At the beginning of the semester we were confronted in a task that was called “friends with an old book”. We were not really sure what’s going on and what we will have to do. So it came out that we will have to make a list of tasks which belongs the for us selected book.
So first we had to collect some primary information about our book. Then we had to post our findings on a Blog which is called the same as the task, “friends with an old book”. There was a task that involved meeting the book. My book was available in the Oechslin library in Einsiedeln. This was an extraordinary experience for me, not only because I have never held a such old book in my own hands, also because of the location. I have never visited a library with a character like the one in Einsiedeln.
My book was a kind of encyclopaedia for architecture. On over a thousand pages you will find descriptions and information about the column orders, architects and building types. This is completed with unspeakable examples of sketches and pictures. It was an extremely exciting experience.
This was my highlight in this series of tasks. Then followed other assignments with and about our books. Some of them we had to do in group work. It was interesting to find out what about the books of the other students were.
Some assignments generated problems in solving. They were not feasible to solve with the actual book. That is the reason why sometimes I had to use another one for the task. But because the books were quite similar in content and form, the correct completion of the task was not affected.
In conclusion, I can say that it is more a hate friendship than a real friendship. It is probably because one should and could have dealt with the book much more intensively and longer. Scrolling through the book for 30 minutes is a little too little for over a thousand pages. On the other hand, the task series had its charms. It enabled many new insights into special places. So you continuously learned new things about your book and what is in it, but always only a little. In addition, some tasks were detached from architecture, which raised questions from time to time.
Nevertheless, the many positive experiences were worth taking a closer look at the book and at least establishing a kind of friendship.