Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBML) visit

Alvin Kernan’s Samuel Johnson & the Impact of Print mentions in its second chapter that the most important mark of print culture is the idea that “what is printed is true, or at least truer than any other type of record” (49) but by visiting the Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBML) I was able to see that what is printed (its details, colors, shape, images) also shows a lot about a period of time.

It is amazing what one can know just by looking at a book, be it medieval or modern. The texts or pieces of text we were able to observe gave information its original printers never thought they were giving away. Pieces of papyrus only printed on one side indicate that the work was preserved in a scroll; the phrase “Dis Maniscues” on chiseled stones indicates it was a funerary stone and certain symbols or letters in red indicate the reader they don’t belong to a text but that they are there to help navigate through the book the same way we use chapters and page numbers nowadays.

The texts I liked the most were those produced by monks during the 12th Century. Their attention to detail and the vibrant colors that still show through the years of wear and tear of the pages is artistic yet they show the intention of not only scribing down words but to make the text more attractive to the eye. I found it interesting that these colorful books were not meant for production, maybe because the idea one has of a monk is that of an immutable person above simple joys and pleasures like that of looking at a pretty picture.

Just as today a person’s car may signal his/her status, in the medieval period owning books (leather bound, with gold and color prints, with parchment leaves) was the ultimate sing of literacy, which translated to power. Not only because books were expensive but because owning them indicated that that particular person had the “de facto” (28) powers that Kernan says European monarchies used for centuries to call “art and artists into being” (28). Kernan continues by saying that “art existed to testify to and in turn be justified by the power, wealth, authority, and grandeur of the king, the state religion, and the court aristocracy” (28).

But even as the works we saw from the Library’s collection served the specific purposes ordered by the scribes and writers’ patrons, like teaching religion or alphabetizing children, the concept of documenting life in a more permanent medium persists. Collectors like George Plimpton have succeeded in preserving these pieces of the life of other periods as a proof of the progress of other societies and of the roots of our own. Observing these samples made me wonder what the children of my children would think of the literacy advances my generation made. Maybe the e-reader that has set so many changes in the way people read and in their access to texts in this time will belong in a museum in a couple of years but what is important is that, the same way we are able to observe how our ancestors developed literacy and learn how their relationship with it influenced their time and formed a base for the current systems we use, future generations will be able to do the same with ours and have a better understanding of where they come from.