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.

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

laube@hab.de

Adresse postale

Tracts for Action
PD Dr.Stefan Laube
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
Lessingplatz 1
D-38304 Wolfenbüttel
Allemagne

Ville de production

Wolfenbüttel

Actualités