Johanna Drucker, a professor in the Department of Information Studies in UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS)  has published a new book, "What Is?: Nine Epistemological Essays" (University of Houston-Victoria Cuneiform Press, 2013), in which she examines the historical trajectory from letters and words to documents and books. She notes that information visualization is taken to the next level with the ever-expanding field of digital humanities, and she considers the future of letters and words as digital resources.

Drucker, the inaugural Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies, is a book artist whose limited-edition works are in special collections and libraries worldwide. Currently, she is working on "History of the Book" in partnership with the online Museum of Writing of the University of London. Drucker and her colleagues on the project are using materials from the UCLA Library's Special Collections to build a resource for pedagogy on creating interpretive frameworks for rare, esoteric or unusual materials.

Learn more in this article from Ampersand, the newsletter of GSEI&S.