RESOURCES FOR THE
HISTORY OF BOOKS AND PRINTING

For starters, this link takes you to a very basic Book History Timetable, part of the Book Information Website now maintained by Cor Knops; another site looks specifically at renaissance printing history.

General introductory information about Your Old Books comes from a text originally written by the late Peter M. VanWingen (The Library of Congress) for people who (unexpectedly and without preparation) find themselves in possession of what appear to be old and unusual books and related materials.

The History of Libraries in the United States -- the link takes you to the program and registration information for a conference to be held at the Radisson Plaza�Warwick Hotel, 1701 Locust Street, in Philadelphia, April 11-13, 2002.

This link takes you to information about, and the current schedule of, Philadelphia's book collectors' club, The Philobiblon Club, a group of which Traister is currently Program Chair.

This is the current schedule for Penn's Workshop on the History of the Book (also called the Workshop on the History of Material Texts).

Here is the website for the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies.

Here is a National Public Radio report on the implications of digitizing the Library of Congress copy of the Gutenberg Bible: Gutenberg Bible Goes Digital: High-Tech Photos of Library of Congress Copy Allow Web Scrutiny

Miscellaneous materials of interest include:

1. James A. Dewar, "The Information Age and the Printing Press: Looking Backward to See Ahead" (RAND)

2. Michael Winship (Department of English, University of Texas at Austin) accepted an award from the American Printing History Association (APHA) at the end of January 1997 with brief reflections on the nature of book history (reproduced here by courtesy of Professor Winship).

3. Michael Rosenthal, a San Francisco bookseller, has posted a brief essay on the Futures and Histories of the Book. He also posts Molly Weatherfield's Pornography (in Theory--and History).

4. HoBo: The site formerly known as History of the Book @ Oxford. This site includes includes The Unofficial D. F. McKenzie Home Page, the equivalent of an internet "fanzine" for one of the great bibliographical scholars of our time.

5. The William Morris Home Page and The William Morris Society.

6. A Shakespearian discovers connections between WS's punning and "the new bibliography".

7. A listing of some recommended readings on the profession of authorship.

8. A summary of the University of Michigan Iconic Page Conference (October 11 and 12, 1996) has been posted.

9. Preservation in a Digital Age (Jack Kessler's provisional bibliography)

10. Frederick S. Lane III, Obscene Profits: Becoming a Pornographer in the 21st Century (outline of a work-in-progress)

11. JPHS seeks contributions (and the PHS also seeks members)

12. David Clayton Phillips, "Art for Industry's Sake: Halftone Technology, Mass Photography and the Social Transformation of American Print Culture, 1880-1920", a dissertation written at Yale University.

Some more or less recent book reviews include:

1. Traister's review of Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zbvoray, A Handbook for the Study of Book History in the United States (2000)

2. D. Graham Burnett, rev. of Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)

3. Text (a bibliographical periodical which has begun to make its reviews available online); see also its associated Society for Textual Scholarship website

4. James O'Donnell reviews Richard A. Lanham, The Electronic Word; William O'Donnell reviews the same book.

5. James O'Donnell reviews Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader; Mark Vessey reviews the same book.

6. Nicola F. McDonald reviews Seth Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers

7. Laura L. Howes reviews Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500, ed. Carol M. Meale

8. Stephen Stallcup reviews Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381

9. Susan R. Boettcher reviews of Mark U. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther

10. Tom Davis reviews David Vander Meulen's history and facsimile of Pope's Dunciad (this review contains a considerable amount of thought about what special collections are for)

11. Richard R. John reviews Rosalind Remer's Printers and Men of Capital: Philadelphia Book Publishers in the New Republic; Philip Scranton reviews the same book

12. a review of a new edition of Michael H. Harris's history of libraries

Willie Sutton thought banks a good place to visit if you happened to be interested in money. The same line of reasoning suggests that libraries -- e.g., Penn's library, as well as some of the other libraries and library resources that Traister lists -- are good places in which to look for books and other evidences of the history of printing. This means going physically to literal libraries as well as eyeballing virtual ones on the screen (although the latter category [virtual libraries, their exhibitions -- the link takes you to Smithsonian's site, Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web -- contents, and special resources] is growing by leaps and bounds even as Traister types and revises these evanescent electron-like words; see, e.g., a site announced in March of 1998, Early Printed Collections: British Library Reader Services and Collection Development).

