Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 14

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Summaries

Berry Dongelmans, Gerda Huisman, Ad Leerintveld The research library as an ouroboros or: how special are special collection libraries?

In this article three members of the editorial board of the Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis discuss with four people active in the field of digitisation the (future) developments of research libraries. Special collections libraries in particular seem to be vulnerable once their collections are digitized. The discussion partners, however, do not fear the future. Instead of a gradual decrease of tasks they predict an increase in consumption and use of libraries and their (special) collections. Of course, the services rendered will change. Apart from making accessible their collections in a digitized form, coaching in using the databases and digitized documents will become a major task as well.

Jacobijn Kiel From Parchment to Portal: The cataloguing of Dutch medieval manuscripts

Medieval Manuscript in Dutch Collections (mmdc) comprises all medieval western manuscripts written in Latin script and produced up to circa 1550 now preserved in public collections in the Netherlands. The catalogue contains uniform short-title descriptions and digital images of all medieval manuscripts held by libraries and other public institutions in the Netherlands. The mmdc is a portal and is linked to databases of existing projects such as the Biblioteca Neerlandica Manuscripta and the Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts website. On the other hand it will be the core of a national website that concentrates and makes available the existing academic knowledge and expertise. Thus it forms a national basic infrastructure for research and in the field of palaeography and codicology at Dutch universities and a basis for ongoing (in-depth) cataloguing and digitisation of the manuscripts by the various libraries.

Jan-Hendrik Bakker How tough will that late arrival in the Gutenberg paradigm prove? About the survival chances of the daily newspaper

The daily newspaper is in a period of transition and transformation. While its circulation is permanently decreasing, it is also losing influence in a culture that is more and more dominated by images. Besides this, electronic online media like the Internet and Ceefax have proven to be strong, well read and very fast messengers of the latest news. The daily newspaper is alive yet, but its future is uncertain. In this article the daily is regarded as a product of modernity, on the one hand based on a rationality that stems from the old scriptural culture, on the other deeply related to (post)modern fragmentation. Most probably, in the medi-

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um term the newspaper will become part of the electronic information stream predicted by scholars like Manuel Castells. At the same time new chances for written journalism, in whatever material form, will emerge, depending on how strong the need for local and regional news supply in a global world will be. The written word will also remain leading in the field of critical, intellectual and investigative journalism.

Saskia C.J. de Vries The future of the monograph in the digital era. A university press perspective

The new opportunities offered by the Internet for the diffusion of scholarly information are causing thorough changes in the position of existing parties like authors, universities, libraries, and readers, as well as attracting entirely new players, like Google and Amazon.com. Regarding the present developments in a historical context this article discusses the impart of digitisation on the scholarly monograph, especially in relation to the recent history of scholarly journals, including the Open Access movement, which is fast finding wider acceptance. In spite of all speculations to the contrary the printed book has still not been superseded by its digital counterparts. Yet there is every reason to be concerned about the future of the scholarly monograph in its familiar form. While there may be intrinsic reasons why certain scholarly arguments would benefit most from conventional book form, and while digital printing techniques, by enabling shorter print runs, will allow more titles to be ‘in print’, other digital developments militate against the continued existence of scholarly monographs in the form of printed books.

Willem Heijting The book between the media. About the framework and foundations of book historical research

The neglect of the theoretical base of the discipline is typical for book historical research in the Netherlands - and not only there. The rise of new media which seem to supplant the printed book only serves to add to the uncertainty about the theory of book and print studies. So it would be good if a discussion took place about the framework and foundations of book historical research.

This article gives an overview and critical analysis of the leading theoretical approaches in this field since the beginning of the twentieth century, revealing some of their strong and weak sides. The New Bibliography School, led by R.B. McKerrow and others, has mainly focused on textual transmission, which has left deep marks in later book historical practice. The l'histoire du livre school of the French Annales historians studied the social and cultural effects of books on society. Book historians in the Netherlands followed both traditions, but they were also influenced by Robert Darnton. His communication circuit brought some order to the steadily expanding field of book history. Elizabeth Eisenstein's interpretation of the impact of the printing press, however controversial it was, did not invoke much discussion in the Netherlands. In recent years, the work of D.F. McKenzie, whose Bibliography and the sociology of texts has also appeared in a Dutch translation, has drawn attention. McKenzie advocated a text-based history of the book (which in his view encompasses a wide range of text-related artefacts), while incorporating elements of the French tradition.

All of these approaches fail to take into account the wider context of the history of the printed book in a history of the media. As a vital discipline, book history should free itself from the text-based approach inherited from the New Bibliography, and the printed book should be studied as a medium between other media, like the oral and written media, as well as radio, film, television, and the digital media.

