just call me research girl
Apr. 1st, 2005 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katekatBuried in books. Covered and surrounded on all sides by complex constructions and fitful dialogues. I rediscovered the library today. Not just any library, though. Not just a couple of floors with some books in the Dewey Decimal. No, we're talking serious library here. Six massive floors, stocked and stacked with journals and annals, theory and practice, kept by fluttering research assistants and silent re-shelvers.
What did I learn from all of this?
* Some foul breed of person, some idiot who has no concept of lending and borrowing, mangles books. And UT has enough of them that they either didn't notice or put them back on the shelves anyway. I found, to my horror, highlighted passages. Pencil underlines that hadn't been erased. Scribbles with meaning in the margin. Honestly, people should think twice about that anyway - your scribbles may sound like the words of the gods to you, but to me, who has to come along and read them later? I'm already annoyed that you desecrated the library book. Every word you commit to the margins just seems more inane by the second. I'm all for writing in your books if they're *yours* and you never plan to sell them or make anyone else look at them but you. But a library book?? The whole purpose is for lending.
* On the good side, there have been improvements since the first time I did this. Online catalogues bursting with PDFs of Journals I'd never be able to access any other way. Bibliographies upon bibliographies. It's part of why I brought home ... counting ... 9 books with me. So cool. I want to read it all.
* Oh, and there's *NO LIMIT* to the number of books I can check out. The librarian actually used those words. No Limit. My brain is just ... on overload.
Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Etsuko Terasaki. Figures of Desire: Wordplay, Spirit Possession, Fantasy, Madness, and Mourning in Japanese Noh Plays.
Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2002.
Sakaki Atsuko. Recontextualizing Texts: Narrative Performance in Modern Japanese Fiction.
Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Slaymaker, Douglas N. The Body in Postwar Japanese Fiction.
London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
Washburn, Dennis C. The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Lippit, Seiji M. Topographies of Japanese Modernism.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller.. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Yay reading! Reading is good and fun. Seriously. Of course, it's a good thing, because I now have to read all of these things by the end of the weekend to write my paper. *ducks head* yeah, going now. Bye.
What did I learn from all of this?
* Some foul breed of person, some idiot who has no concept of lending and borrowing, mangles books. And UT has enough of them that they either didn't notice or put them back on the shelves anyway. I found, to my horror, highlighted passages. Pencil underlines that hadn't been erased. Scribbles with meaning in the margin. Honestly, people should think twice about that anyway - your scribbles may sound like the words of the gods to you, but to me, who has to come along and read them later? I'm already annoyed that you desecrated the library book. Every word you commit to the margins just seems more inane by the second. I'm all for writing in your books if they're *yours* and you never plan to sell them or make anyone else look at them but you. But a library book?? The whole purpose is for lending.
* On the good side, there have been improvements since the first time I did this. Online catalogues bursting with PDFs of Journals I'd never be able to access any other way. Bibliographies upon bibliographies. It's part of why I brought home ... counting ... 9 books with me. So cool. I want to read it all.
* Oh, and there's *NO LIMIT* to the number of books I can check out. The librarian actually used those words. No Limit. My brain is just ... on overload.
Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Etsuko Terasaki. Figures of Desire: Wordplay, Spirit Possession, Fantasy, Madness, and Mourning in Japanese Noh Plays.
Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2002.
Sakaki Atsuko. Recontextualizing Texts: Narrative Performance in Modern Japanese Fiction.
Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Slaymaker, Douglas N. The Body in Postwar Japanese Fiction.
London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
Washburn, Dennis C. The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Lippit, Seiji M. Topographies of Japanese Modernism.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller.. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978.
Yay reading! Reading is good and fun. Seriously. Of course, it's a good thing, because I now have to read all of these things by the end of the weekend to write my paper. *ducks head* yeah, going now. Bye.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 12:21 am (UTC)-BJ
no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 12:26 am (UTC)See, this was the downside of doing my undergraduate work at UT. Because of my training there, I thought that a university library had everything ever published. Hello, I took three semesters of SERBO-CROATIAN, and was able to check out every book I could dream of. Cuz, UT? Pretty much does have everything ever published. Thank you, PUF money. (Any non-Texans who care can ask me what PUF means. I doubt that there are any of you.)
When I went somewhere else for grad school, and I looked for a book that they didn't have, I was personally affronted. What do you mean, you don't have it?
Ah, oil money. I know, politics and Bush and all, but damn. UT is a fine school just the same. Sometimes Oil Money does good things.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 12:45 am (UTC)*Grin* Gotta agree with you there. And having done undergrad in the vaunted UC system, funding is funding. It's what you do with the funding that counts. I haven't been dissappointed with UT yet. It is a damn fine school.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-04 09:05 pm (UTC)- Maija