notes, week 2 (meeting 2)

notes (draft); this page in progress, but wanted to provide the Google Books / Hathitrust / Internet Archive info first.
 

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searchable scans of books, magazines
came up in discussion of Melissa’s project, and particularly her images from old issues of Popular Mechanics

Google

Advanced Book Search
note that you can specify search terms across one author, one title, or within a date range. You can even search for nonwords (will yield typographic errors, and even results of OCR misreads

Here is the result of one search, John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a later (London, 1877) edition the result of a search for “words” + “error,” yielding “The misuse of words the cause of great errors.”

strengths : fast, good for searches across all texts (without specifying one title or author); thumbnails load extremely fast (and show interesting mis-scans.
shortcomings : poor bibliographic data (metadata); scans are sometimes imperfect.

While we're on the subject of Google Books, here's an Ngram view showing relative frequency of the words “extraterrestrial” and “martian” in the Google Books corpus (which is what it is, so to speak).

Aside —
Probably a good idea to read about what an Ngram actually is, and does. See the Google Ngram info page.
 

Hathitrust

strengths : excellent bibliographic metadata; displays multiple editions (or issues, volumes, years for serials/magazines) in an orderly way; scans have been checked (few or no errors)
shortcomings : pages and thumbnails load relatively slowly.
 

Internet Archive / Wayback Machine

Internet Archive info

Excellent, even for more recent materials, technical documents, even material still copyright protected (for these, one can “borrow” for an hour, then renew); also old instructional films, even Grateful Dead concerts.

strengths : excellent bibliographic metadata; displays multiple editions (or issues, volumes, years for serials/magazines) in an orderly way; scans generally better than found in Google Books
shortcomings : less good for searching words or phrases across some or all volumes (for this, Google can’t be beat); some searches might start with Google, then move to Hathitrust or Internet Archive.

sort findings by “date published”, then click “down” arrow at left, for earliest first.

some results for Popular Mechanics Collection 1902-2016 shown below. A search for Popular Mechanics (but not collection) yields other copies/scans, some in color.
 

There are other searchable scanned book options, for example Gallica in France, and for plain text editions of materials out of copyright, there is always gutenberg.org (aside: the Australian version provides all of Virginia Woolf!). And not discussed here are other options, for materials in Japan or Spain, for example.

Yet another resource — that I have not explored but am told is steadily improving, is the Digital Public Library of America.

But the three tools described above are useful, and become useful in more and more ways, as one becomes familiar with their respective quirks, overlaps, relative strengths and shortcomings.
 

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parataxis, hypotaxis
this may have come up in relation to Eileen’s photographs.

from wikipedia —

“Parataxis roughly translates to ‘arranging side by side’, while hypotaxis translates to "arranging under’. Parataxis omits subordinating conjunctions while hypotaxis utilizes them such as the terms ‘when’, ‘although’, and ‘after’. Parataxis juxtaposes ideas and thoughts, while hypotaxis subordinates ideas to one another and can show both juxtaposition and transition. Because of this, hypotaxis can show relationships of cause and effect, chronology, and comparison.”

Fair enough, but visually, things can be more complicated. Even in paratactical arrangements of two items, which is at left and which at right may matter; even moreso for three — in a triptych — what is at left, right and center will matter a lot. Are the items in the wings, subordinate to or explanatory to what is in the center? Are we to read from left to right?

And for hyptotaxis, what is above, what below? Is a sequence suggested? or hierarchy? And what of combinations of parataxis and hypotaxis? Of image plus image, or image plus text... and so on.

And obviously there are other basic relationships to consider, e.g., size, or the quality of the image (grainy or high resolution; color or black and white; “picture” or diagram; etc., etc.). Also, space between items in whatever arrangement, signifying something missing, or a pause, a missing comma...