Hi it’s me again. I really enjoyed the MFA Design Studies 2nd year students’ presentations of their thesis experimentation this morning. Currently I’m reading the essays they’ve written which detail precedents for the kinds of work they are exploring. Later this week I’ll report back on the themes and implications that are emerging there.
Provocation #1 still remains. I’ve extended the deadline until the end of the week to allow for more responses. But now it’s time for our next challenge. Today it’s all about books. More specifically, how we arrange our books, which, according to the French essayist and filmmaker Georges Perec, is a two-fold problem concerning ‘space’ and ‘order’. In his essay ‘The Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books’ Perec proposes the following list as the most common ways of arranging books, although he admits that in practice most libraries use a combination of these modes:
ordered alphabetically
ordered by continent or country
ordered by colour
ordered by date of acquisition
ordered by date of publication
ordered by format
ordered by genre
ordered by major periods of literary history
ordered by language
ordered by priority for future reading
ordered by binding
ordered by series
PROVOCATION #2: How do you currently arrange your books? Rearrange your books in a new way.
You could either take a picture, make sketch, or describe your current and your new arrangements. If you use a visual means to document this project you may need to add a caption to explain your former rationale for arrangement and your new one. Thesis students among you may wish to use this opportunity to organize and thematically sort their thesis literature.
And lest you think this provocation not particularly ‘critical’, I would urge you to consider the ordering of books through more political lenses such as ‘non-traditional views,’ ‘books I disagree with’, ‘harmful books’, ‘wasteful books’, ‘luscious books I wish would go on for ever’ etc.
Some background reading:
Georges Perec, ‘The Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books‘, 1978
Walter Benjamin, ‘Unpacking My Library‘, 1968
Designersandbooks.com
I look forward to your images and descriptions and your new categorizations. You can post them here as comments, or add links to your own blogs, or paste them on my door. Remember, there’s an exhibition to be made out of this by next week!
My ‘old-school’ pocket (A6) size sketch-books from the past few years… Organized into vertical stacks according to date and size…
Sketch-books-2.JPG
Sketch-books-1.JPG
As the above ‘pasting’ of the images didn’t work, please see them here: http://kuwaitschool.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-extraordinary-ordinary-pile-of-a6.html
Interestingly Perec doesn’t mention “by subject” which is the basis of the Library of Congress scheme and the main method of classification for many university libraries to arrange books. “Genre” and “Periods of Literary History” would not relate to most subjects outside of literature.
I am most interested in seeing how books taken at customs offices in Qatar, and elsewhere, for the purpose of censorship are arranged, or not.
I arrange my own books by what I want to read next and what I use most often. Cookbooks are often the most prominently displayed books at my house.
The VCUQ library has an added color scheme in our stacks, thanks to designer/librarian Mike Wirtz. What about all other kinds of information and media we use? Books are such a small part of how we access and use information, images and media now. Haven’t Google’s Algorithms completely overshadowed our interest in and the importance of any book organization systems or methods?
One of our Library Specialists, Roshni, just excitedly handed me a book after reading this post. She didn’t want to reply to the post, so I’m posting a reply for her.
It is “My Ideal Bookshelf,” edited by Jane Mount and illustrated by Thessaly La Force. Mount asked authors, artists, designers, actors and other notable folks to assemble their ideal bookshelves, which were then illustrated by La Force. I particularly like Paola Anonelli’s bookshelf where the two-volume “Complete Far Side” collection is held up on one side by “Ferrari: 60 Years of Technological Innovation” and “Disco Bloodbath” by James St. James on the other.
I’ll put it at the VCUQ Library circulation desk next to the featured book of the week, if anyone wants to take a look. If you do, thank Roshni for the find.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/30815_876402375552_5856797_n.jpg
I used to think I organized my books based on size alone, but by looking at this old photo of my bookshelf I’m noticing a few interesting things..
1. Religious/Arabic books are separate from all the other books.
2. Magazines and books don’t mix.
3. All topics of personal interest can mix freely and are in a section of their own; science, art, technology, all sit side by side (or on top of each other).
4. Apparently cook books are as nourishing as self-help book, they share a section.
5. There is a tub for manuals that come with my electronics, just in case.
6. Journals do not go on bookshelves, they go in drawers.
Hi Lina, I recognize myself in your bookshelf. Beautiful how you refuse to organize vertically, but make little piles of books on the shelves.
I think I have a problem with the convenience of horizontal space. The horizontal space on my desk fills with books and files, and then when I need desk space, I move items to horizontal space on my shelves. Unfortunately, I don’t usually have time to consider organization when I do this. So, my shelves usually look something like this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/107747774@N02/10690708255/
As a librarian, this is a little pathetic. Librarians tend to think in terms of very specific places for each book. Because of this, in the interest of doing something I normally wouldn’t, I tried to rearrange my books based on where I intuitively felt they should go, without paying attention to the subject. After a lot of resorting, it sort of ended up by color.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/107747774@N02/10690676845/
It bugs me a little, since the two different editions of the “Chicago Manual of Style” should be next to each other in the library world, but it isn’t any worse than it was before. I couldn’t find a place for the “Economics of Information.” Wherever I tried to put it, it stuck out in a really ugly way.
hmmmm, must be a real reason for that, why the “Economics of Information” is not finding a good fit, on your shelf…:)