The “other documents” along with the syllabus are things like the midterm exam, the course evaluation, and the “final you don’t have to take.” We’d originally planned to have a final exam, but due to the complexity of the printing project and the fact that we really wanted them to focus on refining their virtual exhibition assignments, we chose to forego the exam. But that didn’t mean that I had stopped thinking of things I wanted to ask them.

Most of the questions on the “fake final” are questions that I actually find somewhat intriguing, but that I either left more raw or more jokey than I’d feel comfortable putting on a real exam. But Jessy had a very good question that she and I had talked briefly about during the class, but that never really made it to an open class discussion. Here’s my version of that question, which I think could have been a very good final exam essay question, indeed.

For a college book-collecting contest, a student wanted to submit a collection of electronic books. Would you allow such a submission? In supporting your answer consider some of the following: What are good criteria for judging a collection of tangible, physical books? Is it possible to evaluate a collection of electronic books the same way, or would you propose different criteria? Is it possible or useful to compare collections of paper books and electronic books? How do concepts of “individuality,” “ownership,” and “scarcity” affect your answer? Is book collecting of any kind merely a bourgeois exercise in Pokemon-esque conspicuous consumption, narcissism, elitism, and crypto-fetishism by an anal-retentive phallocracy of bibliobores?

We asked students to sample at least five online works from Jessy’s page on Netcessary literature and then we looked at a handful in class, mostly chosen by students who had something to say about them. Our group was pretty well split on Felix Jung’s First Snow with some people finding it gimmicky–using multimedia to dress up a weak text–while others found it at least intriguing or successful on its own terms. The class was more complimentary about Jessy’s own work, A Letter from Henry. (And I should mention that the students mentioned Jessy’s work first–she didn’t bring it up.)

Back in special collections, we looked at dozens of examples of artists’ books and fine press books, from fairly straightforward (if beautiful and lavish) books, such as Stuart Klipper’s A City as Once Seen, recently published by the Press at Colorado College, to Soap Story, an artists’ book by Angela Lorenz where the pages of the book are printed on cloth and encased in soap.

Now I need to make my own thoughts about manuscript and early printed books more coherent so I can talk about them tomorrow.

One of the things we asked them to do last night was to participate in a very old internet meme. We had them read John Scalzi’s 15 Things About Me and Books and then post their own 15 things to the couse website.

I can’t show you their posts, but I thought I might as well show you mine:

1. I had a fight with my girlfriend in college when she borrowed a book from me (Romeo and Juliet, I believe) and returned it dog-eared.
2. I remember looking at the books on the spinning display in my elementary school library, especially ship on the cover of “The Voage of the Dawn Treader” and especially especially “The Dragon’s Handbook” which had green pages and which I checked out repeatedly.
3. The illustrations for the book “Pick a Peck of Puzzles” freaked me out so badly as a kid, I think I had to hide the book from myself.
4. Like Scalzi, I burned a class text once (“David Copperfield.”) Unlike Scalzi, I don’t feel too bad about it.
5. I used to read books on my Palm Pilot while walking to CC from home.
6. I watched a co-worker steal a book when I was still a pretty new employee at Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore. He advised me “when you have your review with a manager and they ask what you like about working here, don’t say ‘free books.’”
7. I’m not usually someone who says he likes the smell of books, but I recall the smell of a Latin Bible printed by Nicolas Jenson on vellum in 1476 which I thought was the most beautiful book at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
8. I’m not much of a book collector, but I have a small collection of career books for girls about being a librarian.
9. I bought a copy of Plato’s Dialogues at a library sale when I was in elementary school. I didn’t know a thing about Plato, and never really read any of it, but I liked the fact that it looked old and had a green leather spine.
10. I wish we had a better term than “graphic novel” for big, thick, “respectable” comics. Very few of them are novels. I love all kinds of comics.
11. My Northwestern University roommate and I checked out all the books by journalist/memoirist/kinda hokey guy/Northwestern alumnus Bob Greene in the NU library, and my roommate took them to a signing where a puzzled Greene inscribed them.
12. My first full-time library job was in interlibrary loan at the University of Delaware library. I used to have a file with photocopies of the covers or title pages of the strangest books that passed through my hands there. I can’t find it, but a few I remember are: “My Life With the Microbes”; “Atlas of Avoidable Death”; “Crimson Steel” which had a disclaimer on the back cover releasing the publisher from responsibility if you injured yourself while even just reading the book.
13. Buying books every quarter was probably my favorite part of college.
14. I once gave the OK to discard an old reference set that was a German etymological dictionary of French. A few months later I got an email from Owen Cramer: “I can’t find Wartburg anywhere. What have we done!”
15. I have two sons, ages 4 and 7. I was talking to them about our class over dinner tonight and asked them if the audio books they liked to listen to are “books” or not. Mr. 4 said yes, because someone is reading the book to you. Mr. 7 said no, because first, they aren’t really reading to you, and second a recording of someone reading a book is not also a book. I agree with them both.