Book Reviews 297

works less well collected by major librar-
ies: prayer books, newsletters, Papal 
indulgences (perhaps 30 percent of the 
surviving printed documents from the 
fifteenth century), the Reformation’s war-
ring pamphlets, best-selling vernacular 
works (especially chivalric romances), 
and bread-and-butter Latin grammars 
and other educational works. In all cases, 
Pettegree is able to back up his narrative 
with concrete data from a variety of sourc-
es, often including counts of specific print 
runs to demonstrate the relative profit-
ability of a particular printed edition. 

The third and fourth sections of The 
Book in the Renaissance evolve into even 
more interesting and even more esoteric 
subjects; in these chapters, the history 
of print is a lens and data point through 
which to view several different areas of 
more general social history. Printed books 
are examined as a point of political and 
religious conflict (via incidents of book 
burnings and mass censorship), as a 
philosophical grounding point in strife-
torn France, as a benchmark for economic 
distribution in the midst of confessional 
wars, and as participants in the sixteenth-
century development of technical scien-
tific illustration and medical practice. 
Finally, he offers a chapter ruminating 
on the effects of widespread printing on 
the Renaissance concept of the library 
itself: the collections that had once been 
the province (and the pride) of great lords 
became possible for average scholarship, 
and the erudite discourse once relegated 
to the libraries of the nobility were now 
possible in the stationer’s shop. 

Pettegree admits, however, that even 
this more boisterous history of early Eu-
ropean printing may still be incomplete. 
Plantin kept a single copy of everything 
he printed, no matter how ephemeral; 
for how many other presses are the com-
plete riches of history lost? Booksellers’ 
inventories can be quite revealing, but if 
they represent unsold inventory, do we 
gain a complete picture? Pettegree closes 
his history with two counterexamples to 
his own approach. After noting the too-

numerous examples of book destruction 
in the course of warfare (up to World 
War II and the Gulf wars), he notes an 
instance in 1989 in which Dutch work-
men discovered a group of Protestant 
books apparently hidden more than four 
hundred years prior in a house in Delft; 
fully four of the six books had no other 
known exemplars anywhere in the world. 
In a different example, the prolific scrap-
books of the sixteenth-century diarist 
Pierre de L’Estoile apparently preserve 
vestiges of a variety of “street” sources, 
many of them apparently printed broad-
sheets and newsletters currently lost to 
our knowledge. 

In his conclusion, Pettegree brings to a 
crux both the potentially paradigm shift 
of his approach and its inherent limita-
tion. It is certainly true that the history of 
the book as traditionally written has been 
centered on the printed books of highest 
value, the volumes most assiduously 
sought after and carefully preserved by 
nobles, scholars, collectors, and (later) 
librarians. It is completely appropriate to 
broaden that history to include the gamut 
of other works that could fill the corners 
in a printer’s schedule and the gaps in 
his bottom line. Pettegree’s The Book in the 
Renaissance uses a variety of electronic and 
more traditional sources to do so. Even 
so, as with any historical narrative, the 
author must admit that there are parts of 
this history that still await excavation.—
Timothy J. Dickey, Independent Scholar, 
Columbus, Ohio.

Envisioning Future Academic Library 
Services: Initiatives, Ideas and Chal-
lenges. Ed. Sue McKnight. London: 
Facet Publishing, 2010. 247p. (ISBN 
9781856046916). LC2010-478131. 

Library shelves and book catalogues are 
filled with volumes prophesying the end 
of the library world as we know it, with 
change so imminent and so pervasive that 
it hardly seems possible for any paper-
based book to reach readers before it be-
comes obsolete. While the coming of, and 
need for, change is certainly trumpeted in 



298 College & Research Libraries May 2011

this book, this wisely edited collection of 
diverse and strong essays should have a 
long shelf life nonetheless.

The essays, written by distinguished 
librarians, publishers, and professors 
mostly from the United Kingdom and 
the Commonwealth, with others from 
the United States and other international 
sites, are uniformly succinct, well writ-
ten, and particularly well edited. Sue 
McKnight, Professor of Knowledge and 
Learning Management and Director of 
Libraries and Learning Management at 
Nottingham Trent University, deserves 
praise for the diversity of the essays, 
their hierarchical arrangement within 
the volume, and her care in overseeing 
each contributor’s text to make sure there 
are no tedious redundancies from one to 
another, and that they interlock and mesh 
like gears, driving the discussion forward. 
Edited volumes often suffer from jerky 
stops and starts in their progress. This 
volume’s acceleration and thrust, gather-
ing speed as it goes, is virtually flawless.

A listing of the essays will suggest 
the range of the book and its appeal to 
educators, students in Library and Infor-
mation Management/Science programs, 
and those working in academic libraries, 
whether at the reference desk, in informa-
tion technology, or occupying directors’ 
offices, planning strategically for today 
and for times to come. 

