Two professors in Wichita State’s English department came up with an idea to fill an empty room in Lindquist Hall with a lab space that could improve students’ understanding of literature. 

“A year and a half later, and here we are,” Associate Professor Francis Connor said. 

On the sixth floor of Lindquist, students now have access to a Book Technology Lab. 

“We have machines that are replicas of really old technologies, and then we have machines like our book eye scanner that are really new cutting edge technologies,” said Katie Lanning, an associate English professor. 

The lab offers wax tablets with stylus tools, goose quills and dip pens with ink, linen papers, wax seals for letter writing, a Book Beetle tabletop screw platen press, a provisional cylinder press, and a replica 1/3-scale Gutenberg press, among other machines. 

Lanning and Connor are co-directors of the lab, and went on various adventures to find some of their machinery, from auctions and eBay to Facebook Marketplace. 

“We think being an English major now isn’t just reading text, it’s about thinking about them,” Connor said. 

Lindquist 601 originally housed the Writing Center, which is now in the Student Success Center. The book lab opened in the fall semester and offers new perspectives and learning experiences to students.

“Its important that we recognize the book as a collaborative object, as a communal object,” Connor said. “Every book is put together by humans whether we did it in the medieval period … or with word processors today.” 

The lab has a lineup of events and open hours for students to come in to use or learn about the equipment. 

“We’ve got zine workshops coming up… we had a typography workshop this semester, but we are going to start doing some open hours this spring, where students can come and use the lab for a couple hours and make something,” Connor said.