College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews 
Giesecke, Michael. Der Buchdruck in der 

friihen Neuzeit: eine historische Fallstudie 
iiber die Durchsetzung neuer lnfonnations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien. Frank-
furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991. 994p. 
68 DM (ISBN 3-518-58003-5). 
This is a large book in every sense of 

the word. It combines a broad outline of 
the history and dissemination of print-
ing technology in the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries with a comparative 
analysis of the intellectual and psychoso-
cial consequences of that diffusion, focusing 
its argument on the similarities between that 
development and the rapid expansion of 
computerized communications in our own 
time. In it the reader sees the lines of a dis-
tinguished intellectual pedigree which in-
cludes some of the luminaries of modem 
German thinking on the nature of com-
munication in society, notably Reinhart 
Koselleck, Paul Raabe, Niklas Luhmann, 
and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Thirteen years 
in the writing, the book grew out of the 
author's Habilitationsschrift, and it demon-
strates many of the strengths and weak-
nesses of that uniquely Teutonic academic 
genre: a systematic and exhaustive treat-
ment of every conceivable nuance of the 
subject, a rigorous organizational sequenc-
ing of the arguments, a copious citation and 
documentation apparatus (over 230 pages 
of notes, indexes, and citations), and a 
dense, nearly impenetrable style which at 
times verges on the soporific. 

Nevertheless, Michael Giesecke's argu-
ments are significant and, for the most 
part, convincing. He reinterprets the book 
culture of the incunabula period in mod-
em terms and with modem terminology 
as a complex system of information ·pro-
cessing dependent upon the evolution of a 
vast array of specific new technologies, 
communication patterns, and modes of 
creating, imparting, and receiving knowl-

76 

edge. The printed book as a medium of 
social and political change has been a 
regular theme of book-historical scholarship 
virtually since the age of Gutenberg, but 
Giesecke goes much further than traditional 
analysts by insisting that it caused a fun-
damental change in the notion of what con-
stituted information, and in the ways in 
which information could be processed. The 
advent of printing produced not merely 
economies of scale in production that led to 
broader dissemination of knowledge but 
also to a fundamentally different concept 
of the relationship between literacy and 
social progress. It caused the traditional 
structure of institutional censorship to dis-
integrate gradually over time by produc-
ing a volume and variety of material 
which exceeded the ability of the old 
censorship apparatus to survey, and by 
requiring the creation of a vast and com-
plex system of distribution for the or-
ganization and supply of markets. In 
education, it led to the reorganization of 
curricula and teaching methodologies at 
all levels, the restructuring of old disci-
plines, and the establishment of countless 
new ones. It permitted the production of 
"Literature" to evolve from the leisurely 
pursuit of gentlemen to a widely accessible 
profession having the potential to 
generate enough revenue to live com-
fortably, with a concomitant eradication 
of the barriers of class and caste (with all 
the attendant implications for a broadened 
intellectual horizon). In all these areas, and 
·in many, many more instances, the author 
documents his view that the arrival of 
book technology swept away the chief 
ideological underpinnings of medieval 
and classical thought and paved the way 
for the rise of modern social, economic, 
and political structures in Europe. 

One of the most interesting aspects of 
Giesecke's modern functional analysis is 



his attempt to use the early history of the 
book as a paradigm for the continuing 
emergence of present-day electronic com-
munications technologies. His notion of 
the importance of the free market in the 
development of late medieval information 
dissemination carries with it the echoes of 
similar debates on the desirability of com-
mercially viable networks as opposed to 
publicly supported ones outside the 
market structure. The question of com-
petition between the old scriptographical 
tradition and the new typographical 
science is likewise reflected in the current 
struggle between the proponents of the 
paperless society and those whose ideas of 
scholarship and culture are inextricably 
bound to the printed book as artifact. 

This volume is an original and valua-
ble addition to the literature of the 
book's history, but the force of its argu-
ment is somewhat diluted by its sheer 
size and the degree of detail to which it 
resorts to buttress its premises. A more 
general statement of its principal theses, 
with a less elaborately documented 
defense of them, would probably be a 
desirable middle ground for most poten-
tial readers; in its present form it demands 
an intense and prolonged concentration 
which is perhaps more appropriate to the 
narrowest technical specializations than 
to more broadly conceived humanistic 
views of the history of the book.-James 
Henry Spohrer, University of California, 
Berkeley. 

Cataloging Heresy: Challenging the Stan-
dard Bibliographic Product. Proceed-
ings of the Congress for Librarians, 
February 18, 1991, St. John's Univer-
sity, Jamaica, New York, with addi-
tional contributed papers. Ed. Bella 
Hass Weinberg. Medford, N.J.: 
Learned Information, 1992. 217p. $30 
(ISBN 0-938734-60-1). LC 92-9374. 
Although the title Cataloging Heresy 

might suggest that this book proposes 
radically different ways of looking at cat-
aloging and bibliographic control, it is in-
stead a rather useful overview of some of 
the problems with uniform titles, subject 
headings, classification, and the descrip-
tion of special types of library materials. 

Book Reviews 77 

Editor Bella Hass Weinberg has com-
piled a well-edited volume of papers 
from the 1991 Congress for Librarians at 
St. John's University. It provides a frame-
work for library school students and 
practitioners to think critically about cat-
aloging data in standard bibliographic 
records. Managers who look for the most 
expeditious, most economical method to 
process library rna terials are warned of 
the conflicts and inaccuracies inherent in 
shared records. The papers examine 
what data should be included in these 
shared bibliographic records and how 
those data might be altered in response 
to a given collection, special type of 
material, or special user group. 

Part 1 consists of edited papers from 
ten invited speakers as well as intro-
ductory and concluding remarks. The 
seven contributed articles in Part 2 remind · 
us that for some types of materials (special 
collections of literature and music, musical 
sound recordings, nonprint materials, 
digital cartographic databases), stan-
dard practices may not be adequate. 

The Library of Congress is attacked, as 
usual, for not keeping up with current, 
politically correct terminology in its Li-
brary of Congress Subject Headings and 
for its practice of assigning insufficient 
and inadequate headings and subdivi-
sions (articles by Sanford Berman and 
Hope Olson). Fortunately, alternatives 
and positive recommendations for fu-
ture direction are provided. The reader 
is also reminded of the increased efforts 
on the part of the Library of Congress, as 
the national bibliographic agency, to in-
form and consult widely on changes to 
cataloging policy in order to reflect con-
sensus within the library community 
(article by John Byrum). 

Apart from criticisms of Library of 
Congress Subject Headings, there are the 
expected papers on the shortcomings 
of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 
Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, 
and Library of Congress classification. 
Other papers provide wonder-ful histori-
cal background for library school stu-
dents and those in the profession who may 
have forgotten about the National Library 
of Medicine classification (Sally Sinn),