{"id":364122,"date":"2019-02-18T15:49:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=364122"},"modified":"2022-08-08T11:27:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T15:27:47","slug":"book-wheel-modern-search-engine-364122","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/book-wheel-modern-search-engine-364122\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning the gears of an early modern search engine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Technology and the mellow scent of wood aren\u2019t often associated with each other in the 21st century. But a new piece of early modern machinery has brought them together in Rossell Hope Robbins Library<\/a> at the University of Rochester.<\/p>\n

The medieval studies library is now home to a custom-made, full-size book wheel, a kind of rotating bookshelf that was the brainchild of 16th-century Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli. The device is a \u201cFerris wheel for old tomes,\u201d says Gregory Heyworth<\/a>, an associate professor of English and a specialist in textual science. The core of what he calls its \u201cfanciful design\u201d is a system of epicyclic gears in which one gear rotates around another\u2014like a planetary system\u2014with the device\u2019s shelves maintaining a constant 45-degree incline that hold the books securely as the giant wheel turns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly beautiful and historically accurate machine that we\u2019ll be able to use to teach the history of the book and reading technologies during the medieval and early modern eras, the history of engineering and technology, material culture, and more,\u201d says Anna Siebach-Larsen, the director of the Robbins Library\u2014which has comprehensive holdings in all aspects of medieval history, literature, art, and culture\u2014and the Koller-Collins Center for English Studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"animated<\/p>\n

The wheel was a tool for producing early encyclopedias and editions of classical works, \u201ctasks that require having many books open simultaneously so that information from multiple sources can easily be collated,\u201d says Heyworth. It\u2019s the same kind of need that prompts modern-day information seekers to open multiple tabs in a browser.<\/p>\n

A happy convergence of engineering and the humanities, the wheel is tangible evidence of a growing collaboration between the University and the nearby Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)<\/a>. The Robbins Library and the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at RIT<\/a> share a similar focus on the history of the book across the Middle Ages and into the early days of printing\u2014and beyond, in the case of the Cary Collection. Heyworth had long dreamed of building a book wheel based on Ramelli\u2019s design, and the project evolved from conversations between him; Siebach-Larsen; Steven Galbraith, curator of the Cary Collection; and Jessica Lacher-Feldman, assistant dean and director of Rare Books and Special Collections<\/a> at the University of Rochester.<\/p>\n

\u201cRochester is rich with cultural and historical collections, and working with RIT on projects such as this only adds to the experiences we can help create for students, faculty and the community,\u201d says Lacher-Feldman. \u201cAs we continue to think creatively about how to connect with the past, we become stronger and more dynamic as an institution.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a senior project, Ian Kurtz, Reese Salen, Matt Nygren, and Maher Abdelkawi\u2014mechanical engineering students at RIT\u2014worked for a year to build two book wheels, one for Robbins Library and another for the Cary Collection. Students in Heyworth\u2019s Digital Media Studies<\/a> and Medieval Idea of the Book courses are developing a digital kiosk to explain to Robbins Library visitors the book wheel\u2019s history and mechanics. The wheel itself will serve as display space, offering literally rotating exhibits of works in the library\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n

\"illustration
Working from Agostino Ramelli’s 16th-century design, a team of engineering students designed a system of epicyclical gears, first developed for astronomical clocks, that allowed each shelf to rotate, holding open books safely in place as the wheel turned.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Siebach-Larsen describes Ramelli\u2019s design as an opportunity for him \u201cto display his engineering prowess.\u201d Bringing his design to life was a chance for the engineering students to do the same\u2014and to delve into history. They developed plans based on Ramelli\u2019s 1588 design, sourcing woods\u2014European beech and white oak\u2014in common use in Northern Europe in the early modern period, and they carefully considered when to hew to historical accuracy and when to make improvements to serve their clients.<\/p>\n

The project exemplifies the interactions Siebach-Larsen would like to foster between the Robbins Library and the University\u2019s own engineering community. Her eyes light up when she considers the possibilities: working models of the universe\u2019s structure, as imagined by medieval thinkers; a replica of a Gothic building, complete with difficult-to-replicate Gothic arches; a siege-warfare machine. \u201cI\u2019d love to work with optics and engineering students to see if we can delve into medieval theories of optics and try to recreate their \u2018vision\u2019 of how vision worked,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Such blending of the humanities with science and engineering can help students and researchers understand ideas that can be difficult to conceptualize through reading alone. \u201cIt brings them to life in a totally different way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The history of technology is an area of increasing focus in the collections of the University\u2019s libraries. And she hopes that the book wheel will whet visitors\u2019 appetite to look even earlier and learn about breakthroughs of the Middle Ages, so often thought of as a scientifically fallow age.\u00a0\u201cThere were so many technological innovations,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d love to break down those biases.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she hopes visitors will take advantage of a hands-on experience, too. \u201cI want people to try it for themselves,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Turning the massive wheel is an invigorating experience, both physically and intellectually. \u201cThe book wheel shows readers how scholars were trying to improve the technology for gaining easy access to information in books in an analog world,\u201d says Heyworth.<\/p>\n

He sees strong intimations of the future in the arrival of the wheel, too. It\u2019s the fruit of Siebach-Larsen\u2019s vision for Robbins Library as a place \u201cwhere people experience books and literary culture as much with their hands as with their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A collaboration between librarians and engineering students, the book wheel in Rossell Hope Robbins Library is a recreation of a 16th-century design, solving the problem of needing access to multiple books at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":364152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[20542,22722,29502,32332,326,25812,16072],"class_list":["post-364122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-department-of-english","tag-rare-books-special-collections-and-preservation","tag-featured-post-side","tag-gregory-heyworth","tag-river-campus-libraries","tag-rossell-hope-robbins-library","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTurning the gears of an early modern search engine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The book 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