The National Printed Archive from Panizzi’s Time to the Digital Era

Abstract

• We have tended to view the modern development of the national research library and printed archive in the West in terms of a sequence of conspicuous innovators: Panizzi, Althoff and Harnack , Putnam and Evans, Francis and Hookway. Such a sequence can be best understood if it is seen as interacting not only with the order of learning but with the larger process of cultural-political change in general.