Three disciplines, one whole

The three disciplines named in the title of the network have long traditions, but today all of them are under a process of renewal. The changes in the media and society in general caused by the digital revolution pose challenges to these traditional branches of research.

On the negative side are the structural changes in the academic curricula have created a context for the disciplines. The position of book and library history in the library and information science education has weakened during the last decades.

On the positive side are the new expanding views that the rapid historical turns create: not since the invention of printing have new technological inventions and social and professional changes literally demanded new interpretations of the history of books, libraries and reading. In this way the work of the network is related to the present day, even if the periods studied may go back hundreds of years. It has been said that people hunger for a context in the everchanging media world. The work of this network can create that context.

All these fields of study can, in the present professional, scholarly and technological circumstances, be seen from the same angle that may be called “information history” This term is, however, under debate and needs to be further discussed even in the emerging network.

We need one another

One thing is certain: those who conduct this kind of research need one another. Their communities in their own countries are too small to obtain respect from their immediate academic community. They have to cooperate internationally to create a stronger and more effective group.

Book history as an umbrella?

One of the developments during the recent decades that has changed the position of these disciplines is the rise of book history as an accepted field of historical study. Book history is more and more seen as an umbrella covering all disciplines in the field of history of books, of reading, of libraries, of publishing, of bookselling etc.

International cooperation in the field of book history, especially under the auspices of SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, has opened new ways of cooperation and helped lower disciplinary boundaries. The conferences of SHARP, where many of the members of the present network have presented their papers, gather researchers from all over the world and from many disciplines.

The rise of book history has also brought together the historical research done in the library and information science (or information studies) community and research done in the academic historical community. Several members of the present network originate from university departments of history.

Out of the shadow!

Moreover, there is a growing interest in the international book historical community towards research done in the Nordic countries, around the Baltic Sea and in Russia. These areas have a flourishing research with long traditions in all the fields named in the title of the network. Their problem has been, so far, that there has been very little cooperation over the geographical or disciplinary boundaries.

There has been no effective international academic community in these fields, not even in the Nordic countries where language is no real barrier (except concerning Icelandic and Finnish-language research).

One of the problems of the Nordic research in these fields is that there are no academic chairs in book history, library history or history of reading, except the chair in book and library history in the University of Lund, Sweden. It is no wonder, then, that research is rhapsodical and without formal academic structures, too much dependent on individual persons and with no continuity from a generation to another.

In this respect the situation in the Baltic countries and northwestern Russia is different. There the academic traditions and organizational structures are on a high level with chairs in book history and the more general book science in several universities and with permanent researchers’ positions in national and other larger libraries. The Baltic and Russian book science community’s internal lively contacts and cooperation goes on using their common language, Russian. They are, on the other hand, more plagued with resource problems.

Language barrier?

Most of the rich original research is, naturally, published in the domestic languages both in the Nordic countries and Baltic area. Even if publishing in one’s own language is important, these circumstances create a multiplicity of language barriers that have prevented the international academic community, be it English, French or German-speaking, from getting acquainted with the valuable research that is done around the Baltic sea and in the Nordic countries. What is even more alarming is that even neighbouring countries, across the Baltic sea, do not know what is happening on the other side.

Know your own region, become visible internationally

By establishing the HIBOLIRE network it is possible to obtain several principal aims: getting to know one another better in our own region, and creating a firm basis for a better international visibility for our fields of research. There also is a third aim that is connected with the cultural aspect of the history of books. National literature in each country and the international contacts of the literary world in the region form a fundamental part of the national and regional cultures, they are part of the national and regional identity.

Popularization

The topics that the network’s researchers represent are not only academically interesting. A large part of them are interesting from a broad cultural viewpoint and the general public is likely to be interested by them, if they are presented in a proper way without heavy academic formalities. The history, e.g., of the universal reading habit, is so recent that many people have their own memories of it, even if the beginnnings of this phenomenon took place a couple of hundred years ago.

It is the spread of mass education and modern media revolution that has made all of us witness to history and that is why it interests the great public. Therefore the members of the network are prepared to give popular lectures and informal talks on their research interests. These talks can be realized in connection with the network meetings or as a special lecture tour. The same objective can be obtained by popular newspaper and magazine articles and TV programs as well as radio talks. As stated earlier, people hunger for new interpretations of the history, even cultural history, and interpreting history is our business.