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Jaap van Loon and Geeske Steeneken What use are textbooks to the Internet generation? Are books destined to disappear from the curriculum?

Internet and mobile communication are central to the daily existence of the generation that has grown up with them: the ‘internet generation’. This has repercussions for education. The education system is having a hard time motivating children to learn in schools as it is. The coming of the Internet generation is adding to that challenge. To emphasize the radical differences between this generation and earlier ones it has even been termed a new species: ‘Homo Zappiens’. The five processes of social change that especially affect them are: individualisation, informalisation, technologisation, internationalisation and intensivation. The Internet generation works and thinks in virtual networks, is interactive, communicative en social; it googles, zaps, scans, games, multi-tasks, lives intensively, demands to be entertained and expects that any information need can be met instantaneously. It cannot remain tuned into a single channel for long, and lacks the patience to process large amounts of unrequested information.

Under the general nomer of ‘Nieuwe Leren’ (new ways of learning) Dutch schools have been experimenting in recent years with new educational concepts which take the student rather than the subject as their central focus. This Nieuwe Leren has engendered much criticism, not least that there is no evidence that it will work. But whatever one may think of it, it can offer a valuable contribution to new ways of thinking about education, which are necessitated by the arrival of the Internet generation.

Existing education is still based on a hypothetical average student instead of on individuals. The existing system is non-flexible, linear, non-interactive and regards the teacher as a broadcaster of knowledge. However, the ‘average student’ no longer exists - any more than does the average teacher or the average school. The Internet generation requires a teacher to be an ‘inter-actor’, and the standard teaching method needs to be replaced by a modular, more flexible, open system. This needs to allow linking to relevant resources outside of the system and to allow teachers and students to add material of their own. It will also need to include many opportunities for self-evaluation. New media technologies are making such a shift more feasible.

That the book as a linear, pre-programmed instruction system aimed at the average student is not suitable for the Internet generation does not mean that there is no future for folio products. However, their form will need to be defined not just by authors and publishers, but also by the end users themselves. De consequences of such momentous changes will especially affect educational publishers (with regard to processes, business models, structures) and schools (with regard to infrastructure and staff training). The Internet generation itself is already well prepared to make the change.

Jürgen Pieters From textual scholarship to tradition scholarship. Jerome McGann on texts, books and computers

This article offers an introduction to the work of the American literary theorist Jerome McGann. It pays specific attention to McGann's contribution to the theory of textuality and to the role of electronic editions in the future of that theory. The article substantiates McGann's conviction that the use of electronic media in the representation of texts can enable us to (re)discover aspects of textuality that go back to the reading culture of sixteenth-century humanism.

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Els Stronks The older book goes digital. Contours of the digital edition

The article discusses the editorial standards of the Emblem Project Utrecht. Aim of this project is the publication of digital editions of twenty-five Dutch love emblem books on the Internet. How can the experience of this project help us in defining the contours of a scholarly digital edition? Four problems concerning digital editions are discussed and resolved. The proposed solutions in some cases complement traditional editorial procedures, and in some cases contradict them.

Jan Baetens and Dirk de Geest E-literature in Dutch. Much E, little literature?

This contribution offers a preliminary analysis of the problems that attend the far-reaching digitisation of the field of literature as an artistic practice. Starting out from a global cultural perspective, the article attempts to explain present and future problems and pitfalls by taking recourse to a historical view of the fluctuating relationships between literature and other media. A central topic is the disparity between current conceptions of digital literature and the practice of those who read and/or write texts on and for the computer screen. The second part of the article applies the proposed view to the specific case-study of Dutch and Flemish literature. This analysis shows that actual literary practice lags behind the theories and hopes of many. By contrast, the impact of digitisation can clearly be discerned in the areas of literary criticism, the approach to literary heritage and the distribution of the literary book.

Frank Huysmans Public libraries in the Netherlands and the transformation of the reading culture since 1975

The public library sector in the Netherlands originated about a century ago, but, as in Flanders, only grew to maturity in the 1970s. Since then, after an initial expansion in terms of buildings, collections and users, the numbers of books borrowed has started to decline. This article sketches the position of the public library against the background of a broader trend, i.e. the gradual process of declining readership of books and other printed media (particularly among the younger generations). Explanations are sought in the increased competition for leisure time resulting from the expansion of the media/information landscape (most recently the Internet) and the leisure market at large, as well as increased prosperity, which allows more expensive leisure time pursuits. The article discusses how Dutch public libraries are coping with these changes in their environment by creating innovative digital services. It finds that the main function of the public library - providing open access to information and culture - is in part taken over by private initiatives on the Internet. The public library is forced to reinvent itself by connecting with the new ways people orient themselves in today's and tomorrow's world of information, media and culture.