Nordic and Baltic Book History Cooperation

Before the SHARP conference in Helsinki, Gothenburg will host The World Library and Information Congress: 76th IFLA General Conference and Assemble, in 10-15 August 2010.

The massive event includes also sessions on library history. For one of these sessions, docent Ilkka Mäkinen (University of Tampere) has written a presentation of HIBOLIRE (Nordic-Baltic-Russian Research Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading), one of the co-organizers of Book Culture from Below -conference. HIBOLIRE has been active since 2006, but it is a dircet continuation of Nordic book history cooperation since 1990s. The network is funded by Nordforsk until the end of 2010.

HIBOLIRE has arranged and co-organized multiple seminars and conferences in Nordic and Baltic countries and supported young researchers' training and academic careers. The researchers of the network have also published a book last year, called Library Spirit in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Historical Perspectives. The articles of the book concentrate on studying the idea of public library: how the idea of library, which would open its doors to all readers, spread in the Baltic Sea Region region and what kind of local ideologies, institutional varieties and networks were created.

In his IFLA presentation, Mäkinen does not only introduce various activities of the HIBOLIRE network, but also discusses on the possiblities and difficulties of the international scientific co-operation. The effort to bind eight distinct national research traditions and varying institutional support under one umbrella of book history has certainly been difficult, but discussions on the methodological issues, transnational research approaches and comparative aspects have offered common basis for cooperation.

Mäkinen's whole report is available here.

Book Science Conference in Vilnius

Doctoral student Inga Liepaitė & Associate Professor Aušra Navickienė
Institute of Book Science and Documentation,
Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University

The 18th international conference devoted to book science, Book and Media Science: Research, Researchers, Communication, was held at the conference hall of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, 22–23 October 2009. The event was organized by the Institute of Book Science and Documentation from the Faculty of Communication at Vilnius University. As with previous conferences, assistance was provided by HIBOLIRE and, this year for the first time, by the Department of the Humanities and Social Sciences from the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. The programme of the conference is available as a pdf-file.

As was noted during the conference, two anniversaries gave cause to reflect over developmental landmarks and past achievements in book sciences, as well as its relationship to other sciences, both in Lithuania and other Baltic States: these being the 1000th anniversary of the first recorded use of the name Lithuania, and the 430th anniversary of the founding of Vilnius University.

The range of issues discussed at the conference was extremely broad and challenging. However, while a focus of attention was ancient manuscripts and printed books, it was the issues raised about concepts used by the founding fathers of book science and problems they faced, together with their applications, that were discussed most enthusiastically, often within a modern unstable context of 21st-century developments such as relations between traditional and digital books or in disquisitions related to the traditional book and the future of its study. It is hoped that the latter issues will provide guidelines, which will determine topics for future Vilnius conferences devoted to book science.

Over two days, the speakers and participants of the conference had an opportunity to hear 32 presentations, by scholars from Belarus, Estonia, the United Kingdom, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, France, Russia, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden. Some speakers were visiting Lithuania for the first time.

The event was opened by the chairman of the organizing committee, Professor Domas Kaunas of Vilnius University, and Associate Professor Andrius Vaišnys, Dean of the Faculty of Communication, who welcomed conference delegates. This was followed by three gripping plenary presentations. The first speaker was by Professor Simon Eliot of IES, University of London. His speech was devoted to a rather intriguing issue – has book history a future? With the conclusion of his presentation, delegates were relieved to hear that the strongest feature of the book is its tangibility, which is why there would be little reasons to worry about its disappearance. Professor Eliot noted that, due to its broad subject, the book in the future would develop into the history of communication and information. Ideas voiced by Professor Miha Kovač of Ljubljana University, Slovenia, were also inspiring. Professor Kovač stated that the traditional book continues to be the backbone of our civilization and possesses many merits, when compared to speedily developing technologies. Associate Professor Aušra Navickienė, representing Vilnius University, addressed issues related to development of book science.

The conference was organized into four sections. For the first time in the history of the Lithuanian book science, a section devoted to the manuscript book in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its neighbouring countries was undertaken. It was chaired by Associate Professor Alma Braziūnienė of Vilnius University and Dr Tatjana A. Isachenko of the Russian State Library. Seven papers relating to the state-of-the-art of manuscript book research, possible perspectives for the future, possible modes of research, and the reconstruction of the manuscript collections were presented in the given section.

The second section was devoted to the history of the printed book. It was chaired by Professor D. Kaunas from Vilnius University and Professor Tiiu Reimo from Tallinn University. The nine papers in this second section were devoted to theoretical and methodological problems relating to book history, reading, book dissemination and the history of libraries.

The third section, entitled "Book Science Creators and Concepts", was chaired by Ausra Navickienė and Professor Krzystof Migon of Wroclaw University. Nine presentations discussing developments to theoretical problems of bibliography, as well as the scope of book research and book researchers, were given.

The fourth section, entitled "Applied Research of Book and Other Media", chaired by Associate Professor Jurgita Rudžionienė and Associate Professor Aile Möldre of Tallinn University, in which seven presentations were made, can be characterized by the variety of issues investigated. The section considered the relationship of book science with other sciences, book relations of the Baltic States, modern university publishing within the context of the new changes, while issues relating to print statistics and standardization were also discussed, as well as results of the investigation of the documentary science communication being introduced.

