Book Value Categories and the Acceptance of Technological Changes in English Book Production

Bibliographic Data

ID5832567
AuthorsL Millard Rosenberg (0000-0003-0610-3644, corresponding author), Simon Rosenberg
Year2020
Pages298
Publication date2020-06-10
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBook Value Categories and the Acceptance of Technological Changes in English Book Production (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPeter Lang D (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3726/b17293
OpenAlexW3037149057
ISBN9783631827390
Open LibraryOL29539557M
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

The Book as an Evolutionary Process? 17 Kilgour offers five concurrent elements that are, in his opinion, necessary preconditions for each of the major innovations of the book:1. societal need for information, 2. technological knowledge and experience, 3. organizational experience and capability, 4. the capability of integrating a new form into existing information systems, 5. economic viability. 24 Unfortunately, he does not elaborate further on these conditions in detail.Especially "organizational experience and capability" seems vague.When he later lists these conditions again to attempt a prediction about his last punctuation, that is the electronic book, he even rewrites these preconditions as "users' needs, adequate technology, new organizations, successful integration with existing systems, and cost effectiveness." 25 Kilgour's ideas and elaborations are tempting because they seem so straightforward and almost simple.Indeed, his arguments seem, at times, flawed.The question remains: how relevant, for the history of the book, is a comparison with biological evolution?Further, the inclusion of clay tablets in his work (Kilgour boldly titles a chapter "Incunables on Clay") reveals his rather unspecific definition of 'book.' Overall, his approach is a simplification of complex procedures; the difficult mixture of sociocultural and economic features and aspects make the medium 'book' difficult to analyse.If one takes into consideration that, for example, the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain-series spans seven volumes with thousands of pages, it seems somewhat naïve to offer a monograph that attempts to illustrate and discuss the complete evolution of written communication on a mere 180 pages.Consequently, a review of Kilgour's monograph concluded with the notion that, before the electronic book will be successfully introduced, "one hopes that someone will write a more successful brief account of the book's evolution." 26 Kilgour's attempt shows the dangers involved when discussing the development of the book over long time spans.To prevent similar criticism, this study avoids Kilgour's main pitfalls by looking at the transitional phases only and therefore focussing on much smaller time units.It will also use 24 Kilgour, Evolution of the Book, 5-6

Value (mathematics · Library Science and Administration · Library Science and Information

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