This exhibition draws upon the University's rich and varied printed book collection to explore the significance of the advent of printing and its impact on the development of western civilization. The invention of printing with movable types began a revolution in what, why, and how we read, learn and view the world around us. It transformed the speed of communication and the spread of knowledge with a rapidity unmatched until our present age.

The current communication revolution in which computer technology is challenging the role of the printed word invites us to re-examine the impact of printing on the cultural landscape since the fifteenth century, and in so doing consider whether the traditional world of the book is fast disappearing, or whether it will again be transformed by technological advances to expand our experience of reading and learning.

The purpose of this exhibition, within the space available, is to illustrate the development of printing as a craft and to demonstrate the effect it has had on the course of history. The task of selecting a representative sample from the mass of significant material has necessarily been one of exclusion rather than inclusion, but the intention was to capture, in the manner of a snapshot, something of the diversity of the collection and to convey its significant cultural value as a research resource.

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Click on a "thumbnail"... ... for a larger image

Photography by Suzanne Yee, Graphics Unit

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The URL of this page is http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/exhibs/Artofthe Book.html
constructed by Paddy Collis
created March 1997; edited by Katy Hooper 2006