- DFG Project "Thüring von Ringoltingen's "Melusine" in German printing from 1473/1474 to the 19th century"
- DFG Project Academic Portal for Library, Book and Information Studies (b2i)
- Hypermedia publishing
- Book Adventure. Books are treasure-troves of hidden worlds. Promoting reading amongst children of nursery and primary school age.
Thüring von Ringoltingen's "Melusine" in German printing from 1473/1474 to the 19th century
This project focuses on the (printed) book of Thüring von Ringoltingen's "Melusine"; it looks at how the late medieval and early modern book trader planned, published and distributed the work, as well as how it was received by its purchasers.
Key jobs to be carried out by the project are the recording, description and analysis of the printed work as it was published – from the first print by the Basel-based printer Bernhard Richel in 1473-1474, right up to the last of the "Volksbuch" editions in the 1870s.
The main aims of the research are to analyse: the writing dialect and style, and its rhetoric; the nature and function of the pictures (image series) in the book and on the title page; the iconography; and the roles of the various image authors and publishers in the book production process. The research also looks at the presentation and typography of the book – at which materials were used to publish the book.
By examining the four hundred year history of this book, the impacts of the interactions between book production, book design, redaction, reading and the reader should become clear.
The project has been set up to be interdisciplinary in nature. The disciplines of Book Studies (book publication, book trade, the reading audience and the market), History of Reading (layout and literature), History of Language (language development from 15th to 19th century, organisation of text, printing technologies) and Art History (image and media history, text-image relationship, understanding images, transfer processes) all contribute to the project with their own lines of study and research.
The German Research Foundation initially gave the project funding for December 2007 to December 2009; the financial support was extended to last until the end of March 2011.
Project Direction
Professor Ursula Rautenberg (Book Studies, project leader), Professor Mechthild Habermann (Linguistics) and Professor Heidrun Stein-Kecks (Art History).
Researchers
Dr Hans-Jörg Künast (Book Studies), Martin Behr (Linguistics) and Benedicta Feraudi (Art History).
Publications
Behr, Martin / Habermann, Mechthild: Die textgeschichtliche Tradierung der „Melusine“ aus sprachwissenschaftlicher Sicht. Die oberdeutschen Offizinen von 1473/74 bis 1516.
Hespers, Simone: Die „Melusine“ des Thüring von Ringoltingen in der Drucküberlieferung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchungen zu Repräsentationssystematik und Rezeptionsästhetik der Illustrationen.
Künast, Hans-Jörg: Die Drucküberlieferung des Melusine-Romans in Frankfurt am Main in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts.
Rautenberg, Ursula: Typographie und Leseweisen. Überlegungen zu den Melusine-Ausgaben der Frankfurter Offizinen Gülfferich und Weigand Han/Han Erben. (Alle Publikationen im Druck).
Project Website
http://www.buchwiss.uni-erlangen.de/homepage_melusine.html
DFG Project Academic Portal for Library, Book and Information Studies (b2i)
The central internet portal for Library, Book and Information Studies provides a hub where these closely-linked departments can pool their learning and research resources. This leads to a uniform search interface through which all of their collective information can be accessed.
With one search on the b2i platform the user can access a multitude of printed and electronic materials, internet resources and factual publications. In addition to straightforward searches by author or key words, the portal also allows the user to browse by topic. The site is ideal for academics, students and individuals working in the fields of Book, Library or Information Studies.
The b2i portal is a collaborative project involving the State and University Library (SUB) in Göttingen, the Department of Information Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, the Library Network (KNB) at the German Library Assocation in Berlin (DBV) and the Book Studies department at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Since 1st January 2008 the Bavarian State Library in Munich has been responsible for the project.
From 1st March 2007 to 30th June 2008 the Erlangen Book Studies department's participation in the b2i project was funded by the German Research Foundation. This paid for a new research position in the department, student researchers and research materials.
One of the department's responsibilities was the creation of a subject gateway where websites related to Book Studies could be listed for others' reference. The department was also involved in the conceptual development of a bibliographic database for Book Studies. This indexed several library catalogues and bibliographies (for example the OPAC index of the St Galler Centre for the Book, the "Wolfenbütteler Bibliography of the History of the Book in the German-speaking world" (WBB) and the "Bibliography of the Book and the History of the Library" (BBB).
You can search the database from the comfort of your home for free, for example when looking for literature for a thesis.
