Dr. Snead's Assignment Guidelines

Special Collections Paper

In this assignment, you'll be asked to write a paper based on material research that youπll be doing, on your own, in the Special Collections Library at Texas Tech. The point of this assignment is to give you an individual experience working with rare books, and to give you a better understanding of how an analysis of a textπs material form can contribute to your knowledge of its content, its readership, and its reception history.

Right after our class visit to Special Collections, I will assign you a number between 1 and 4. At some point over the next two weeks, head back over to the Special Collections reading room on your own. The library staff and I have pulled several texts from the Rare Books stacks for you to work with: simply go up to the main desk, tell one of the librarians there that youπre from Professor Snead's English class and that youπre here for her Special Collections assignment. Give him or her the course and section number for the class, and tell him or her your assigned number (between 1 and 4). He or she will then set you up with a spot at a table in the reading room, and one of the books from the Rare Book stacks (corresponding to the number you've been assigned).

Please respect and follow the Reading Room rules, be mindful that there will be other researchers around you, and treat the materials youπre evaluating, the Reading Room staff, and those other researchers with care and respect.

Carefully examine your book using the following criteria and guidelines:

I. Content

• What is the title of the book? What is its genre: a novel? A collection of short stories? A book of poems by a single author? A collection of poems by many authors? A book of science, or philosophy, or religion?
• Does the book have a dedication, or a preface, or an introduction? If so, who is it by: the author? the editor? a scholar or commentator? What kinds of information does the preface or introduction or dedication give you? And what might this information suggest about the author's or publisher's or editor's intentions for the book?
• Does the book have a table of contents? If so, what does this suggest about the author, editor, or publisherπs approach to his/her subject or the contents of the book? How is it organized?
• Does the book include information about the titles and/or prices of other books that the publisher sells? If so, what does this suggest about the publisher, their market share, and their marketing strategies?

II. Form (Material)

• What is the size of the book? What does the size suggest about the potential audience of the book?

• What is the cover made of? Is it illustrated or decorated in some way? If so, how? Are the illustrations or decorations related to the content of the book? What does the cover suggest about the intended market for the book? (Hint: think about the marketing of modern paperbacks versus hardback books)

• Are the edges of the paper gilded? Colored? Plain? Is the binding design the same as the book cover? Feel the paper, and look at the size and style of the print. What do these physical details suggest about the intended market for the book?

• Is the book illustrated? Are there many illustrations? What is the purpose or function of the illustrations? What do the illustrations suggest about the intended market for the book?

• What is the condition of the book? Does it appear used (worn, often read, with dogeared or even stained pages)? Does it contain any marginalia (writing on its pages, in the margins or on the title page)? If so, what kind? Can you tell who may have owned or read this book, or how they might have used it (for a class, for special occasions, etc.)? If so, how?

Type your assigned number (1-4), the title of the book, its author or editor, and the year of publication at the beginning of the response paper. Then, based on how you answered the questions above, make your argument about the relationship between the book's content and its material form, and what that relationship might be able to tell you about how this particular book participates in some of the issues we've talked about in class. These include but are not limited to: gender and authorship, the literary marketplace, reading audiences, print and publication practices. Refer to the guidelines for response papers on my webpage; you should use a clearly stated introduction and thesis statement, a body of evidence to support that thesis, and a conclusion.

Your paper should not be a list of answers to the questions above. The questions are intended to give you some strategies to begin your analysis; they do not provide the structure (or the thesis) for your paper, nor are they intended to limit your analysis. Use the answers to the questions, instead, as proof or evidence for the thesis your paper propounds.

For samples of Special Collections papers written by my past students, click here.