Apology Book by Robert Darnton Like little gentlemen, to read this, might do the yellows, I immediately said here loud and clear that I recognize the importance of work and thought of Robert Darnton, a historian of the book recognized ( Specialist of the European Enlightenment and the history of the book under the Old Regime), and for some time director of the Harvard University Library.
This blog devoted to future books and publishing, is also (look at the top of your screen under his benevolent ;-) (do not doubt) stressed:
"Any attempt to probe the future while addressing the problems of this should be based, I believe, on the study of the past." Robert Darnton, Apology of the book tomorrow, today, yesterday, Gallimard ed., 2011.
Notwithstanding, I was disappointed by reading this book .
So why not say so?
This is certainly not apparent in the small germanopratiquement correct Landerneau that prides itself on making rain or shine, and lead us, as befits some on the beaten track for the 21st edition century.
But I'm not in the boot of these people.
A disappointment
Where does my disappointment?
simply because I am disappointed, I confess, I expected more for my part, this reading.
Basically, I found in the shape and style about the very American-centered, egocentric or at the limit.
While there is indeed bright breakthroughs that we refer to Febvre and Martin, and Darnton puts it in an interesting perspective, but the fact that it Whether there really not a test, designed and built as such, but an amalgam of texts previously published in The New York Review of Books, is, I find damaging.
I also find that Darnton talks a lot about him, his journey of its work in relation to American university libraries, and not necessarily in tune with a francophone context or the situation of libraries and French universities, for what I can learn. It
this perspective that I find "American centric, and the choice Editorial Gallimard who asks. For, indeed, who will buy and read this book, and that's going to understand something, and especially what? Mutations in this period of reading the book and its market.
Not only the U.S. and the world with what is currently playing in the transition from print publishing to digital publishing, Gallimard certainly could, or could, in addition to U.S. perspective, to find better information from their readers!
In France we have historians of the book, I think especially to Frederic Barbier among others ...
I really think that an objective compilation of texts of reflection that comes out of François Bon, in his own house Publie.net under the title
"After the book" is a relevance and interest far beyond what Darnton, and read first (I publish a critical reading in a few days ...).
