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In 16Th- and 17Th-Century Europe, There Was No Clear Distinction Between Libraries and Museums Or Between Archives and Treasuries

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In 16Th- and 17Th-Century Europe, There Was No Clear Distinction Between Libraries and Museums Or Between Archives and Treasuries NEURO-X: IN YOUR HEAD: THINKING GLOBAL: HUMAN HEALTH: The Neuroscience New imaging technology American studies, Dean Ann Arvin Institute has an is allowing physicians an interdisciplinary outlines the ambitious program and researchers to undergraduate university’s that brings together make a quantum leap in program, is making translational vision researchers from many their efforts to decipher sure students take a for health research disciplines, page 4 the brain, page 4 broad view, page 6 at Stanford, page 8 ISSUE 7 • FALL 2007 • STANFORD UNIVERSITY • MULTIDISCIPLINARY NEWS UPDATED AT http://multi.stanford.edu In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, there was no clear distinction between libraries and museums or between archives and treasuries. Such places, filled with books, natural oddities, relics, beautiful objects, manuscripts, stones and bones, could resemble junk rooms for the erudite, wunderkammern, landing spots for bequests of all sorts. Books were organized by size or date of arrival or donor, not by content or use. See story, page 2 PHOTO: CONNIE SHAO MULTIDISCIPLINARY NEWS UPDATED AT http://multi.stanford.edu Virtually unlimited knowledge n 16th- and 17th-century Europe, there was pening in the way knowledge is being delivered.” no clear distinction between libraries and In the years following the 1989 Loma Prieta earth- museums or between archives and treasuries. quake, the people involved in the remodeling of Green ‘I’m expecting 9 million Such places, filled with books, natural oddi- Library sometimes worried that their efforts might be ties, relics, beautiful objects, manuscripts, misdirected, given the advent of the much-discussed books incoming, so the stones and bones, could resemble junk rooms bookless library. It didn’t turn out that way. for the erudite, Wunderkammern, landing Henry Lowood, curator for the Germanic, history magnitude of my informatic spots for bequests of all sorts. Books were of science and technology, and film and media collec- organized by size or date of arrival or donor, not by tions, was on the staff at that time. “The doomsday Icontent or use. projections didn’t carry weight at a place like Stanford challenges is going Slowly, systematic disciplinary and alphabetical because we’re able to acquire the new while maintain- up dramatically,’ catalogs emerged, and “libraries” became places that ing the old,” he said. stored books and manuscripts—and little else. Gerhard Casper, who came to Stanford as university Keller said. Today, one doesn’t trip over skeletons or jewel boxes. president in 1992, had decided that the library would But libraries—or cybraries, as University Librarian Mi- be rebuilt, and Keller, who arrived in 1993, could take chael Keller likes to call them—contain the world. Ab- into account the swift technological advances since the solutely everything is there. The age of the collection earthquake. has returned. “My whole career is littered with cases of trying to L.A. CICERO “The virtual makes figure out what people want in libraries,” said Keller. that possible,” said As- “Strategic thinking is part of my toolkit. What do you sunta Pisani, associate do with a great old building when you have the oppor- university librarian for tunity to rebuild?” collections and ser- The redesign of Green Library called for a variety vices. “One of the old of spaces to account for the new variety of uses and limitations of librar- resources: quiet, noisy, computing, group, individual, ies was space. There closed, open. Resource centers for humanities and so- were beautiful rooms cial sciences were created. with displays, which “We returned all the big spaces to their original, we then became larger tore out all the foolishness that was constructed from and more organized, 1919 to 1989, and with all those walls wide open, we and decisions had to be installed lots of conduit for powerful signal,” he said. made about space and Casper, at the dedication ceremony for the opening efficiency. But now it of the Bing Wing in 1999, remarked that the gaping doesn’t matter.” holes at the construction site had reminded him of the The relationship be- bombed-out buildings of his Hamburg childhood. At tween hyperlinks and no point, he said—his talk was titled “Who Needs a 17th-century collecting Library Anyway?”