Sue McKnight sets up the issues facing 
academic libraries in her opening essay, 
and the discussion begins with Derek Law 
reminding us what troubles await if we 
ignore and fear and minimize the “digital 
barbarians” at our gates. Penny Carnaby 
then takes up the “delete generation” and 
presents case studies from New Zealand 
to illustrate her topic of how citizen-gen-
erated content is transforming libraries. 
Andrew McDonald takes a refreshing 
step back from the virtual world to discuss 
three-dimensional libraries, planning, and 
layout, but then the virtual world is front 
and center for the majority of the remain-
der of the volume. The impact of Web 2.0 
on libraries is the topic taken up by James 

G. Neal and Damon E. Jaggars, proving a 
natural segue for P. Charles Livermore’s 
discussion of Second Life (SL), “arguably 
the most popular and well known… of 
multi-user-virtual environments.” Like 
many other essayists, he defines his topic, 
presents pro and con arguments for use 
of SL in libraries, presents a case study, 
ruminates on the implications for library 
staff and library users, and provides ref-
erences and notes, many beginning with 
“www.” In another natural transition from 
SL’s digital environment, Frances Pinter 
highlights the manner in which scholarly 
publishers have had to adapt to this new 
world. How others—scholars, students, 
and researchers—also adapt to the digi-
tal world, their experiences with search 
engines and reference staff, and the use 
and development of “Library 2.0” is the 
subject of Paul Coyne’s chapter. Coauthors 
Helen Hayes and Philip G. Kent, using the 
example of the University of Melbourne, 
discuss knowledge management in uni-
versity libraries, noting how academic 
libraries can fully partner in impacting 
not just their users, but their institutions, 
communities, and countries. One aspect 
of that on a national or global scale is the 
management and sharing by libraries of 
scientific, technological and medical data, 
the focus provided by Martin Lewis. Liz 
Wright opens up the discussion in a new 
direction, not just predicting the major 
forces driving change in the next 5 to 10 
years, but also predicting the 15 aspects 
necessary in leaders and leadership in 
the coming years. Editor Sue McKnight’s 
next contribution argues for leadership 
among all staff members in adding value 
to learning and teaching, while referenc-
ing Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library’s 
pilot program of pairing students with 
a “personal librarian.” The final chapter 
by Michael Robinson takes a sobering 
look at the future of academic libraries in 
China, a thought-provoking essay on the 
difference and similarities of eastern and 
western libraries, which, with apologies 
to Rudyard Kipling, are not destined to 
remain distinct. 



Book Reviews 299

The essays are much more subtle 
than this simple listing implies; but the 
“menu” does suggest the wealth of mat-
ter contained in the slender, easy to read, 
and handily indexed volume. More of a 
call to arms than a battle plan, the book 
nevertheless does give concrete examples 
and suggestions that will be helpful to a 
variety of readers. The reports of what 
other institutions are doing across the 
globe offer not just benchmarks against 
which to measure our institutions, but 
examples we may want to research and 
duplicate. The volume promises much 
and delivers impressively.—Harlan 
Greene, College of Charleston. 

The History of the Book in the West: A 
Library of Critical Essays. Farnham, 
U.K. & Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Pub-
lishing Ltd., 2010. Vol. I: 400AD–1455, 
eds. Jane Roberts and Pamela Rob-
ertson, xxxii + 515p. $275.00 (ISBN 
9780754627739); Vol. II: 1455–1700, ed. 
Ian Gadd, xlii + 526p. $275.00 (ISBN 
9780754627715). LC2009-921962.

On May 4, 1515, Pope Leo X issued a pe-
culiar and remarkable decree, the Super 
impressione librorum (On the printing of 
books). In it, the Pope acknowledges a 
deep-seated sociocultural anxiety about 
the new technology of printing, stating 
that, although the reading of books can 
be a profitable pursuit for those seeking 
knowledge and the invention of printing 
has helped spread truth and learning 
more widely and inexpensively than ever 
before, the very same technology that en-
ables the dissemination of truth also facili-
tates the transmission and perpetuation of 
pernicious error that corrupts rather than 
edifies the reader. Despite any benefits it 
might offer, in the Pope’s opinion—which 
for all intents and purposes was supposed 
to reflect the official, ideal view for the 
entirety of the Christian West—the tech-
nology of printing was a new force that, 
in spite of its many benefits, needed to be 
assiduously monitored and controlled.

Pope Leo’s decree stands at a decisive 
moment in the history of the book. On 

the one hand, this declaration invokes 
a medieval past in which books and the 
knowledge they contained were created 
slowly by hand and disseminated among 
a smaller, more restricted body of readers. 
Although literacy rates and the spread of 
reading increased steadily throughout 
the Middle Ages, accelerating more and 
more up to the years immediately prior 
to the invention of printing, the medieval 
reading public was still comparatively 
small and both the prescription and pro-
scription of manuscript texts were easier 
to manage. At the same time, however, 
the decree also anticipates the explosion 
in literacy and the spread of reading that 
would occur throughout the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries in response 
to major social and religious movements 
and intellectual developments such as 
the Protestant Reformation, Renaissance 
humanism, New World colonization, the 
development of “modern” science, the 
emergence of more powerful centralized 
nation-states, and the growing popular-
ity of Europe’s various vernaculars as 
appropriate and authorized vehicles for 
printed expression. In the face of a rapidly 
growing and demanding reading public 
and the quick spread of the new technol-
ogy that could feed its ravenous appetite 
for text, both authorities and readers 
confronted an unfamiliar environment 
in which books—and the truth or errors 
they contained—were more widespread 
and less controllable than ever before.

The first two volumes of Ashgate’s new 
series, The History of the Book in the West, 
represent a necessary attempt to define 
the history of the book, a relatively new 
scholarly field, at a critical moment in 
its development. The thirty-five articles 
included in these volumes embody some-
thing akin to a “greatest hits” collection 
of relevant scholarship produced during 
the past forty years. Taken together, they 
provide readers with a firm foundation 
of authoritative research upon which 
to build future investigations into the 
complex history of books, their producers 
and readers, and their collective cultural