In the summer of 2009 the German Research Foundation approved an application made by the Erlangen Book Studies department for permission to expand the Book Studies section of the portal. The Community made available considerable personnel and resources to support the department in this endeavour.
As part of this second phase of the b2i project, the department is currently developing an E-learning module which will teach students important IT skills. The subject gateway is also being improved and an evaluation of the Book Studies section of the portal is being carried out. This work began on 1st October 2009 and is being undertaken in close cooperation with the Bavarian State Library in Munich and other in some cases international partners.
Project Direction
Professor Ursula Rautenberg
Researcher
Nikolaus Weichselbaumer
Publications
Capellaro, Christof / Duntze, Oliver: Das Wissenschaftsportal b2i und seine buchwissenschaftlichen Inhalte. In: Rautenberg, Ursula (Hrsg.): Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland. Ein Handbuch. Bd. 2: Lehre, Fachkommunikation und Institutionen. Berlin 2010, S. 735–756.
Project Website
www.b2i.de – Academic portal for Book, Library and Information Studies.
Hypermedia publishing
This project is in the conception and planning phase.
There is currently no digital history of the book that makes use of the tremendous facility offered by the internet. We would therefore like to write a new history of the book in the German-speaking world – one covering everything from Gutenberg to present-day authors. This is a wholly new concept.
An important aspect of this project is a systematic definition of media. Works will be organised according to four over-arching concepts: quality of resource, level of organisation, level of institutionalisation and functionality.
A strictly chronological approach is rejected in favour of the labels above – within which events can be listed in historical order. Listing for example History of Technologies events in sequence would produce a different result to listing by forms of book trade businesses.
This presentation is ideally suited for the electronic format which allows access not only by epochs and time periods but also by thematic groups. Summaries of the individual system elements are another advantage to this form of organisation, as is the ability to combine the text with multimedia elements.
Between the beginning of February and the end of March 2010 an online survey was carried out. It asked how a digital history of the book should be composed – in terms of content, format and structure. The results of the survey can be found in the following work: Greifeneder, Elke / Kuhn, Axel / Rühr, Sandra: Construction and Development of a Digital History of the Book. Study of the requirements and target groups (Alles Buch. Research at the Erlangen Book Studies department XXXIV. Erlangen 2010). Complete article.
Abenteuer Buch. Books are treasure-troves of hidden worlds. Promoting reading amongst children of nursery and primary school age
The Book Adventure project became a part of the Book Studies department in January 2006. For two years project participants, with the help of partner nurseries and schools, designed, tested and analysed strategies for improving reading and speaking skills amongst children of nursery and primary school age. In November 2008 the project team was awarded the Sparda-Future Prize "Education for children" for its work.
The core idea of the project was to make not reading or reading out loud the focus but the book itself: its creation, its history, its use in daily life and many other interesting aspects of the literary world.
With the help of teachers, children and parents the project team was able to create the building blocks of Book Adventure. These building blocks provoke questions about many aspects of books – questions which should awaken children's natural curiosity. And the playful search for answers to these questions has a number of positive didactic effects on different aspects of children's reading and media awareness.
Thanks to the many experiences gained while testing its strategies, the team is now working on the first product of the project – the publication "Book Adventure. A book of knowledge and experience for the old and the young". It gives details of lots of book-related activities and communicates many interesting and exciting facts from the world of the book in an accessible way.
In addition to the work with nurseries and schools the Book Adventure project is also involved with the KinderUni in Nürnberg and the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften" ("The Long Night of Science"), an open evening of sorts where children and adults alike are encouraged to take part in stimulating academic activities.
The project remains active on an academic level too: in May 2008 the project organised an international colloquium on the topic of "promoting reading amongst nursery and primary school age children – academic discussion and practical initiatives". In April 2009 a publication of the same name was released.
Project Leaders
Stefan Salamonsberger (Operations Management, Idea and Concept)
Dr Volker Titel (Academic Direction)
Researchers
Melanie Ehrlich, Katja Oesterlein
Publications
Lesesozialisation in Forschung und Praxis. Das Projekt „Abenteuer Buch“ am Fach Buchwissenschaft der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Hrsg. von Stefan Salamonsberger u. a. Erlangen 2010.
Leseförderung im Kindergarten- und Grundschulalter. Wissenschaftlicher Diskurs und praktische Initiativen. Hrsg. von Stefan Salamonsberger u. a. Erlangen 2009.
Project Website