{"product_id":"9780814211717","title":"Collections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe fourteen essays that comprise \u003ci\u003eCollections in Context: The Organization of Knowledge and Community in Europe\u003c\/i\u003e interrogate questions posed by French, Flemish, English, and Italian collections of all sorts—libraries as a whole, anthologies and miscellanies assembled within a single manuscript or printed book, and even illustrated ivory boxes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCollecting became an increasingly important activity during the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries, when the decreased cost of producing books made ownership available to more people. But the act of collecting is never neutral: it gathers information, orders material (especially linear texts), and prioritizes everything—in short, collecting both organizes and comments on knowledge. Moreover, the context of a collection must reveal something about identity, but whose? That of the compiler? The reader or viewer? The donor? The patron?\u003cbr\u003eWith essays by a wide array of international scholars, \u003ci\u003eCollections in Context\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates that the very act of collecting inevitably imposes some kind of relationship among what might otherwise be naively thought of as disparate elements and simultaneously exposes something about the community that created and used the collection. Thus, \u003ci\u003eCollections in Context\u003c\/i\u003e offers unusual insights into how collecting both produced knowledge and built community in early modern Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ohio State University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47016725315824,"sku":"9780814211717","price":54.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780814211717_p0.jpg?v=1763746291","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780814211717","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}