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Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 17:03:30 -0500 (EST)
From: Alfred M Kriman <akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu>
Message-Id: <200009172203.e8HM3UA21081@darwin.helios.nd.edu>
To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: pigeon hole legend

I remember reading a review five or ten years ago, of a popular book about
the transition from scroll to codex.  In failing to track that down, I did
manage to find something relevant.  The May 1999 edition of _College &
Research Libraries_, available on line [[1]], has a review by Michael Ryan
of the University of Pennsylvania of

	Kilgour, Frederick G. _The Evolution of the Book_ (New York
	and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1998), 180p., $35, alk. paper
	(ISBN: 0-19-511859-6).  LC 97-14430.

Although the reviewer is ideologically biased in the currently approved
fashion, I imagine that his claim of increased activity in the field may
be objective:

| The advent of electronic communication has triggered a boom in studies
| on the history and future of ``the book.''  For much of the 1990s, it
| has been one of the major growth areas in humanities scholarship,
| invading disciplines and posing new questions of old material.  ``The
| book'' has become code for anything and everything involved in the
| creation, production, dissemination, and reception of texts: authors
| authoring, scribes scribbling, printers printing, booksellers selling,
| readers reading.  We have a veritable armada of monographs and articles
| on ``the book'' confronting us, much of it sensitive to new types of
| evidence appropriate for new questions and issues. 

Michael Ryan, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.


[[1]]
http://www.ala.org/acrl/crlmay99.html

.