—did he or anyone else seriously en- practices might not be tertain a libraryless future. obvious. But the chief virtue of digitization, from the point of view Subject specialists Art librarian Peter Blank and Amber Ruiz, of Keller and his colleagues, is that you can dig deep— Curators, or subject specialists, such as Lowood, really, really deep. You can drill through a text to find who have advanced degrees, are up to date on the de- curator of the Visual Resources Center. the point at which child psychology veers into electri- bates in their disciplines and on what is going on in the The center is embarked upon a campaign cal engineering, the moment of the genesis of scientific information trade, formerly known as the book trade. arguments within philosophy, the places where biology “What’s accessible and interesting that we can ac- to reach out to the broader Stanford com- bumps up against chemistry and physics, where relics quire in order to make Stanford a distinctive place for and stones and texts can be viewed as part of a whole. musicologists or early childhood education experts or munity. Below, University Librarian Michael Informatics, which posits that everything ultimately mechanical engineers?” Keller asked. Keller. Bottom, a robotic page-turning is linked to everything else, now can actually link most “The subject specialists understand how their disci- everything through taxonomic indexing, a highly com- plines interact and challenge one another, so this whole and scanning device, the centerpiece of plex process of assigning semantic categories to clumps sense of multidisciplinarity is reflected in how we build collections. SULAIR’s array of on-campus digitization of text that then can be summoned in a certain, rel- evant order, relying on what Keller calls the text’s fin- “Librarians have always been multidisciplinary, up capabilities. gerprint. With that, instead of running through the on all the big strategic innovations. We collect in all stacks from Spanish history (DP, second floor) to so- fields, we identify all subjects, we develop new tech- cial history (HN, way down in the basement) and then niques afforded by digital versions, we provide the L.A. CICERO over to the Law Library or up into the Bing Wing to means to analyze works by subjects, we make correla- find Jewish law (KBM) and then back up to Green to tions ... we’re it.” check Spanish lyric poetry (PQ, third floor), it’s all in Pisani also pointed to the range of the activities of one place. Or it will be soon. Stanford’s 35 subject specialists. “I’m expecting 9 million books incoming, so the “We’re farsighted,” she said. “Some libraries have magnitude of my informatic challenges is going up dra- created separate organizations to acquire electronic con- matically,” said Keller, obviously delighted to have such tent. Here we believe that content and knowledge are problems, largely the result of Stanford’s collaboration fundamental to a good collection development program with Google. regardless of how the information is being delivered.” Lowood, for example, said he will choose (or at least participate in the choice of) German materials through- Disciplines fused out the collections, from ancient to high-tech, which he In Keller’s view, there’s an old narrative and a new said “encourages a sort of interdisciplinarity.” narrative. The old one is a ribbon of text, a stream of Though libraries today are no longer simply the sum characters organized from beginning to end. The new of whatever arrives at their doorstep, they still seek and narrative is the old narrative with interruptions, with receive collections. Among Stanford’s outstanding spe- high-octane Java, with links and spreadsheets and vid- cial collections are the papers of Buckminster Fuller, eos and citations and whatever else will help the reader Allen Ginsberg and John Steinbeck; an important se- STUART SNYDMAN make connections. ries of 18th-century French political economy pam- Keller started off his professional life as a music li- phlets; the records of the Farm Worker Archive and the brarian. So how did he get from there to book robots, National Council of La Raza; and a wonderful collec- to the pioneering HighWire Press (online home to more tion of artifacts and papers documenting the history of than 1,000 journals) and to cybraries? Silicon Valley. “It’s the training,” he said. “You study physics, And the special collections are not necessarily all in physiology, mechanical engineering, the creative pro- the department of Special Collections. The Archive of cess. You read code, psychology, history, reception, Recorded Sound, hidden downstairs in the Music Li- patronage. We cover the whole waterfront. That’s the brary, is the repository for some 300,000 recordings perspective we bring to the party.” (including thousands of 78 rpm records), the entire “Libraries are participating in a fusing of disci- recordings of the Monterey Jazz Festival, remarkable plines,” Pisani said. “We are acquiring packages of contraptions from more than a century ago that actu- publications or information now, not just traditional ally produce fine music, radio news shows from World acquisitions. War II recorded on heavy 16-inch discs, voices of the “The Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Con- most prominent poets of the 1950s and all the KZSU gress assigns books to a specific place, and once there, tracks from the 1960s, among other treasures. the book doesn’t belong anywhere else. That’s being Special Collections used to be a sort of sanctuary, undone with digital.
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