User:Joca/Reader Joca

Who is the Librarian?

The gendered image of the librarian and the information scientist

Chapter 2 of Reflections on Book Scanning: A Feminist Reader

Abstract

Looking at the past and comparing it to the present, where some librarians insist on calling themselves information specialists/brokers/managers.

Why is there a stereotype of librarianship as a female job, although its infrastructure (catalogoging systems like the Dewey System) still reflect the male-centric culture of which the profession was part of in the past

Articles

Article 1

Melvil Dewey

Article 2

Hope A. Olson

Design

Book block

Who is the Librarian? The gendered image of the librarian and the information scientist

Format width:176mm, height: 125mm (B5, horizontal). Horizontal spine, +- 200 pages, glue binding, softcover Printed at the Espresso Book Machine. Libre typefaces: PT Serif & PT Sans Caption (by Alexandra Korolkova, in collaboration with Olga Umpeleva and Vladimir Yefimov)

The idea is that readers can change the orientation of the book, to change their focus from the articles to the annotations made in the byline. The annotations refer to other articles in the chapter, make connections to other chapters and add context. This is done in the form of e.g. short biographies of the authors, images and abstracts of the texts.

This is also relevant in the context of scanning, as the software is only able to read text in one direction at a time. Scanning the book in a certain way influences the text that will be scanned. I tested it with some proof prints and it works quite well! Having different colors improves the recognition of the different orientations of the text by the software. Next to that it gives the annotations a distinct look that sets it apart from the body text.

Cover

Raw audio to image -> link to experiments in prototyping

Production

This reader is printed and bound at Betty, the Espresso Book Machine of the American Book Center in Amsterdam.