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© Universiteitsbibliotheek van Amsterdam, CC BY 4.0. |
Here is a snippet from the book's abstract to whet your appetite:
Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence[...]Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts.
Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire.
Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?
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© Uppsala Universitetsbiblioteket, CC BY 4.0. |
A previous blog post about Open Book Publishers can be read here. In the post we highlighted the cataloguing team's work to create MARC records for all the books on the OBP catalogue (no small feat!). We also looked at some of the interesting and novel ways that OBP are trying to escape the bonds of print, by incorporating alternative media into the electronic versions of their books.
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