Another useful source is the Home Page of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, & Publishing (SHARP), which provides access to many book-history sites, and whose SHARP-L archives are searchable back through 1992 at .

See also The Reading Experience Database (RED) (Open University)

See, in addition, such sites as:

• History of Books and Printing: A Research Guide (The New York Public Library)
• the Guide to the Book Arts and Book History on the World Wide Web
• The History of Printing (by Bruce Jones)
• David Scott Kastan's Early Modern Book Website
• The Media History Project
• Re-thinking the Book
• Bibliologie et histoire du livre, Bibliographie (in French; from the Département de Formation aux Métiers du Livre et de la Documentation at the Université Charles-de-Gaulle--Lille 3)
• Página para a Indústria Gráfica (in Portuguese)
• Il Libro Antico di Angela Nuovo, Aldo Coletto e Graziano Ruffini (in Italian; from the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università degli studi di Udine)
• The British Library has created a site that concisely treats the history of the British newspaper since 1620.
  No doubt, they do not recall Humbert Wolfe's lines on the topic (misquoted here from memory):
  You cannot hope to bribe or twist
  Thank God! the English journalist.
  Considering what the man will do
  unbribed, there is no reason to.
  One notes, too, that this format began to flourish, apparently, as soon as the Puritans left for Massachusetts.

For the history of libraries, see Library History (PICK Quality Internet Rersources); see also the site created by the Library Association (UK)'s Library History Group. A Swedish site (with some material in English) has been mounted by The Library Museum in Boraas, Sweden.

"Treasures from Europe's National Libraries" is a web-based exhibition now accessible from several servers:

• Frankfurt
• Helsinki
• The Hague
• Ljubljuna
• London

Brown University mounts an Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts Web.

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries hold microfilms of European manuscripts; a list is available through the Library's website.

A French site for the study of paleography, complete with exams, was originally divided in two: here is the first. The second part (orinally located at http://www.arisitum.org/adihaf/paleo.htm, a site that has now shut down for financial reasons) may be sought through Stephane Pouyllau's website and through his principal paleography page.

Shirlee A. Murphy has mounted a Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscript Facsimiles at the Michigan State University Libraries (my italics--DT). (Michigan State University, located in East Lansing, is a different place from the University of Michigan, located in Ann Arbor--a point worth remarking, as someone might notice who is located at Penn, not Penn State.)

Summary of a conference on the encoding of descriptions for medieval manuscripts (2-3 November 1996, Studley Priory, Oxfordshire, chaired by Peter Robinson and Hope Mayo)

1. For images of manuscript and printed materials, see, e.g.:

   • The Diamond Sutra (an exemplar of an extremely early printed book)

   • A hundred highlights from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, leaves from manuscripts and printed books illustrative of the history of books and printing

   • Kommission für Schrift- und Buchwesen des Mittelalters der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

   • Treasures of the Royal Library (Copenhagen, Denmark)

   • Manuscript miniatures from the University of Liège

   • The Lindisfarne Gospels

   • Magna Carta

   • The Planets and Their Children: A Blockbook of Medieval Popular Astrology

   • 13th century Italian antiphonal, the State Library of South Australia

   • The Aberdeen Bestiary

   • The Tyndale New Testament

   • Les tres riches heures du Duc de Berry

   • French illuminated manuscript leaves from the Bodleian Library, Oxford

   • The Sforza Hours

   • The Gutenberg Bible Online Digital Facsimile

   • Renaissance Dante in Print

   • The Codex Arundel: A Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci

   • The Art of the Book: Rare Printed Books from the University of Liverpool Library

   • Art of the Book Collection, Yale University Library

   • Brigham Young University Aldine Collection

   • Arbeitskreis für die Erfassung und Erschließung Historischer Bucheinbände (AEB)

   • 1000 MS illuminations, Department of Manuscripts, Bibliotheque Nationale

2. DSCRIPTORIUM (a database of images from medieval manuscripts housed at various locations)

3. Thomas Kinsella's exemplary description of the binding of Penn MS. Latin 13

4. Association for the Recording and Reconstruction of Historical Bookbindings (Andreas Wittenberg, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, et alii)

5. Printing: Renaissance and Reformation (Rare Books and Special Collections Department, University of South Carolina)

6. An Unofficial Index to the Schwenke-Sammlung: or, A Finding Aid to Ilse Schunke's Die Schwenke-Sammlung Gotischer Stemple und Einband Durchreibungen (East Berlin, 1979)

