Libraries & culture最新文献

{"title":"The Book History Reader (review)","authors":"A. Fyfe","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0069","url":null,"abstract":"commentary assures that Purdy’s book will continue to be a relevant source of Hardy scholarship for years to come. Bloomfield’s second revised and enlarged edition of his bibliography, on the other hand, remains a work in progress. Scholars will notice that the only primary material selected and published by Larkin himself after the appearance of the first edition of the bibliography in 1979 was Required Writing, a selection of Larkin’s occasional prose. Of course, Bloomfield’s book is a compelling testament to the notion that there is more to an author’s life than whatever literary remains have been stamped as official and left behind. As Purdy showed, there is the life lived, the history of the person that emerges in drafts, correspondence, diaries, notes, and even personal effects. This new edition of Bloomfield’s book only covers materials appearing through 1994, while the study of Larkin and his work has exploded since that time. In a word, there is much more to be said about Larkin. Bloomfield and Pettit both argue convincingly that authors continue to live through the critical reading and appreciation of their work, which amounts to, perhaps surprisingly (as was the case for Larkin), much more than the sum of the words they committed to paper while they lived.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"576 - 577"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0069","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"William Bradford's Books: Of Plimmoth Plantation and the Printed Word (review)","authors":"Julie Sievers","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0078","url":null,"abstract":"Other reviews, including Allison Keith’s 2004 assessment in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, have testified to the place of this volume in classical studies, describing its value in making these female-authored texts available and its uses in the curriculum. Owen Hodkinson, in a 2005 issue of Scholia Reviews, articulates the significant difficulty of determining, in some cases, an author’s sex, in effect rejecting Plant’s neat resolution of such problems by declaring these works as representative of women’s ideas and skills. The aliterary quality of the translations has seen some comment as well, though fairness requires that any such criticism acknowledge the editor’s own introductory statement that his interest was in conveying meaning rather than preserving poetic phrasing. Given that the vast majority of texts presented in this volume are poetry, one might nonetheless take issue with this decision. A question that remains, then, pertains to the value of this work for scholars interested in library history. In short, it is the historical perspective that Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome provides regarding women’s literacy. The texts in this volume portray women as writers, as readers, and as participants in discourse communities. These translations allow those interested in questions about women’s literacy in historic context to consider early demonstrations of the creation and consumption of texts. As Plant states in introducing one such early female author’s advice treatise, “it offers evidence for the literacy of women and the sharing of books” (69). A particularly interesting feature of classical women’s writing that emerges from this anthology is the not inconsiderable number of texts that deal with medicine and science, with women’s health and that of their families. While it may be tempting to read these scientific and medically oriented texts as signs of women’s advances toward a more equal footing with men, excerpts from a conduct manual translated by Plant suggest the ways that concerns with health remain firmly connected to traditional sex roles in these cultures: “On the whole a woman must be good and orderly; and one could not become such a woman as this without virtue. . . . The virtues of the body are health, strength, good perception, and beauty” (84–85). Thus women’s writing, reading, and even knowledge about health, while indicating education and participation in the production of discourse, may also reinforce conservative cultural norms. Plant’s volume aptly reveals the sometimes paradoxical situations of women writers in early Greek and Roman society.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"570 - 572"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0078","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66797001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Books, Friends, and Bibliophilia: Reminiscences of an Antiquarian Bookseller (review)","authors":"Michael Levine-Clark","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0074","url":null,"abstract":"As with similar volumes of compiled data, we are indebted to the editorial team for their dedication but are left wanting a critical analytical study, based in part upon the rich available documentation, that would provide greater insight into core basic issues of institution building in China during the past forty years. Such a study would illuminate the trials and tribulations of the Guangdong Library Association, such as the degree of centralization versus central-regional differences, the debate over foreign models of institution building, the discussion of “information science,” and the extent and role of overseas Chinese financial and other contributions and international linkages (e.g., IFLA) in institution building in post–“open and reform” China. In sum, the aim of the work is to demonstrate the success of Guangdong Library Association’s historical role in China’s library development.