RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Since the first issue of RBML rolled off the presses more than 13 years ago, the world of rare books and manuscripts has undergone a series of upheavals that can best be described as tectonic. The contemplative reading rooms originally fitted out with mahogany bookcases, leather wing-back chairs, and Old Master prints where bibliographers, textual editors, and other scholars poured over the treasures of Western culture have yielded to undergraduate students working on the history of gender in photography, faculty contextualizing racial stereotyping by examining Victorian book design, and private researchers mining film archives for the next important video documentary.