Communications Revolutions: Writing a History of the Book for an Electronic Age

Abstract

When does an academic field begin? For the expanding specialty known as the history of the book, the landmarks are many:

• Major publications: Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change and Robert Darnton's The Business of Enlightenment, both appearing in 1979.¹

• Intellectual centers: the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress (1977) and the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture at the American Antiquarian Society (1983).²

• Encyclopedias and reference works: since the appearance in the 1980s of the multivolume Histoire de l’Edition, the French pioneer in the field, . . .