7. ALA's Library History Roundtable, with a link to resources in library history

8. Bibliotheca Canadiana: A Historical Survey of Canadian Bibliography (a McGill University Library exhibition)

9. J. P. McCarthy, "In Search of Cork's Collecting Traditions: Kilcrea's Library to the Boole Library of Today", an article on some of the origins of the library at University College, Cork (Republic of Ireland)

10. Recent Studies of 18th-Century Book Culture (James E. May, The Pennsylvania State University)

11. Aspects of the Victorian Book (an online exhibition by Elizabeth James, The British Library)

12. The Watermark Archive (incorporating The University of Delaware Library Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Collection) of Thomas L. Gravell

13. Le filigrane degli archivi genovesi

14. The Watermark Archive of Robert W. Allison, Bates College

15. David Gants, A Digital Catalogue of Watermarks and Type Ornaments Used by William Stansby in the Printing of the Workes of Benjamin Johnson (London 1616)

16. Erle Randall's Electronic Pictorial Index for Provenance Research in Book History

17. William S. Peterson's Modern Fine Printing Page

18. The Mosher Press (Philip R. Bishop and Millersville University, Pennsylvania)

19. Book Industry Study Group, which has now made available a Guide to Book Publishers' Archives

20. Street & Smith Archives Preservation and Access Project (Syracuse University Library)

21. David Schlater's book arts pages

22. Map History / History of Cartography

23. J. Hewit & Sons., Ltd. (a commercial site; Hewit is in the binding leathers business; its site includes a "potted history" of the company)

24. The Illustrated Book, 1780-1830: Selected from the Collection of Harris N. Hollin (a University of Pennsylvania online exhibition)

25. Literary Generations and Social Authority: A Study of American Prose-Fiction Debut Writers, 1940�2000: Research Project (Bo G. Ekelund and Mattias Bolkéus Blom, The Swedish Institute for North American Studies, Uppsala University)

26. Color Printing in the Nineteenth Century (a University of Delaware online exhibition)

27. Paperback Cover Art Illustrators

28. Women and texts / Les femmes et les textes: A celebratory exhibit at the University of Leeds, 1997 (exhibition curated by Special Collections, University of Calgary Library)

29. Mixing Messages (from Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NYC: an exhibition on modern graphic design)

30. Science and the Artist's Book

31. The Structure of the Virtual Book

32. The POP-UP World of Ann Montanaro, a Rutgers University Library exhibition (May 1996) of pop-up books, including materials on their history and links to related sites

Numerous additional sources of information about books and their history can be found on the web. These include, in addition to Traister's own links to libraries and book sources (i.e., for purchase), a variety of institutionally- and personally-maintained pages, among them:

• Piet Wessel's Rare Books page

• Piet Wessel's Book Lover's page

• Netherlands Antiquarian Booksellers' Network

• Der Büchersammler (in German)

• Antiquarian Book Herald

  Does the web address for the preceding four sites ["xs4all"] mean "access" or "excess"? Both possibilities seem equally appropriate.

• The Grolier Club, a New York City-based book collectors's club, with an extensive exhibition and speakers's schedule and an extraordinary library devoted to the history of books and book collecting

• An interesting and useful book collector's page is to be found here. This collector (Steve Trussel") is also interested in Howard Fast (Traister finds his own [now published] essay on Fast available online here).

• Bibliographical Society of America

• Bibliographical Society (London)

• Bibliographical Society of Canada

• American Printing History Association (APHA)

• Text

• Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia (with access to Studies in Bibliography)

• the Printing Historical Society

• St. Bride Printing Library (London)

• The English Short Title Catalogue (English printed books, 1475-1800)

• The History of the Book in Canada Project

• Commission Belge de Bibliographie/Belgische Commissie voor Bibliografie

• St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute's Collaborative Project The Sixteenth Century French Religious Book (St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute, University of Saint Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland)

• Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Home Page (RBMS is part of the Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association)

• Society for Textual Scholarship

• The Cathedral Libraries Catalogue project (co-sponsored by The British Library and The Bibliographical Society) provides modern placenames for unfamiliar (often Latinate) forms of placenames that appear in the imprints of older printed books. See also:
  • Graesse's Orbis Latinus
  • Latin Place Names File
  • Roman Place Names

• The University of Oxford Early Printed Books Project. Click here for more information about Oxford Libraries and OLIS (the Oxford Libraries Information System); see also OLIS itself, which also produces a short guide to searching for early printed books on OLIS.

