Alistair Black – författare

The Routledge Handbook of Information History offers a definitive, inclusive, and far-reaching study of how information practices have influenced—and have been influenced by—society, politics, culture, and technology over millennia.

Information is often considered a defining characteristic of modern society, but it is far from a modern phenomenon. In the last decades, historians have started to ask new questions about how information was understood in the past, suggesting that it has a history which is long, complex, and multifaceted. This influential volume is the first large-scale collection to use the term Information History as its titular focus, situating "information" within the historiography of the field. The book showcases a diverse assembly of over forty international contributors who explore information practices from antiquity to the contemporary world, with geographical coverage ranging across Europe, Africa, Asia, as well as North and South America.

Including overview chapters alongside a wide range of in-depth empirical studies, this ground-breaking collection will appeal to scholars and students across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, offering readers unique insights into how historical practices have influenced the understanding and role of information in our modern world.

The Routledge Handbook of Information History offers a definitive, inclusive, and far-reaching study of how information practices have influenced—and have been influenced by—society, politics, culture, and technology over millennia.

Information is often considered a defining characteristic of modern society, but it is far from a modern phenomenon. In the last decades, historians have started to ask new questions about how information was understood in the past, suggesting that it has a history which is long, complex, and multifaceted. This influential volume is the first large-scale collection to use the term Information History as its titular focus, situating "information" within the historiography of the field. The book showcases a diverse assembly of over forty international contributors who explore information practices from antiquity to the contemporary world, with geographical coverage ranging across Europe, Africa, Asia, as well as North and South America.

Including overview chapters alongside a wide range of in-depth empirical studies, this ground-breaking collection will appeal to scholars and students across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, offering readers unique insights into how historical practices have influenced the understanding and role of information in our modern world.

For the first hundred years or so of their history, public libraries in Britain were built in an array of revivalist architectural styles. This backward-looking tradition was decisively broken in the 1960s as many new libraries were erected up and down the country.

In this new Routledge book, Alistair Black argues that the architectural modernism of the post-war years was symptomatic of the age’s spirit of renewal. In the 1960s, public libraries truly became ‘libraries of light’, and Black further explains how this phrase not only describes the shining new library designs – with their open-plan, decluttered, Scandinavian-inspired designs – but also serves as a metaphor for the public library’s role as a beacon of social egalitarianism and cultural universalism.

A sequel to Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), Black''s new book takes his fascinating story of the design of British public libraries into the era of architectural modernism.

For the first hundred years or so of their history, public libraries in Britain were built in an array of revivalist architectural styles. This backward-looking tradition was decisively broken in the 1960s as many new libraries were erected up and down the country.

In this new Routledge book, Alistair Black argues that the architectural modernism of the post-war years was symptomatic of the age’s spirit of renewal. In the 1960s, public libraries truly became ‘libraries of light’, and Black further explains how this phrase not only describes the shining new library designs – with their open-plan, decluttered, Scandinavian-inspired designs – but also serves as a metaphor for the public library’s role as a beacon of social egalitarianism and cultural universalism.

A sequel to Books, Buildings and Social Engineering (2009), Black''s new book takes his fascinating story of the design of British public libraries into the era of architectural modernism.