Browse Exhibits (2 total)
Everyday Writing 1920s-1990s
Within the past forty years, everyday writing has seen a tremendous change. With the advent of the digital age, the "average" person has been able to broadcast and preserve their writings to an extent that was previously unimaganible. Because of this, the larger part of our archive is composed of these post-1980 texts. Although less easily accessed, the everyday writing composed prior to this shift casts valuable insight into the constants within the human psyche. In this exhibit, you will be able to explore various types of everyday writing from the 1920s-1980s.
Some of the most prolific everyday-writers of the 20th century were school children. As with their 21st century counterparts, rather than writing for business or sticking strictly to school work while in classes, children tended toward more creative writing.
In its day, the everyday writing of adults is often viewed as mundane and insignificant. Because of the mental distance offerd by time, these artifacts from the early '20s and '40s will help illustrate the significance and beauty of everyday writing no matter how mundane their purpose and origin.
Annotated Elementary Books
"Our fingerprints never fade from the lives we touch." But what about our words? Better yet, what about our annotations. We use annotations in literature to highlight important concepts, ideas, beliefs, and values. The give a subject perspective into reading. This exhibit gives further insight into the annotations of young elementary schoolers from Barbara Skulszki's class.
Annotations are important in everyday life to help you correctly and coherently understand books. Harvard library regards this in the statement “Annotating puts you actively and immediately in a ‘dialogue’ with an author and the issues and ideas you encounter in a written text. It's also a way to have an ongoing conversation with yourself as you move through the text and to record what that encounter was like for you.” Annotations are more than a way to remember a sentence or phrase, annotations help you live through the book.
This exhibit focuses on annotation: a note added by way of comment or explanation. This exhibit is based on everyday writing in books. It focuses on select students from an Elementary school. Annotations are subjective, they are your interpretation of a story and can range from doodles to words that help you understand the story better.
In gradeschool we were always taught never to write in books. They were considered property and it was shuned upon to "destroy" someone else's property. This exhibit shy's away from that steroype and promotes gradeschool children to annotate books.