Archives for the Month of November 2007 on Nick Overholser's Blog
Writing Within Majors
All of us here at Case Western Reserve University have experienced the outrageous work load and surplus of writing assignments but how will this writing change once we declare our major? Will the work load become more intense and specialized to what we will be writing about in the future? After talking to senior Preston Baliga, a Biology major, it seems that the writing done in classes like SAGES will be the climax of writing here at Case.
Preston is about to graduate after this semester and has completed all of his courses required for his major. After he graduates, Preston plans on going off to med-school somewhere to work on becoming a doctor. According to Preston, the extent of the writing done in his biology courses has been through lab reports. Every lab report requires a detailed introduction introducing the concepts of the experiment, why the experiment is being performed and what is being done throughout the experiment. Aside from the introduction, the most important piece of writing in a lab report, aside from the recording of accurate data, is the discussion and conclusion section. It is here that the mathematical results recorded in the data and observations section are summarized and interpreted into words. It is from this section that different conclusions are drawn either supporting or refuting the beginning hypothesis.
“The ability to accomplish what you want through writing is directly related to your success. Results are only useful if you can communicate them to the scientific community,” Preston said. Basically what this means is that the ability to put results into words to explain the significance of different outcomes is a valuable tool to have. No employer is going to want to hire someone who doesn’t understand why certain results came out the way that they did.
Though Preston feels that the never ending lab reports have greatly improved his writing ability and will definitely help him in the future with internships and job opportunities, the majority of his writing has been outside of his major. In his biology classes, aside from lab reports the only other writing done is on tests where in other courses he has taken, the amount of writing has greatly surpassed that of his major. Preston noted that his worst writing experience took place in his philosophy course when he had a 15 page turn paper due at the end of the semester.
Throughout the time we all spend at Case we will do enormous amounts of writing that may or may not pertain to our prospective majors, but they all serve their purpose—to further our writing abilities, so when the time comes to write an important piece while applying for an internship, job or graduate school we all have the abilities to do so. Also, in Preston’s case, though he did not engage in most of his writing activity within his major, the writing he did do within his major is the necessary requirements for what he will need for graduate school and internships so it served its purpose as well.
Dittrick Medical Library Visit
Writing is one of the primary ways of gaining insight into the past, which educates others on past ideas and notions which aids in the progression through all fields of study. These writings, while useful and informative are useless if they are not kept in good condition and in order. There are countless pieces of writings from the past, though it is nearly impossible to know how many of those are found and stored by archivists. The Dittrick Medical Library contains thousands of pieces of writing from the past that they store within their facilities. The archivists record and store all of the writings discovered in a delicate manner, making sure that if ever necessary they can find exactly what they need and it will be kept in good condition.
The Dittrick Medical Library uses the finding aid system to locate their contents. Another commonly used organizational system is the Dewey Decimal System, which is probably one of the most common forms of organizing writings and is used in almost every library nationwide. Its purpose is to organize the thousands of writings in the library so that the customers will be able to find which book they want to read through a number system. Without it, finding any particular book would take an unreasonable amount of time and effort if it was found at all since it would constitute looking through every book with no reference points.
Without these systems in place to organize contents in places such as libraries, the lack of order would be a major inconvenience to most everyone. While the lack of order would make the jobs of the archivists much easier, it would also make their work meaningless since no one would be able to access the facilities contents. All of a sudden finding an article or document on early forms of contraceptives, which was talked about during our visit to the Dittrick Library, would take too much time and effort for it to be worthwhile, thus hindering the progress to potentially be made by viewing and assessing what others have done through their writings.
Archivists also have to make sure to take care of these documents; paper and ink are not indestructible objects so they must be handled with care, and stored in temperature controlled rooms. For this reason, some of the documents have been placed on display for the public to view and not touch and other documents are available for the public to handle and look over. If every person were to handle an original document discussing the primary efforts in creating the first contraceptive, no matter how careful they are, the document will get worn and weathered, thus losing value and practicality depending on how bad the condition gets.
Another way to avoid the wear and tear that the documents and other forms of information would undergo within the publics’ reach is to make copies of the material and preserve the originals. This way there is no loss in translation from original to copy, the original is saved and can be preserved properly and the library can loan out numerous copies rather than just the one.
Archivists have and important job in controlling and maintaining the preservation and order of historical documents. These documents’ writings would be useless if it weren’t for the writings that surrounds them, allowing those respective others to find what it is they are looking for.