The last year I had a friendship with an old book which I must say sounds strange. It is not the typical exercise which you expect from an university.
My first task was to search for the location of my book and write down some information about the book and its author. It did not take that much time to complete the first task since you can easily look the information up online. But this task made me realise that nowdays a lot is transparent and connected mainly because of the internet. You do not have to go to different libaries to look for a specific book anymore.
However in the second task I learnt the importance of making contact with the book. In this task I had to visit the libary in which my book resides and film myself how I was inspecting my book. First of all I was pretty glad that my book was in Zurich. I had to ask the libary for a reservation and that also went smoothly since I was allowed to see my book the next day. So I was looking at this 400 year old book and I must say I felt a lot of respect towards the book. It is not every day that you are holding such an old book. It was really well preserved and you felt the difference between having the real book in your hands or looking at it online.
The third task was quite simple in comparision to the second. I had to search online for 5 other books from the same author and again the internet makes everything so easy.
For the fourth task I had to run my book through some programs and afterwards I had to analyse the content. It seemed in the beginning a little challenging because I have never used the programs. But with the help from the instruction and some friends I was able to manage it. I admit the abilities of these programs are quite amazing and I am glad I learnt how to use these tools.
The last task was to interact with other students and their books. It was quite interesting to find parallels and differences between the books. The experience of working in a group helped me further to understand my book. And I was glad that my other group members felt the same.
If I look back at this exercise I am able to say that I learn a lot, especially how to search cleverly for useful information. As I said already the internet and many programs do really simplify our lifes but it requires that you can use it the right way and that must be learnt. Again there is also this huge difference of interacting with the book in person or via internet. It made me realise sometimes the internet cannot copy everything. The exercise showed me aswell the importance of books and how you can access them. I am happy for experiencing this connection with an old book.