2000

AQ -- Book Trade and Publishing

The first volume (Bibliographie Science-Fiction: Bucherstausgaben 1945-1995) of a new series, Bibliographien: Buch, Bibliothek, Literatur [Bibliographies: Book, Library, Literature], was reviewed in RREA 5:127. The present title is the second volume of the series. The criticisms regarding the first title still stand; it appears as if the publisher has begun a forum for book collectors without bothering much about standards of content or form. The observation in the foreword that "...;for a long time the illustrated German book of the 19th and early 20th centuries was considered scarcely worthy of serious contemplation" suffices for the compiler as justification for the chosen time period, from which he has selected 113 book illustrators. He states that "the selection does not follow any strict system," and, indeed, it appears that the indexing does not follow any strict system either. The articles offer very limited biographical data, sometimes a few literary references (but more often none), and the actual bibliographic descriptions of the illustrated works. The overall impression is conflicting: if the publisher had demanded the remedy of obvious deficiencies, then perhaps the bibliography would not have been published at all. As it is, even defective bibliographies have a partial usefulness, but the verification work falls where it should not--on the shoulders of the user. [sh/rdh]
 
 

This catalog is another byproduct of the author's 1989 Marburg dissertation, which was published in 1994 as Die Bedeutung der Leihbibliothek für die Lesekultur in Hessen-Kassel 1753-1866 [The Significance of the Lending Library in the Reading Culture of Hessen-Kassel, 1753-1866] (Tübingen, 1994). Other related publications include Sirges's Lesen in Marburg 1759-1848: eine Studie zur Bedeutung von Lesegesellschaften und Leihbibliotheken [Reading in Marburg 1758-1848: A Study of the Significance of Reading Societies and Lending-Libraries] (Marburg, 1991), and his work in Alberto Marino's Die Deutsche Leihbibliothek: Geschichte einer literarischen Institution, 1756-1914 [The German Lending-Library: History of a Literary Institution 1756-1914] (Wiesbaden, 1990).

German lending libraries of the 19th century were exceedingly important institutions for the dissemination of popular literature, regardless of political boundaries. With this microfiche reproduction of the Hessen-Kassel lending library catalogs from 1778 to 1866, the compiler's efforts to document this phenomenon in Hessen-Kassel have found a provisional endpoint. The huge amount of editorial effort invested in this microfiche collection is evident in the indexes of authors, editors, publishers, illustrators, composers, pseudonyms, and printers that accompany it. Perusal of any of these leads to unexpected and interesting connections and discoveries.

Given the current state of digital reproduction techniques, the reproduction on microfiche of a collection of catalogs seems obsolete. A CD-ROM version would have provided interested scholars with a more usable resource and brought increased sales to the publisher. [hm/baw]
 
 

In the four-volume Histoire de l'édition française [History of French Publishing] (Paris, 1989-1991), France has an excellent, modern, richly illustrated publishing history covering the Middle Ages through the period immediately following World War II. The volume reviewed here serves well as its continuation, although it is less a history than a panorama of many different aspects of French publishing.

The work consists of two sections: the first includes 16 chapters on a variety of publishing areas, such as belles lettres, social sciences, book clubs, paperbacks, art books, children's books, comics, various types of nonfiction and reference publishing, and electronic publishing. The second part chronicles changes in publishing (such as the move from mechanized to digital printing), publishing and the state (including copyright, pricing, and censorship), and economic aspects of publishing. Several chapters can stand on their own as reference resources for anyone who purchases French books, and many include excellent bibliographies. Notable as well are the richly colored illustrations. Their colleagues in other countries with a major publishing industry can only envy the French for this informative, painstaking publication. [sh/baw]
 
 

The title sounds inviting and promises an index of materials relating to the topic "media"--but in what way? A glance into the book shows that this is not an annotated list of recommended works but rather a listing of titles without commentary. The author classifies his material under nine broad headings: Mass Media, Press, Radio, Television, Film, Telecommunication, Journalism, Public Relations, Marketing. Each of these chapters is further subdivided into three categories: Bibliographies; Encyclopedias, Handbooks, Lexica; Journals and Yearbooks. The numbered listing of 6,622 titles provides only a sketchy--sometimes incomplete--summary of bibliographic information for each item.

In his introduction, Schuster writes that he compiled this bibliography in the space of half a year, relying primarily on Internet research in the catalogs of the Library of Congress, the Deutsche Bibliothek (German National Library), and the library of the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen "Konrad Wolf" (Institute for Film and Television "Konrad Wolf") in Potsdam. Herein lies one of the fundamental flaws of his project--that it is based on catalog research, not on firsthand inspection of the works indexed, which would certainly have provided the work with a sounder methodological basis, but may have delayed its publication. The editor's stated aim is to index a mixture of general and specialized literature in the field, being particularly selective in the choice of reference works. In fact, his selection appears somewhat arbitrary. For example, he includes local and regional periodicals from the USA and Canada, but inexplicably leaves out significant European reference works and journals. Another, lesser, objection is that the index completely excludes the wealth of resources now available on the Internet. Nevertheless, Schuster has provided a valuable service with his ambitious undertaking, by offering an overview of much, if not all, of the important American and European literature relating to media and mass communications. [wub/akb]
 
 

This work, intended for a general audience, is based on a series of articles that appeared in the Pforzheimer Kurier in 1994-95. For the book version they were expanded and augmented with bibliographical references and an index of names. Numerous illustrations add to the depiction of local history. The list of publications, with 46 titles, is chronological by year of publication; other literature is given in footnotes.

The source for the narrative is the newspapers themselves; sometimes archival material and regional and superregional secondary literature were consulted. Newspaper texts are quoted in detail. Dealing with the history of newspapers is particularly interesting, the author emphasizes, because the press is often the only source for the history of a place when other local documents have been lost. The history of newspapers in Pforzheim begins in 1794, with the first issue of the Wöchentliche Nachrichten von und für Pforzheim, and continues for 10 chapters until June 22, 1999, when the 150,000th visitor clicked on the Internet pages of the Pforzheimer Zeitung. The detailed presentation ends earlier, in the mid-1950s, with the consolidation of local newspapers after the turbulence of World War II. Schulze proceeds chronologically; an imbalance in the space devoted to various time periods is not unjustified when one remembers the shifting importance of the region. The author uses the source material with expertise and sensitivity, not simple when dealing with newspapers. Anecdotal material gets its due.

For the librarian, an appended overview of the holdings of Pforzheim newspapers in archives and libraries will be of particular interest. This list of 67 titles, which also includes short-lived publications and titles of which no copies appear to have survived, seems to be very nearly complete. The holdings of the Pforzheim city archives and the state libraries in Karlsruhe are noted, occasionally further holdings, all nearly identical with data in Gert Hagelweide's Deutsche Zeitungsbestände in Bibliotheken und Archiven [German Newspapers in Libraries and Archives] (Düsseldorf, 1974). No holdings are listed beyond the immediate geographical region. Outside of the regional depository copies one would expect to find only scattered holdings of original newspapers, but it would have been helpful to find microfilm holdings mentioned. For newspapers one should also consider collections outside the public sphere, such as publishers' archives. Good examples for the processing and determination of local newspaper holdings are offered by Peter Stein in Die nordostniedersächsische Tagespresse: von den Anfängen bis 1945, ein Handbuch (dealing with northeastern Lower Saxony) and by Werner Ströbele in Hiesiges: Anfänge der Lokalpublizistik (dealing with Tübingen). [wh/gh]

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Last update: September 7, 2001 [RD]
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