Archives for the Month of November 2007 on Stephan's BlogSpace

The Writing Engineer

When I planned to pursue a career in engineering I was convinced that I had had my last of English and writing. Was I gravely mistaken! Every technical profession today requires extensive writing in different forms for different purposes. Naturally this writing would be incomprehensible without specific writing techniques and a strong command of the English language. Having declared myself as a Biomedical Engineer here at Case Western I decided to look into the writing that students, professors, and researchers do in this field of engineering.

Several upperclassmen and sophomores mentioned the term paper they had to write in their Introduction to Biomedical Engineering class and how much trouble at gave them. Luckily the term paper was optional this year. James, a sophomore, said that the term paper gave him insight into the areas of Biomedical Engineering that he was interested in. To his amazement a professor read his term paper and recommended he join a research group here at Case Western that was engaged in the topics his term paper addressed. James is now training a post doctorate student to take his position in the research group, and that only as a sophomore.

Other students mentioned the amount of lab and instrumentation write-ups required in the introduction courses. These included physics, biology, chemistry and a few Biomedical Engineering courses. The rudimentary concepts in the introduction labs, such as physics one and two, initially appeared redundant, but the write-up and lab processes did end up useful one student mentioned.

Besides the basic writing done in earlier classes, some students were involved in the writing of research proposals. A senior in the Biomedical Engineering program said that writing a research proposal allows the prospective researcher to quantitatively evaluate the work that he or she plans on engaging in. Researchers, but in some cases students, in any technical field write, in conjunction with their research proposal, a grant proposal requesting a person, group, society, or even the University itself to provide monetary assistance for the research.

Seniors in the Biomedical Engineering major have to complete a senior capstone research project which involves all the writing and research that an experienced researcher would have to conduct. This requirement gives students the opportunity to get valuable experience. The final result of the project is a technical research paper, a piece of writing meant to document and present the findings and research conducted by the student. It is the final combination of science and language, because the combination of the two allows the spread of ideas.

From the little that I heard from professors and students about their writing I see that science without writing is like Bonnie without Clyde. Ideas would never make it further than the spoken word and even though I had initially expected to be done with writing, I appreciate it even more now as I read through technical journals, textbooks, and articles. Engineering and writing go hand in hand and as a prospective engineer I will capitalize on the effectiveness of writing.

What is Important?

Archivists could quite possibly have one of the most monumental roles in the world of writing. Few people can boast having a hand in what will be deemed and determined as important for future generations. The definition of importance is so ambiguous and relative that that it cannot be laid on the shoulders of a few to determine. Archivists, however, have that responsibility and luxury as they make it their goal to sort through information and list, categorize, and record items in order to make what is important available to others.

This raises the question: How do Archivists determine what is important? When this fundamental step has been made, how do archivists make their selections public and easily accessible to the people who would be interested in the collected information? This process is called archival description and is defined by Jennifer Nieves of the Allen Memorial Medical Library on the campus of Case Western Reserve University: “The purpose of archival description is to identify and explain the context and content of archival material in order to promote its accessibility.”

This archival material includes letters, tapes, notes, articles, newspapers and anything else that can be archived. These items in a collection are described in a standard format which is supposed to break the contents down into short pieces of categorical writing. The purpose of this writing is to enable ease of access and research. With so much information to sort through archivists are bound to miss a few things here and there as they write and compile archival descriptions.

An example of such a missed piece of information occurred at the Allen Memorial Medical Library during research conducted by a man from Korea studying the history of a late medical professional at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. The researcher from Korea stumbled upon some old film reels that had not been specifically documented in the “Scope and Content Notes” or “Container List” of the collection. These film reels contained recordings of the late doctor’s former estate on the current Severance Town Center property and a rare recording of a Western Reserve College Redcat football game.

I find it amazing how such brittle pieces of history that might not, at a certain instant, be determined as important surface as something incredibly valuable. This once again stresses the importance of the work being done by archivists. Their work, which involves extensive reading of material and compilation writing, is invaluable in the realm of history and even beyond.

Who knows what might be important to someone else. With well written archival descriptions not only will something important be observed and archived, but it will also be easily accessible. Without this integral part of archiving important material might as well just have been lost or destroyed.

The Allen Memorial Medical Library on the campus of Case Western Reserve University

As always, thank you for reading.

STEPHAN NIEUWOUDT