Tracts for Action
On How-to Books
How do I make soap? How do I dye textiles? What ingredients do I need to make an effective medicine? How do I find and mine natural resources? How do I prepare food that is as tasty as it is wholesome? How-to questions keep society going, they have advanced and refined civilisation. Until the age of social media, guidebooks, instructions and recipes - a perennial favourite on the early book market - offered a way out of awkward situations in life. Two famous libraries joined forces to create this rather inconspicuous book genre: The University of Glasgow Library (UoGL) and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (HAB). The special collections in Glasgow also include the Ferguson Collection, probably the world's best collection of practical knowledge literature from the early modern period. This will be analysed in more detail in the light of supplementary holdings from Wolfenbüttel. How do you learn practical skills from a book? Why were such treatises so popular, who used them and how, do these books represent a clearly defined genre at all? - These questions will be at the centre of the discussions.
Discussions and results of the co-operation project will be published continuously during the project period via the joint blog ‘Tracts for Action’. Largely forgotten tracts from the Ferguson Collection will be brought to light in a way that is as competent as it is attractive, and old prints from Glasgow and Wolfenbüttel will enter into a dialogue (tandem principle). The materials produced at the working meetings and in the sub-projects will be collected and presented interactively.
Responsable(s)
Stefan Laube
Thèmes
Histoire des sciences, Histoire et sociologie du livre, Histoire culturelle, XVIe siècle
URL du carnet
https://howtobook.hypotheses.org
En savoir plus
Informations bibliographiques
Rédacteur(s) en chef
Stefan Laube
Année de création
2024
Date de mise en ligne
22 mai 2024
Langue de la publication
English
Coordonnées
Courriel
Adresse postale
Tracts for Action
PD Dr.Stefan Laube
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
Lessingplatz 1
D-38304 Wolfenbüttel
Allemagne
Ville de production
Wolfenbüttel