Talk:History of the book

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The direct article translation from the French wikipedia does not adequately represent "History of the book" as is is understood in the english tradition. In english, History "is the study of human behavior through time." The orientation of this article is not towards a type of study but towards outlining a specific series of events -- telling a story in the "histoire" sense (i.e. the french concept 'histoire du livre' does not map directly across to 'history of the book' in english as that (english) phrase is used. Maybe the article needs to be retitled or disambiguated from a new article on "Book History" (distinct from the journal)? Or, maybe the set of subsections which outline specific media advances etc. need to be set under a section something like "Key Events in the Study of the History of the Book"? If the later, the opening text should tend towards online descriptions of "History of the Book" university centres, graduate programs and publication projects in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and Ireland, (notably, the publications of such programs/centres go well beyond the technology/media defnition given in the french article).

For the bibliography idea, it is noted that there are so many books on the topic, maybe it would be better to put in external links to the 1) international bibliography database: "Book History Online: An International Bibliography" from Koninklijke Bibliotheek http://www.kb.nl/bho/index.html 2) Some of the Book History society pages with descriptive content/bibliographies 3) (definitely agree about) the links to the various international "History of the Book in [Country]" publication project web-sites...? I am new to Wiki editing and do not know how to do this yet (but hopefully will remember to check back once I learn more). Also noted that the entry for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing journal "Book History" exists as a wiki orphan entry that "needs to be linked to" (and maybe also needs to be clearly identified as a journal as opposed to a discipline, with one of those redirecty-type things at the top to "History of the Book"), but again, I do not know how to add that...

JBVaughan 04:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Echo has identified History of the book as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the French language Wikipedia.

I'm taking a stab at adding a "bibliography" to this very good article, knowing very well that I'll probably "stab" someone in doing so -- there are so many books etc. which might be recommended for this topic...

My primary motivation, as will appear immediately from my selection, is to keep the booklist international: the subject is fascinating to a lot of folks, in a lot of different places, and I find it very useful to consult other traditions to better understand my own. Also, the others are interesting: the Americans do things differently than the British do, in these areas -- and the anglo-américains do things differently than the French -- and i.e. I would hope that someone has done a good "history of the book" for China, hopefully one translated, perhaps in Needham (?), and that someone who knows of this will add an entry for it here.

The aim, too, has been to select resources of general appeal, to someone just beginning an interest in the topic. I have no idea how someone new might handle a plunge into "analytical bibliography", for example: not well, I would imagine. Better that they first be guided to large-format picture books, and clear historical explanations, I think.

--Kessler 19:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I combined the two references which were in there -- Diringer's very good book, and the recent one by David Finkelstein which I have not read but now will. My thought is that we might set some sort of arbitrary limit -- 20 entries, say, or maybe less, discussing the choices here -- to keep the bibliography from running overboard with everyone's favorite entries. The more international the better, though, I myself believe: the trouble with simply referring people to the French and other Wikipedia language sites is that folks never go there, and so all the "comparative" content gets lost -- plenty of folks here know other languages, and need to read at least some materials from other places to broaden their understanding of their own.

--Kessler 20:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)