I am posting this on behalf of John Hinks, the research fellow
with the BBTI project. The BBTI has always proved a very useful
source for those studying library and book history pre ca 1850,
so this is certainly a project to look out for.
Chris Baggs
Aberystwyth
. The British Book Trade Index
Thanks to an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Board,
the British Book Trade Index has recently moved to the University
of Birmingham for development as a Web-based research resource.
The BBTI is a computerized database (currently containing around
eighty thousand records) which aims to include brief biographical
and trade details of all those who worked in the English and Welsh
book trades before 1852. It includes not only printers, publishers
and booksellers but also stationers, papermakers, engravers, auctioneers,
ink-makers and sellers of medicines, so that the book trade can be
studied in the context of allied trades.
BBTI began in 1983, under the direction of Professor Peter Isaac, who
sadly died on 15 June 2002. Originally supported by the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne and the Sir James Knott Charitable Trust, the project
later received financial assistance from the British Academy and the
Leverhulme Trust. BBTI data have been derived from a range of published
sources, both printed and electronic, and from forms submitted by the
many scholars and local researchers who have generously contributed their
findings. Electronic data have been generously supplied by the British
Library from the Eighteenth-Century Short-Title Catalogue and by Michael
Turner from his records of Stationers.
The potential of BBTI as a research tool is indicated by the willingness
with which scholars have contributed records over almost twenty years. A
grant of £175,000 from the AHRB's Resource Enhancement Scheme will fund
three years of development work, including the transfer of the existing
atabase to the Web, the addition of many more thousands of new records,
and several research projects using the BBTI database, including a study
of book-trade networks in the Midlands. The longer-term future of the BBTI
is guaranteed by the commitment of the University of Birmingham and by the
project's close liaison with the Arts and Humanities Data Service.
The research strength of the University of Birmingham's English Department
in the history of the book and the transmission of texts makes it an ideal
home for the BBTI. The project, directed by Maureen Bell and with Professor
John Feather (Loughborough University) chairing the Management Group, will
form the hub of a research group (staff, postgraduates and postdoctoral
researchers) working on aspects of book history. John Hinks, who has joined
the Department as the BBTI Research Fellow, has recently completed doctoral
work on the history of the book trade in Leicester and is already familiar
with BBTI in its present form, both as a user and contributor of data.
Under his editorial guidance, the Web version of the BBTI will become the
centrepiece of a new Birmingham Web-portal for the exchange and dissemination
of research information concerning book-trade history.
Contact for further information:
John Hinks
Department of English
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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