Selected Excerpts from Readings:

Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?”

“One could learn a great deal about attitudes toward books and the context of their use by studying the way they were presented–the strategy of appeal, the values invoked by phrasing – in all kinds of publicity, from journal notices to wall posters.” (p. 243, The Broadview Reader in Book History)

“Books themselves do not respect limits either linguistic or national… Books also refuse to be contained within the confines of a single discipline when treated as objects of study.” (p. 247, The Broadview Reader in Book History)

D.F. McKenzie, “The Dialectics of Bibliography Now”

“The obstensible unity of any one “contained” text–be it in the shape of a manuscript, book, map, film or computer-stored file–is an illusion. As a language, its forms and meaning derive from other texts; and as we listen to, look at, or read it, at the very same time we re-write it.” (p. 49-50, The Broadview Reader in Book History)

Andrew Piper, “Turning the Page (Roaming, Zooming, Streaming)”

“The scribal and scholarly commitment to textual abundance suggests an exuberance about reading that I hope we will never forget. Our notebooks still often look like this. They are reminders of the spillage of human thought.” (p. 513, The Broadview Reader in Book History)