• EDIT 16: Censimento delle edizioni italiane del XVI secolo
  "The Census of Italian 16th Century Editions EDIT 16 aims at documenting Italian books printed during the 16th century and at reviewing the countrywide heritage. It includes editions printed in Italy between 1501 and 1600, in any language, and editions printed abroad in Italian. At the present time the Census is receiving input from some 1200 Italian libraries, the Biblioteca statale della Repubblica San Marino and some libraries belonging to the State of the Vatican City, among which the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Besides the titles, EDIT 16 also contains information about the authors, publishers, uniform titles, printers' devices and their digitalized pictures. It therefore can be used for direct searches on authors, printers and printers' devices (e.g. printers who used a given sign or a given device, or those who worked in a given place and in a given year, or the devices having the same motto, etc.)."

• The Sixteenth Century French Religious Book (St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute, University of St. Andrews, UK)

• Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America

• British bookseller Sheila Markham's interviews with booksellers, bookbinders, librarians, and collectors (click on "What else?")

• Book Arts Press, at the University of Virginia (indistinguishable from Terry Belanger's Home Page)

• Two Spanish-language pages that deal with book history are:
  • Los Libros: Página de Luis Misa
  • Onbucs by Alfius (Alfonso Prada Allo)

• PACSCL, the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries

• The Center for the Book in The Library of Congress

  • Alaska Center for the Book

  • Arizona Center for the Book

  • California Center for the Book

  • Colorado Center for the Book

  • Idaho Center for the Book; see also the University of Idaho Bookarts site

  • University of Iowa Center for the Book

  • Minnesota Center for the Book

  • Missouri Center for the Book

  • Center for Book Arts (New York City); see also Richard Minsky's Center for Book Arts page (coming out of Richard Minsky's home page)

• Several Scottish sites:
  1. the Centre for the History of the Book (University of Edinburgh)
  2. The Edinburgh Bibliographical Society
  3. The History of the Book in Scotland
  4. Scottish Centre for the Book, Edinburgh (Napier University)
  5. Scottish Group for the Study of the Book

• L'École nationale des chartes (Paris)

• L'École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques (Lyon)

• Musée de l'imprimerie de Lyon

• The Leiden Centre for the Book

• Conference on Editorial Problems (University of Toronto; editorial work always raises issues of book and manuscript history)

• the home page for Penn professor James O'Donnell's Cultures of the Book course (with its own link to James O'Donnell's Home Page)

• Peter D. Verheyen's Home Page

• Graphion's On-Line Type Museum

• typoGRAPHIC

• Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "Lines for a Virtual T/y/o/pography": this is the website for a doctoral dissertation currently in progress "explor[ing] the visible and visual convergence of information and aesthetics in both print and electronic medias. Topics under discussion include book artists such as Johanna Drucker and Steve McCaffery, the graphic design work of David Carson, multimedia collage, computer and virtual reality interface design, information mapping and visualization technologies, and experiments with machine vision in artificial intelligence research. Aggressively interdisciplinary in its orientation, an important aspect of the dissertation is to develop networks of exchange between the humanities and the sciences."

• Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking (Georgia Tech)

• Early Printed Books Project, University of Oxford

• Collectible Newspapers, the History Buffs' Interactive Magazine (with information about collectible newspapers and other printed ephemera)

• Robert A. Gross's home page, including his syllabus for "Books, Culture and Society in Europe and the United States"

• the Human Symbolic Evolution site--a link that may seem like a stretch to some; but, at a university where there is an undergraduate major called "Biological Bases of Behavior" and where, e.g., Norbert Elias is occasionally read, and on a page that includes links that interest its creator, it seems relevant--so here it is

Traister has, singly and (with Michael Ryan) jointly, taught several versions of courses on the History of Books and Printing:

1. One concentrates on the hand-press period and is directed at graduate students -- Fall 1989

2. It has an analogue directed at undergraduates -- Fall 1996

3. Another concentrates on the machine press period and is directed at undergraduates; its Spring 1997 version looks like this

4. A fourth is called "Topics in the History of Books and Printing" -- here are its Spring 1995 and its Spring 2000 iterations -- is directed mainly at graduate students and concentrates on the hand-press period.
5. Some "special topics" -- subsets -- of this general interest include:
   • Bestsellers: Popular Fictions from the Greeks to Grisham (taught jointly with Michael Ryan)--Spring 1997