Gordana Stokić Simončić
Univerzitet u Beogradu
Filološki fakultet – Katedra za bibliotekarstvo i informatiku, Beograd
gordana.stokic.simoncic@gmail.com

Biljana M. Đurašinović
Univerzitet Edukons
Fakultet za projektni i inovacioni menadžment – Biblioteka, Beograd
biljana.djurasinovic@gmail.com

doi: 10.19090/cit.2021.39.62-75
No. 39 (November 2021), p. 62-75

Libraries, Printing and Publishing in Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries

Summary

This paper presents the most important changes in the field of ”book” publishing and printing that occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Publishing and printing are presented through an overview of the activities of notable individuals and groups in different European countries, with a parallel overview of some new media: leaflets, pamphlets, brochures, and periodicals such as calendars, almanacs, newspapers, and magazines.
In the paper, the political, religious, and cultural changes brought by the strengthening of the absolutism of the rulers, Protestantism, the Reformation, the scientific revolution, and Baroque as a style in art, are observed from the positions of both book historians and library historians. The decline of monastic collections of books, which throughout the Middle Ages were the most important custodians of written heritage, the development of royal collections, university and special libraries, private libraries of wealthy citizens, funds organization, the status of librarians, and library architecture, are presented in such a way as to testify clearly to the social foundation of library activities. The importance of texts on the arrangement of libraries that appeared in the first half of the 17th century is especially underlined. They show how important this issue was for the contemporaries who increasingly emphasized the need for greater availability of publications. These works contributed to the increase of knowledge about possible ways of organizing funds and the internationalization of this issue, which, over the next hundred years, led to the creation of the modern types of libraries. Behind all these efforts, the contours of a user as the central figure of the communication chain in the library activity slowly began to be discerned.

Keywords:

Europe, 16th and 17th centuries, librarianship, libraries, organization, architecture, publishing, printing, bоокs, periodicals

Submitted: 4th November 2021
Correction to the manuscript: 12th November 2021
Accepted for publication: 14th November 2021

Libraries, Printing and Publishing in Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries by Gordana Stokić Simončić and Biljana M. Đurašinović is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Full text