Going, going, gone?

In June, I considered photographing the collection at Columbia's Medical Library. A staff librarian told me the journals had either been sent to deep storage or to the dumpster just weeks before.

This afternoon I went with my snappy camera to scout at the NYU Medical Center Library. (Pictured above.) I had been forewarned, but the empty stacks were eerie. The NYU journals were sent to the dumpster about two months ago. 

Librarians have predicted Volume will be an important document in ten years. New York, as always, is ahead of her time. 

My brain knows much more than I do.

Clearly. At the moment I am photographing Columbia's Psychology Library, working on a proposal for the University of Florida's new Biomedical Sciences building (squeak squeak!), re-reading the vision chapter in A Natural History of the Senses, and yesterday stumbled upon a brilliant article in The New Yorker about insight and the brain by Jonah Lehrer that you want to read. Unfortunately it is not available online, so you'll have to pick up the July 28 issue if you want to read it... Below is an excerpt to wet your appetite. 

"The most mysterious aspect of insight is not revelation itself but what happens next. The brain is an infinite library of associations, a cacophony of competing ideas, and yet, as soon as the right association appears, we know. The new thought, represented by that rush of gamma rays in the right hemisphere, immediately grabs our attention. There is something paradoxical and bizarre about this. On one hand, an epiphany is a surprising event; we are startled by what we've just discovered. Some part of our brain, however, clearly isn't surprised at all , which is why we are able to instantly recognize the insight. 'As soon as the insight happens, it just seems so obvious,' Schooler said. 'People can't believe they didn't see it before.' "

It's Google Stoopid

In the process of working on the Volume project, I have seen my subjects start to slip away into storage, deep storage, and in recent months, into dumpsters. Despite the prevalence of the Internet, people are often shocked to hear the books are actually being taken from their shelves. As Nicholson Baker told us the way of the bound newspapers in Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper , Nicholas Carr has written a new book I can't wait to read. In the first few paragraphs Atlantic article he sets the stage from his personal experience as a writer, "Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes." The book is called The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. 

Volume on iGoogle

Thanks to The Webmomster, a Volume theme can now be downloaded from iGoogle. To use it on your search page, follow the instructions here. I'll write a bit more about the timely irony of this marriage and the Atlantic's "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" July cover article another time. Until then, Nicolas Carr's article is worth a read.

The Other Mickey Smith

Mickey Smith DEFENDS THE EARTH! He arrived in my mailbox today.

PDNedu's One 2 Watch

 

PDNedu released their spring Fine Art Issue ages ago, but with the move we haven't had a chance to share the link. Better late than never... Thanks to Jessica Gordon and Jen Bekman for their kind, kind words. Click here to read the article.