Afterword : the future of FBTEE : towards a digital history of the book

Simon Burrows, Jason Ensor

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

![CDATA[Soon after the publication of the FBTEE-1. 0 database in June 2012, other scholars began to suggest it was a game-changing digital resource. According to Jeremy Caradonna, in a comparison with Stanford University’s much-discussed ‘Mapping the Republic of Letters’ digital project, FBTEE was ‘one of the best and most cutting-edge digital tools that historians of early modernity now possess. … [It brings the] historical profession into the age of interactive digital technologies and GIS. ’ Other accolades were similarly enthusiastic. Robert Darnton called the database and interface ‘a prodigious achievement and a joy to use’. The effusiveness of this praise came as a surprise. The FBTEE project was born of a set of tightly organized research questions: a database approach had been chosen because it appeared the best means to answer them. At the start of the project, we had not considered our approach particularly novel. Databases were by the mid-noughties a mature technology and widely used in commercial and research organisations. The discipline formerly known as ‘humanities computing’ had a long and illustrious pedigree. Even the term ‘Digital Humanities’ had been in use among practitioners since before the turn of the millennium.]]
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers
EditorsSimon Burrows
Place of PublicationU.K.
PublisherBloomsbury
Pages175-180
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781441182173
ISBN (Print)9781441126016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • book industries and trade
  • bibliometrics
  • databases

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