acquisitions. roots and embraced a continued on page 79 78 Against the Grain / December 2010 - January 2011