This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew, and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

This wide-ranging dictionary contains a wealth of information on all aspects of history, from prehistory right up to the present day. Over 4,000 clear, concise entries include biographies of key figures in world history (living and dead), separate entries for every country in the world (summarising key historical events), and in-depth entries on religious and political movements, international organizations, and major conflicts and events and their after-effects. For this new edition, existing entries have been revised and updated to reflect the very latest global events including changes in leadership, wars, political situations, and the statistical information given for each country (population counts, currency, languages, religions). New entries have been included for key figures who have recently come to prominence and world events. The book also contains twenty-five detailed maps linked to key historical events and topics. These include the African slave trade, the Black Death, and the Normandy campaign. Also included are over 200 country maps. The dictionary is enhanced by entry-level web links which are accessed via a dedicated companion website. Encyclopedic in scope, this ambitious A to Z provides an excellent overview of world history both for students and anyone with an interest in the subject.

Although the history of librarianship as an organized profession dates only as far back as the mid-19th century, the history of libraries is much older, and people have been engaged in pursuits that we recognize as librarianship for many thousands of years. This book traces librarianship from its origins in ancient times through its development in response to the need to control the flood of information in the modern world to the profound transformations brought about by the new technologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The Historical Dictionary of Librarianship focuses on librarianship as a modern, organized profession, emphasizing the period beginning in the mid-19th century. Author Mary Ellen Quinn relates the history of this profession through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, libraries around the world, and notable organizations and associations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about librarianship.

This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions, introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent horrifying pillage and burning of books in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.

This book advances the belief that the library--more than any other cultural institution--collects, curates and distributes the results of human thought. Essays broaden the debate about academic libraries beyond only professional circles, promoting the library as a vital resource for the whole of higher education. Topics range from library histories to explorations of changing media. Essayists connect modern libraries to the remarkable dream of Alexandria's ancient library--facilitating groundbreaking research in every imaginable field of human interest, past, present and future. Academic librarians who are most familiar with historical traditions are best qualified to promote the library as an important aspect of teaching and learning, as well as to develop resources that will enlighten future generations of readers. The intellectual tools for compelling, constructive conversation come from the narrative of the library in its many iterations, from the largest research university to the smallest liberal arts or community college.

A broad, comparative history of librarianship, this intriguing work goes beyond the standard focus on institutions and collections to help you explore the part modern librarianship played—and continues to play—in forming Western cultures. Previous histories of libraries in the Western world—the last of which was published nearly 20 years ago—concentrate on libraries and librarians. This book takes a different approach. It focuses on the practice of librarianship, showing you how that practice has contributed to constructing the heritage of cultures. To do so, this groundbreaking collection of essays presents the history of modern librarianship in the context of recent developments of the library institution, professionalization of librarianship, and innovation through information technology. Organized by region, the book addresses the widely recognized, international impact of Anglo-American librarianship and its continuing influence over the past century, combining critical analysis with chronological histories of modern librarianship in Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, and Africa. An introductory chapter explains the origins of the project, and a concluding chapter examines the effects of digitization on modern librarianship in the 21st century.

Modeled on Fitzroy Dearborn's highly successful International Dictionary of Historic Places , the International Dictionary of University Histories provides basic information on 200 institutions--location, description, sources of further information--followed by an extensive 3000 to 5000 word essay on each university's history. Entries on each university conclude with a Further Reading list, and most entries are illustrated. Coverage is world-wide, and entries range from the great medieval institutions (Oxford, Heidelberg, the Sorbonne) to the great historic universities of the United States, to the newer universities of Australia and South Africa, to the lesser-known universities of India, China, and Japan. More than 200 writers, researchers and archival departments of the universities themselves have contributed to the Dictionary . Entries include those universities with the most fascinating histories and those that have played important roles in the development of their own countries and in the furtherance of world scholarship.