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"573 - 574"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0074","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66797090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thirty Years of Electronic Records (review)","authors":"Patricia Galloway","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0070","url":null,"abstract":"select are not quite the four I would have chosen, and I can think of plenty of other possibilities, so some editorial musings on the question of the key themes in book history would have been welcome. It was the devotion of a section to orality and literacy that made me ponder these organizational issues. I’m well aware that this is a topic that has caused much discussion (and if I were not, the length of the bibliography for this section makes it clear), yet the essays collected here all focus on the contrast between an oral culture and a literate culture. There is nothing about orality within a literate culture or about different sorts of literate cultures. There has, after all, also been a great deal written about the decline (or not) of the social activity of reading aloud and about the existence (or not) of a revolution from intensive to extensive reading. My own book history courses focus on the period from the eighteenth century onward, and I was disappointed to find so little my students could use in this section. Yet for me the most intriguing—and disappointing—aspect of this volume was its general tendency to think of books as texts rather than material objects. Although the editors claim in their introduction that “the significance of the book as a physical object” is one of the issues forming “part of the substance of this Reader” (1), they are also enamored by the concept of unstable, interacting texts (3), and most of their selected essays engage more with the production and consumption of texts than of books. This is certainly an increasing area of interest in these days of immaterial, electronic texts, but one of the most exciting aspects of book history for me is precisely the focus on books. Where were the essays discussing the material form of the book, investigating the significance of innovations in printing or paper-making technologies or the importance of edition bindings for creating a ready-to-read product? Equally, where was the attention to the practical side of reading, discussing questions of book availability whether from book clubs, libraries, or railway station bookstalls? Of course, editors of anthologies always have to be selective. This will no doubt be a most useful volume for instructors, but it will be more useful to those teaching very general book history courses than to those offering more specialized options.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"577 - 579"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0070","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Guangdong Tushuguan Xuehui Sishi Nian (The Guangdong Library Association: 40 Years) (review)","authors":"Priscilla C. Yu","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0062","url":null,"abstract":"Anderson provides. And yet, since readers have managed so long without such a study as this, Anderson ought to have at least attempted to argue for the significance of his work for early American studies or the field of book history. Rarely can a scholar so thoroughly resituate such a foundational work as William Bradford’s history as Anderson does here. Yet a scholar capable of such work ought also to be able to situate his own work and clarify its key contributions.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"572 - 573"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0062","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History (review)","authors":"D. Davis","doi":"10.1353/lac.2005.0066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2005.0066","url":null,"abstract":"One of the gratifying developments in the historical profession in the past two decades has been the reestablishment of world history as a worthwhile field of study, writing, and teaching. The expansion of traditional concern for Western civilization, the interaction of other cultures within the worldwide human story, and the accelerated interest in globalization, along with the insights of the historical, natural, and physical sciences—all have produced a movement that is gaining increasing momentum. William McNeill, author of the widely used volume The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (University of Chicago Press, 1963) and more than a dozen other monographs on aspects of world history, hinted at the themes in the present volume in his retrospective essay in the 1991 reprinting of the above-mentioned classic. Now he is joined by his son, a distinguished environmental historian, and together they survey fourteen millennia of human history in describing and explaining the relationships of human groups within their natural and cultural contexts. The thesis of the work is that webs of influence linking human beings in relationships are central to human development, since they continually involve the communication of ideas and information. This affects future human behavior that, in turn, fuels the “ambition to alter one’s condition to match one’s hopes” (4). The authors believe that the “first worldwide web” began as a loose network about 12,000 years ago. An introduction explains the characteristics of webs—combinations of cooperation and competition, development of communication for mutual survival, growing influence upon history, and the effect of human development on the earth’s own history. Eight chapters then develop and support the thesis that a worldwide web is not a new concept but a reality that has cyclically evolved with human history. They deal with the earliest period of human development (up to 11,000 B.C.E.), the growth of food production (11,000–3,000 B.C.E.), Old World civilizations (3500 B.C.E.