In his closing speech Professor D. Kaunas expressed his gratitude to the speakers and listeners for the productive atmosphere of the conference and hoped that each delegate had heard at least one or two interesting presentations of specific interest. Professor Kaunas’ sentiments were endorsed by the conference’s international speakers, who recognised the importance of the event, and expressed their gratitude to the organizing committee for the opportunity to participate. Ilkka Mäkinen, associate professor at Tampere University, said that the attempts of the organizers to create an environment for intellectual exchange between Western and both Mid- and Eastern-European traditions was vitally important. In his opinion, since contemporary book history in the West was born from the integration of Anglo-American and French traditions, there should emerge something entirely new in a Western-, Middle-, and Eastern-European intellectual exchange. Institute of Book Science and Documentation at Vilnius University is doing a great job along just these lines. The forthcoming SHARP conference in Helsinki may be the next important step in this direction.

The conclusions and insights drawn from the conference will continue in future discussions. It is planned that scientific articles prepared from the conference presentations will be published in vol. 54 of Knygotyra (Book Science) in 2010. All issues of Knygotyra are available at the homepage of the publication.

Hibolire Doctoral Summer School - Tampere June 4-5 2009

Ilkka Mäkinen

It was a cold (+5 degrees Celsius), wet and rainy early June 2009 in Tampere, Finland (hard to imagine now, a couple of weeks later, when it is +25 degrees). I had advised the participants of the HIBOLIRE Doctoral Summer School that this time of year was usually nice and warm: but now “rough winds” did “shake the darling buds of June”. Happily, leaving the cold winds outside, the 25-person group gathered at the new faculty building of the University of Tampere to create their own warmth. The participants, all members of HIBOLIRE, came from different Scandinavian and Baltic countries.

The mood was enthusiastic since, among the senior members and the doctoral students, were new faces some of whom were to speak before an international audience for the very first time: true “darling buds”. An item of news that also inspired was that our HIBOLIRE member Henrik Horstbøll had been installed as the new professor of Book and Library History at the University of Lund, on that very day. Unfortunately, because of that event, he could not participate in our summer school.

HIBOLIRE, the Nordic-Baltic Research Network on the History of Books, Libraries and Reading, is a multinational and multidisciplinary network of scholars from Scandinavian and Baltic countries. We also wish to improve our cooperation with scholars in northwestern Russia. The activities of HIBOLIRE are supported by Nordforsk, an independent institution operating under the Nordic Council of Ministers for Education and Research. Our intitial three-year funding covered the period from 2006 to 2009, while an extension will enable further activities from 2009 to 2010. The network organises annually at least one doctoral seminar, in addition to other events. Next year, our main goal will be to co-organize the annual SHARP conference in Helsinki. Minna Ahokas, a member of the organizing committee, informed us of the present status of planning.

The first keynote speaker, Dr. Lotte Hellinga from UK, former Deputy Keeper at the British Library, opened the summer school with her speech titled Histories of the book, old and new, and what they have in common, where she touched upon many important themes. What especially struck me was the importance she laid on the popularization of book history. Why doesn’t someone write a “Gutenberg Code” or a “Schoeffer Code”? Book history is full of good stories. The popularization theme is closely connected with another matter she raised, namely, the importance of lifting one’s eyes from details and over the national boundaries in order to see and talk about the larger context.

Dr. Hellinga’s coments about popularization reminded us that our network had listed popularization as one of the initial aims of HIBOLIRE. Popularization in a manner that is both exacting and appealing is difficult to do, but in our own way we shall try, by publishing in July a popular book on the library histories in the region that our network covers; indeed covering a large part of the globe from Greenland to Finland. The book will be titled Library Spirit in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. Historical Perspectives. Not a “Library Code” (perhaps a “Dewey Code”?) but hopefully more accessible than ordinary treatises on library history.

The theme of the summer school, Books as material objects, books in space, books in movement, was deliberately unrestrictive, since all doctoral students of the network irrespective of the subject of their dissertation should have a chance to receive feedback. The theme was intended also to involve jointly both book and library historians. Nevertheless, one theme, books in space, was so successful in gathering speakers that the theme earned its appearance in the title of the summer school. One of the keynote speakers, Prof. Alistair Black of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about Books, Buildings and Social Engineering. Early Public Libraries in Britain from Past to Present based on the newly-published book co-authored by himself, Simon Pepper and Kaye Bagshaw. His presentation was as richly documented with images as the book itself. I believe it was fortunate that the somewhat trite term “social concept” was replaced by “social engineering”.

A senior member of the network, Nan Dahlkild from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, entered the history of library buildings from the Scandinavian angle, and a doctoral student, Pentti Mehtonen, from the University of Tampere presented his dissertation project on the discourse on library buildings in the Finnish professional press. The trio was completed by the presence of Ms. Hanna Aaltonen, who has written an extensive article on Finnish public library buildings in the recent Suomen yleisten kirjastojen historia (History of Finnish public libraries) published just after the summer school. Such a congregation of themes is very welcome, even if it is not possible always to achive, since research themes in the fields covered by the network are so varied.

There were additional senior researcher papers by Wolfgang Undorf (Royal Library, Stockholm) challenging a number of concepts that we take as self-evident in book history, and Alma Braziniune (Vilnius University, Lithuania) about the private library as an object of research in book science and librarianship. Both subjects also have a contemporary importance given the current digitisation of books and even whole libraries. These papers should surely be published as articles or books.

It is impossible to provide summaries of every doctoral students’ paper at the summer school. And, fortunately, there is no reason to do so. Students will be presenting the results of their work in due course themselves: the entire workshop program becoming available at here.

We were successful in gathering people from different levels of scholarship, from different countries and with different disciplinary backgrounds. The mix created a fruitful opportunity for getting to know people and exchanging information and opinions. A problem was the different rhythm of universities in the Nordic countries that prevented people from certain countries from participating. This fact must be taken into account when future events are planned.

Doc. Ilkka Mäkinen is a lecturer at the Department of Information Studies, University of Tampere, and the treasurer of HIBOLIRE.