Books Communities

History of Books Communities

Online communities draw from, engage with, and extend a historical baseline of books communities. The dissemination and sharing of books has a long history, and the networks of communication and action around books has played an important role in the history of public discourse. Understanding the historical role books communities have played will help connect the role of recent online books communities to a significant body of work on books communities throughout history.

Books communities are as old as books themselves. Before the advent and spread of the printing press, the scarcity of print works meant that the networks around the creation and dissemination of print works were very small. Before the printing press, books communities primary consisted of groups of scribes, monastic societies, and, in some cases, the social elite. The advent and spread of the printing press had an enormous effect on the social networks surrounding books and their communities. By rapidly printing standardized copies of works, the printing press enabled quicker sharing, dissemination, and propagation of works across increasingly larger communities. Elizabeth Eisenstein has argued that the printing press's ability to disseminate knowledge through communities played a crucial role in the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.

As literacy rates grew in the following centuries and book ownership expanded throughout upper-class Western society, locations for discussing books played an increasingly important role in politics. Sociologist Jürgen Habermas has argued that 17th- and 18th-century European salons and English coffeehouses, which served as public discussion arenas for books, played a crucial role in the creation of the modern public sphere, which he defines as the space in social life where individuals discuss and identify problems in society and, through that discussion, engage in political action. While mass media has created several other modes for sustaining the public sphere, books communities—including book of the month and book clubs—continue to provide an important space for public interaction. Elizabeth Long has argued that various formats of book clubs continue to provide spaces, particularly for women, where individuals can work out their own identity and needs through collectively engaging with the books they read. Cecilia Konchar Farr has argued that Oprah's Book Club in particular has played a significant [Page 84]role in pushing many women to explore literary works with which they would otherwise not have engaged.

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