reviews


 

384 College & Research Libraries 

The best of the theoretical articles is 
the last chapter, a keynote essay by 
Marshall Keys that contains his thought­
ful speculations on where libraries, vir­
tual and otherwise, are headed. His main 
point—at the end of all this electronic 
upheaval will be unprecedented improve­
ments in user access to information—is 
well taken. The path to this nirvana, how­
ever, is bound to be difficult. Keys ana­
lyzes the tenuous, yet tenacious, grasp 
that journal publishers, electronic infor­
mation aggregators, and online system 
vendors have on their respective high-
profit businesses. Many in the library 
community resent the windfalls enjoyed 
by privately held companies in these in­
dustries and are anxious for library-based 
initiatives that will reduce commercial 
profiteering and strengthen, rather than 
marginalize, traditional libraries. Perhaps 
future editions of The Evolving Virtual Li-
brary will feature case histories of success­
ful freeware-based system solutions or 
project reports on an electronic library 
clearinghouse for scholarly research.

 Both editions of this title are compa­
rable to a “special issue” journal on this 
topic. The price is right (about $4/article) 
and no binding is required. Professional 
librarians dealing with the pressures and 
potentials of electronic resources will find 
useful information here. For those labor­
ing at less-than-progressive institutions, 
it is interesting and even inspiring to see 
what is actually possible, given favorable 
conditions. Of course, the usual caveat 
about electronic topics in print applies— 
beware the short shelf life. The transition 
from cutting edge to historical in the digi­
tal world is a very swift one.—Paul 
Rolland, Mesa State College. 

The Human Face of the Book Trade: Print 
Culture and Its Creators. Ed. Peter Isaac 
and Barry McKay, from the Proceed­
ings of the Sixteenth Seminar on the 
British Book Trade, Edinburgh, June 
1998. Winchester, Eng.: St. Paul Bibli­
ographies; New Castle, Del.: Oak 
Knoll Pr., 1999. 228p. $39.95 (ISBN 
1-58456-003-7). LC 99-30585. 

July 2000

To resurrect pre-twentieth-century book 
activities from dusty volumes to vibrant 
tomes and from deceased book people to 
live (and sometimes whining or conniv­
ing) book entities, the editors have se­
lected essays from the Sixteenth Seminar 
on the British Book Trade, Edinburgh, 
1998. Topics range from a history of books 
about sheep-ear notches to contentious 
journalism to major eighteenth-century 
publishing activities. The excellence of 
these articles (fortuitous proximity?) 
leaves one to wonder about those not sub­
mitted or those rejected.

 Respected authors such as librarians, 
professors, a senior curator, an Honorary 
Fellow, a Master of College, and an anti­
quarian bookseller have highlighted 
auction-house collusion, explored book 
salesmanship, considered the book dis­
tribution patterns, recounted philan­
thropic achievements of the Clark Collec­
tion (Napier College), and mused on 
medical mis- and mal-publishing. Orga­
nization reflects a happy combination of 
sustained scholarly attention (“Henry 
Cotton…”c1813), access to rich resources 
(“William Smellie and the Printer ’s 
Role”), and the capacity of the unusual to 
rivet attention (“Fall of the Hammer: Auc­
tioning of Books in Manchester…”).

 Beyond the diversity of topic and time 
period, the magnitude of detail, and the 
fleshing out of factual skeletons, the 
strengths of this collection include its ex­
tensive documentation (one article of thir­
teen pages has ninety-three footnotes), 
detailed index, and biographical sketches 
that highlight the special qualifications of 
the authors. If one is an incidental learner 
(who reads the word above and below the 
needed dictionary entry), one can expect 
an abundance of grazing. The rear-cover 
blurb and editor Isaac’s editorial are es­
pecially well-written summaries. 

Truly a buffet of riches, these essays 
have something for nearly everyone. Some 
highlights worth mentioning include: co­
operative publishing where one publisher 
lists booksellers in another city (“Charles 
Elliott and the English Provincial Book 
Trade”), analysis of publisher distribution 



Book Reviews 385 

records (“Country Book Trades 1784–85”), 
and the development of a great collection 
(“Edward Clark Collection…”). On the 
other hand, the reader might benefit from 
contemporary currency conversion—to 
better understand financial accounts from 
previous time periods—and brief transla­
tion of some of the Welsh titles.

 This collection emphasizes the re­
search value of publishers’ records, com­
puter analysis of trade patterns, and re­
view of older research in light of newly 
noted resources. More important, the 
book inspires introspection that leads all 
professionals to consider the concept of 
the funnel: Each person contains knowl­
edge and experience, much of which is 
unique (large part of the funnel), and 
unless it is shared (flow-through factor), 
it is lost when the flow is blocked (corked, 
as in death, stroke, etc.).

 Useful as it may be for these reasons, 
this book certainly achieves its purpose 
of providing a Human Face of the Book 
Trade.—Jim Presgraves, ABAA, Bookworm 
& Silverfish. 

Williams, Julie Hedgepeth. The Signifi-
cance of the Printed Word in Early 
America: Colonists’ Thoughts on the Role 
of the Press. Westport, Conn.: Green­
wood Pr. (Contributions to the Study of 
Mass Media and Communications, no. 
55), 1999. 298p. alk. paper (ISBN: 
0-313-30923X). LC 98-41689. 

As its title indicates, this is not a book shy 
about making claims for itself. Professor 

Index to advertisers 
AIAA cover 3, 295, 299, 335 
Annual Review 312 
BIOSIS 291 
CHOICE 357 
CHOICE 323 
EBSCO cover 4 
Faxon/Rowecom cover 2 
Greenwood Publishing 360 
H.W. Wilson 311 
Library Technologies 292 
OCLC 348 
Swets/Blackwell 358 

Williams intends to reveal all concerning 
print culture in colonial America: what 
was printed, how it was received, and 
what its impact was. A hefty agenda. How 
does she fare?

 First, the good news: Williams has 
immersed herself in a wide variety of pri­
mary source material from colonial 
America. She wants to write history from 
the document up. From her journey 
through archives and libraries from New 
England to the Carolinas, she has turned 
up an interesting and occasionally pro­
vocative series of episodes and anecdotes 
concerning print culture in early America. 
This is a book with voices, as its subtitle 
advertises—the voices heard through the 
printed word. And those voices, from the 
personal through the commercial and the 
political, are rich and evocative. The au­
thor wears archival dust well. Indeed, 
stripped of all commentary, the quota­
tions in the book would make for a lovely 
sampling of colonial Americans and their 
struggles to get on with life in a difficult 
and foreign environment.

 She also makes heavy use of newspa­
pers and almanacs and so reminds us of 
the extraordinarily rich sources they are 
for documenting everything from daily 
life to publishing strategies. The personal 
ads that dot colonial gazettes—and many 
early modern newspapers abroad—evoke 
the ups and down of family and commer­
cial life in British North America.

 Williams covers some well-trodden 
ground: the literature of settlement, Pu­
ritan publications, practical advice 
guides, government documents, local 
culture, etc. She is not so much concerned 
with making the case for printing and the 
Revolution as she is for simply document­
ing the abundance of ways in which this 
unusually literate society used and 
abused print.

 That said, it is difficult to recommend 
this book. Yes, it can be evocative and sug­
gestive. A graduate student might find a 
dissertation lurking in some or other 
chapter. But as a piece of historical schol­
arship, the book has little to offer. It is one 
scholar ’s report from wide reading in