The author describes this volume as a "textography" because it combines certain elements of text analysis and certain elements of ethnography. Through analysis of texts, textual forms and systems of texts, is shows the lives, life commitments and life projects of people deeply embedded in the literate culture of the university. The people examined work in a single building, but their textual lives are maintained in different times and spaces, measured by the dimensions of text production and text circulation in their fields of work. These domains of text time and space are to some degree differentiated by the three specialties that mark the three floors of a small building at a major research university - the ethnographic site of this journey into textual lives - computing, taxonomic botany and English as a second language. This research site provides the opportunity to re-examine the concept of discourse community and to investigate the nature and origination of academic discourse from a new perspective.