Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book and Print Culture

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This little essay is a guide to how academics divide up the pie called
book culture. A book can be looked at in three ways. It is a physical
thing, paper and covers that you can handle, touch, even dust. In that
sense, it is an artifact. It is also text, or content. Authors don’t
write books (books are manufactured by publishers, printers, and bindery
operators), they write the ideas, concepts, and words that go into
books. And thirdly, books exist in a bibliographical context in which
their distinguishing identity is traceable (think formats and editions,
for example). The question of the distinction between bibliography and
history is explored, with citations and sources offered in argument of
whether or not they are two separate disciplines.

A book, then, is a material entity, a text (“literature”) and a
“cultural transition.” The academic disciplines concerned with all
this overlap with history, social studies, publishing history, and
library and information science. The book can be a force for change,
Howsam says, and the history of the book documents that change.

Although interest in the history and sociology of print culture has
become something of an academic fad in the past decade, these concepts
are still of interest to only a small group of scholars and
graduate-school students. That audience will find this essay remarkably
readable and a nice guide to a somewhat esoteric field of thought still
under development.