Our colleagues in the Classics Library sent us an interesting housing project.  The goal, to secure and keep together a textbook and accompanying electronic content.
The additional electronic content was not in the form of a URL for on-line supplements, nor a DVD, but a small shiny USB drive.  The drive was originally attached it to the book at the end of a long silky bookmark adhered to the text block.  A neat idea, but the drive was almost impossible to use attached to the anchor of the heavy book.
Ah, the mashup of the old and new!
Our solution was to make a simple corrugated enclosure with a volara foam compartment and a photographic surrogate on the end of the bookmark.  The surrogate directs users to the compartment holding the USB port.  Additionally, a message in the item record alerts library workers to “check for one USB device”.
To me the pleasure of this item is that it illustrates so clearly the tension between the easy functionality of the book and the limits of its fixed form. It also speaks to how slow the march towards the digital age feels – illustrating a change in technology without much of an improvement, such as the move from DVD to USB storage.
[And here is where I lament that I STILL don’t have a hovercraft or a robot maid.]
Though many of us have vowed to get out of the prediction game, let me predict in 10 years our students will marvel at this USB device the way they do now at floppy disks and zip drives.
LONG LIVE THE BOOK!

Enclosure by Jessica Ebert, conservation technician