This history of reading goes from the earliest examples of the clay tablets and cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to today's digital revolution. It argues that it is the demands of the reader, acting alongside the will of the writer, that is the evolutionary motor of literary genres.

Takes the reader into the houses of forty booklovers to view their personal libraries and reading spaces. This book includes professional advice on editing and categorizing your library; caring for your books; preserving, restoring and storing rare books; finding out-of-print books; and choosing furniture, lighting and shelving.

Since the 1950s, some of the world's greatest libraries have dismantled much of their collections of original bound newspapers and books, replacing them with microfilmed copies. In this book the real motives behind the dismantling of our recorded heritage is examined.

What would you find if you went back and re-read all of your favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness, in this memoir of a boy who retreats into books, faced with a tragedy in his family.

Alexander Short, a stylish young reference librarian, is hired by Henry James Jesson III for some after-hours research on a mysterious 18th-century inventor. As his investigation heats up, Alexander realizes there are many more secrets lurking in Jesson's cloistered world than were first apparent.

Richard Rubin has written a completely revised and updated edition of the first textbook - and most widely-used - specifically written to cover the fundamentals of library and information science.