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Stumpage Reports
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Thursday, January 09, 2003 :::
Warriors Against the Forces of Ignorance and Darkness: or, My Class Tonight
I went to my first class this semester tonight. I'm taking three classes so you may have to sit through two more entries like this. After that I'll be tired and bitching about my classes.
Tonight was "Preservation of Archival and Museum Materials." We watched a video called Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record. The film looked at the problem of entire libraries of books crumbling to bits because of their acidic paper and also other preservation issues. The film took a rather evangelical tone, exhorting librarians and archivists that they were responsible for the "foundations of civilization" and warning about an "upcoming age of darkness." I didn't know I was entering into such a noble profession.
One interesting thing I learned: Ancient Sumerian clay tablets held about 4 characters per inch and last at least 10,000 years. Optical discs can hold 50,000,000 characters and last about 5 years.
Quote of the Day: (Its only one sentence, I love it)
The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of the fish -- this, the cheese which he knew he smelled and the hermetic meat which his intestines believed he smelled coming in intermittent gusts momentary and brief between the constant one, the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood.
--- William Faulkner, Barn Burning
::: posted by tom at 9:54 PM
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