Research
Making scholarly research possible is what the American Antiquarian
Society is all about. Mostly, such research is carried out by the
thousands of scholars who travel from all over the world to work in the
Society's library. The "research" part of the Society's mandate is
intended both to provide the means by which its staff carries on research
and to provide directed activities in which others take part. The
Society's director of research and publication coordinates funded research
projects within the Society. Such undertakings have included the Catalogue
of American Engravings and the North American Imprints Program, both
funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The former is
a checklist of all engravings that were published in America through 1820
either as separates or as illustrations in books. The latter is an
undertaking that will result in a computerized database describing all
books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in America through 1876.
One major research program has educational overtones as well. It is the
Program in the History of the Book in American Culture. AAS established
the Program in 1983 in order to focus the Society's resources on promoting
an emerging field of interdisciplinary inquiry. In doing so, AAS draws not
only on its traditional resources as a center of bibliographical research
and as a matchless repository of printed matter, but also on certain
intellectual currents from abroad that look at the history of books in
their full economic, social, and cultural context. In order to accomplish
its goal of providing intellectual leadership in this field, the Program
has sponsored conferences, publications, seminars, and research
fellowships. A summer seminar in the history of the book, offering
short-term, intensive training in methodologies and concepts, was
initiated in 1985. The seminar has been successful in assembling a
stimulating range of persons concerned with the field. A conference that
included European scholars was held in 1984, and resulted in the
publication of Needs and Opportunities in the History of the
Book: America, 1639- 1876. An earlier conference in 1980 resulted in
the
publication of Printing and Society in Early America, a collection
of
original essays, some of which have since become widely cited. More recent
conferences have focused on teaching the history of the book and on the
iconography of the book. The annual series of James Russell Wiggins
Lectures in the History of the Book in American Culture, inaugurated in
1983, has brought forth important conceptual statements by leading
scholars in different disciplines touching on the field. A thrice-yearly
newsletter, The Book, serves as the chief means by which the
Program
communicates with its various constituencies and publishes substantive
pieces on research collections and on research in progress. A significant
goal of the Program is the publication, in the 1990s, of a multivolume,
collaborative history of the book in American culture from the early
seventeenth century to our own times.
-John B. Hench, Vice-President for Collections and Programs
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The First Democratization Project is a
collection
of election returns for the United States during the period 1787-1825.
More information on the Society's Program in the History of the Book is
available under
the heading of "History of the Book" under the
heading of "Academic Programs" in the "Programs" section of this
website.
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