U of T Copy

At first sight, U of T Copy seems to be an erroneously named establishment. It is not located in the sprawling district of copy shops that borders the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. Rather, U of T Copy is approximately five kilometers west of the university, where a network of train tracks, factories, car dealerships, and newly gentrified houses and artist lofts intersect. The first time I visited U of T Copy, I was illegally copying several out-of-print books borrowed from the University of Toronto library. After commenting on the source of my books and asking about my affiliation with the university, the owner of U of T Copy boasted about the other academics who frequent his shop. As he surveyed my books, I surveyed the row of diplomas and certificates hanging on the wall above the self-serve copiers. The documents offered a familiar narra- tive of immigration, education, and employment and a possible explanation for the copy shop’s out-of-place name. A Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree, both from the University of Winnipeg, and a Bachelor of Sci- ence degree from the University of Toronto hung next to a real-estate license, an insurance-sales license, and a certificate verifying the owner’s ability to fix copy machines. On subsequent visits, the owner of U of T Copy completed the narrative implied by his diplomas, which he dismissively described as “just paper.� I was not surprised to learn that he completed four years of doctoral studies in chemistry at the University of Toronto before he was forced to abandon his studies due to financial and familial responsibilities in Canada and Vietnam.

As someone connected to the university, I was left with the impression that the owner of U of T Copy welcomed my presence even more than my business. He became especially delighted when his two-year-old son, Nicholas, expressed an interest in my stack of books. Still in diapers, Nicholas already displayed many bookish habits. As I engaged in the monotonous task of copying out-of-print books from cover to cover, he playfully copied my act of copying with other books retrieved from my bag, taking care to never crease a page or crack a spine. I knew that Nicholas, who has yet to learn his alphabet, already understood the value of books. I also knew that the name of his father’s copy shop is not the result of a geographic miscalculation; the hastily painted sign hanging outside U of T Copy was never intended to tell customers where they are, but rather to tell them where the proprietor ought to be (see fig. 1).

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My account of U of T Copy is significant precisely because it draws attention to a configuration of spaces, practices, and technologies that are typically taken for granted. With the exception of legal discourses on the photocopier’s threat to copy- right law and a limited number of studies on its role in micro- and self-publishing initiatives, researchers have paid little attention to the photocopier and even less attention to modern copy shops and their owners.1 This is somewhat surpris- ing, since most academics spend a considerable amount of time photocopying, often illegally, and many academics teach on campuses that are surrounded by districts of independently owned copy shops. In The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), Elisabeth Eisenstein remarks that one of the far-reaching consequences of movable type is its impact on the nature of scholarship, specifi- cally historical research. Historians are “indebted to Gutenberg’s invention,� she maintains, since “print enters their work from start to finish.� She further remarks, “Because historians are usually eager to investigate major changes and this change transformed the conditions of their own craft, one would expect the shift to attract some attention. . . . Yet any historiographical survey will show the contrary to be true� (3). In the past three decades, due in part to Eisenstein’s study, literary critics, historians, and sociologists have increasingly turned their attention to the histories of medieval manuscript and print cultures. Photocopying has had much less impact on scholarly work, but it may represent another example of a technology that aca- demics have failed to recognize as integral to their work. Although it is unlikely that a stack of photocopied materials will ever have the symbolic currency carried by a wall of printed books, most academics would find it difficult to imagine con- ducting research or teaching without access to photocopying. My interest in the copy shops and the copy districts that border many university campuses recognizes that these localities offer insights into not only the history of print cultures but also the changing nature of the university and its relation to the state, the academy, and patterns of migration in the early twenty-first century.