–200 C.E.), the growth of Old World webs and America (200–1000 C.E.), “Thickening Webs” (1000–1500), the extension of a worldwide web (1450–1800), foundations for the modern world (1750–1914), and modern strains affecting the web (1890 to the present). A final brief chapter provides informed personal reflections on long-range prospects by each of the authors. The substantive chapters are well outlined, with useful headings and subheadings, and are broken into digestible subsections. Furthermore, they each finish neatly with a succinct conclusion that keeps one on track when surveying such a vast array of concepts so quickly. Fifteen maps and five tables enhance the text. An extensive ten-page bibliographic essay of further readings reviews current studies for each of the chapters. A reasonable index concludes the work. The work is a unique blending of socioeconomic, cultural, and physical elements that integrates trends in","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"568 - 569"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/lac.2005.0066","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Recasting the Debate: The Sign of the Library in Popular Culture","authors":"Kornelia Tancheva","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0079","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an investigation of the hermeneutic possibilities in the semiotic image of the library represented in three movies—The Name of the Rose, The Wings of Desire, and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. It looks at the visual semiotization of the library of the past, present, and future utilizing Charles Peirce's semiotic model, in which a sign becomes a sign only because there is an interpreter for it, and argues that from the perspective of cultural semiotics a sign has no inherent/intrinsic meaning, that is, its meaning is contingent on context and, consequently, can be recast.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"23 19 1","pages":"530 - 546"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0079","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66797125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The New York Society Library: Books, Authority, and Publics in Colonial and Early Republican New York","authors":"T. Glynn","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0071","url":null,"abstract":"The New York Society Library was founded in 1754. At its founding it became embroiled in the politics of the city's Whig faction, and through the latter half of the eighteenth century it embodied the republican ideals of its founders. The collection was developed as a means of educating and refining the entire community. During the early nineteenth century the library entered a period of relative inactivity. Although the collection continued to grow, the Society itself became increasingly removed from the cultural and intellectual life of the city. After a bitterly contested election in 1838 the trustees made some effort to reinvigorate the Society Library, but they failed to create a truly popular institution.","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"493 - 529"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Queen Mary 2 Library","authors":"Richard D. Burbank","doi":"10.1353/LAC.2005.0064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/LAC.2005.0064","url":null,"abstract":"The maiden voyage in January 2004 of the Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2, an ocean liner designed for the twenty-first century, ushered in a completely new, massive, and spectacular kind of passenger ship that appeals to a genteel clientele who seeks an ocean voyage in the elegant tradition of the Cunard Line. The QM2 library is no excep tion to that tradition; in a word, the library is sumptuous. Harold M. Otness wrote in his 1979 article on passenger ship libraries: \"Almost all passenger ships operating today are in the cruise business and they offer a full range of social activities on board plus sightseeing programs when in port. With the lectures, dances, movies, televi sions, saunas, and even slot machines to pass away the hours be tween meals, one can hardly find time to read on a cruise today. Nonetheless most ships still maintain libraries for the use of their passengers, although these facilities don't seem to have the impor tance they once had.\"1 Not so the QM2 library. There is an intellec tual component to life on this ocean liner that, in addition to the eight thousand-volume library, includes a planetarium, a regular series of enrichment lectures by professors from Oxford University and other academic institutions, well-known experts not affiliated with universities, and, of course, Internet access. All of these interre lated activities, interestingly enough, take place at the front of the ship on different decks. (The decks are roughly equivalent to the stories of a building, so that Deck 8, where the library is located, is about eight stories above the water line.) The Queen Mary 2 library consists of 700 square feet and is located on Deck 8 forward, at the bow of the ship. The library is physically connected to the ship's bookshop. The librarian is stationed at a ser vice point that serves both the library and the bookshop. There is usu ally at least one other individual who works at this service point; that person handles most of the bookshop sales but also helps with library duties. The librarian handles both library transactions and bookshop customers when no assistant is present. Given the small, special nature","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"40 1","pages":"547 - 561"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/LAC.2005.0064","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Philip Larkin: A Bibliography, 1933-1994, and: Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study (review)","authors":"J. Matthews","doi":"10.1353/lac.2005.0075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lac.2005.0075","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":81853,"journal":{"name":"Libraries & culture","volume":"14 1","pages":"574 - 576"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/lac.2005.0075","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66796748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}