Book Ownership Research Articles

Book Ownership in Stuart England: Lyell Lectures in Bibliography

Book Ownership in Stuart England: Lyell Lectures in Bibliography

Domesticating Human Capital

This article investigates the consumption of knowledge in early modern Amsterdam. A dataset of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century probate inventories is employed to examine the synergies and inequalities between the skilled and educated middle classes and the intellectual elites. A series of democratisation waves in the ownership of books, writing equipment, and measuring tools confirms the unprecedented levels of basic literacy and numeracy skills in the urban centres of the early modern Low Countries revealed by research on signature proficiency and age heaping. The concentration of secular books and advanced knowledge objects in the hands of a small but growing group of affluent households, on the other hand, corresponds to other research that has fixated instead on the role of upper-tail human capital in scientific, technological, and economic progress. Yet, the relatively low value estimates of libraries and scientific instruments, together with a more qualitative examination of two amateur scientists of middling background, dovetails with the hypothesis that the Dutch Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment were marked by a close interaction and mobility between craftsmen and scientists. An above-average income and enough leisure time to develop intellectual interests could be sufficient for inhabitants of Amsterdam to cross the Rubicon from consuming to (re)producing knowledge.

Trends in Malaysian Adolescents’ Mathematics Performance Across Two Decades: What Factors Matter?

The relationship between individual and school factors plays a crucial role in shaping adolescents' mathematics achievement. Individual factors, such as a student's motivation and educational expectation, directly influence their engagement and persistence in mathematical learning. Concurrently, school factors, including teacher quality and the availability of resources, create an environment that either fosters or hinders students' academic success in mathematics. Together, these factors underscore the need for a holistic approach to education that recognizes the interconnectedness of personal and institutional influences on student performance. Thus, this study investigates what individual and school factors have been associated with adolescents’ mathematics achievement over the last two decades. We examined six-wave data of Malaysia from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Multilevel modeling technique was employed for data composed of 5557, 5314, 4466, 5733, 9726, and 7065 eighth-grade students participating in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019, respectively. The results showed that 65.17%, 57.44%, 65.89%, 73.00%, 43.16%, and 61.69% of the total variance in mathematics achievement was due to school differences in these years. The findings also indicated that students with higher mathematics motivational beliefs scored higher. Students who more frequently spoke the language of the test at home achieved lower scores in the four waves of TIMSS; however, this trend changed in 2015 and 2019. Student educational aspiration emerged as a positive predictor of mathematics achievement in the last two assessments of TIMSS. Home educational resources and book ownership also significantly correlated with mathematics achievement. At the school level, teacher gender was negatively associated with achievement in all TIMSS waves except 2019. Students whom female teachers taught outperformed those whom male teachers taught. The longitudinal study of Malaysian students' mathematics performance reveals critical insights for educational stakeholders. The findings indicate that 43.16% to 73.00% of the variance in mathematical achievement is linked to school differences, underscoring the importance of equitable resource distribution. Moreover, students' motivational beliefs significantly influence their mathematics scores, suggesting a need for interventions that foster positive attitudes. The evolving correlation between home language proficiency and achievement emphasizes the necessity of integrating language support into educational strategies. Additionally, promoting educational aspirations is vital for enhancing performance, while the role of gender dynamics in teacher effectiveness warrants further exploration.

‘Dis Köstliche Büchli’: the books of the Dünz, Wyss, and d’Hervart families at Nostell Priory

ABSTRACT The arrival of books by dowry or inheritance into family libraries frequently introduces unexpected evidence of book ownership. Often fragmentary and out of context, these collections are routinely overlooked. This paper examines one such collection, a group of c. 140 books which arrived at Nostell Priory in 1781, part of the inheritance of Louise Sabine d'Hervart (1734–1798), shipped from her childhood home in Vevey, Switzerland. Primarily Germanic, printed between 1550 and 1700, these books chart the reading, interests, and circles of acquaintance of three generations of the Dünz family, an important Brugg dynasty of artists, glass painters, and architects active in the cultural and political life of Bern and its locality. The paper opens with a discussion of some of the methodological challenges facing those working with women's books in private libraries. It then examines the Swiss German books at Nostell, showing how they inform us of the cultural, intellectual, and social lives of members of the Dünz and related families, both male and female. Specifically, these books reveal a culture of book giving and the recording of the exchange of books, but also of close and long-standing relationships between their owners and significant members of the Swiss book trade.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF LOW BIRTH WEIGHT WITH STUNTING INCIDENTS IN ACEH IN 2022

Background: Stunting is a failure in growth and development experienced by children due to insufficient nutritional intake, infectious diseases over a long period of time which is characterized by length or height that is not appropriate for their age. Stunting is still a major health problem in Aceh Province because its prevalence is still high and is ranked 5th nationally. Objective: to determine the determinants of stunting in toddlers in Aceh Province. Research method: Descriptive quantitative research with a cross sectional design with a sample size of 16865 toddlers obtained from total sampling based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The data used is 2022 SSGI data belonging to the Ministry of Health's BKPK. The independent variables in this study include Early Breastfeeding Initiation (IMD), completeness of immunization, ISPA, diarrhea, ownership of health insurance, ownership of KIA books, drinking water facilities, ownership of toilets, mother's education, gender of toddler, birth weight, number of families, and regional classification. Data analysis includes univariate and bivariate using chii square and multivariate using multiple logistic regression. Results: The prevalence of stunting in children aged 0 – 59 months is 31.7% in Aceh Province in 2022. Bivariate results are low birth weight (p=0.033). Conclusion: the high prevalence of stunting in Aceh Province in 2022 is caused by multiple and interrelated factors, both specific and sensitive. To reduce the stunting rate, preventive and promotive measures need to be taken early on.by carrying out routine check-ups during pregnancy and consuming a variety of foods. Short birth length babies need to receive growth and development monitoring, additional food and nutrition and health Information Communication and Education (KIE) interventions for mothers of toddlers.

Pemanfaatan Buku Kesehatan Ibu dan Anak (KIA) Dalam Persiapan Persalinan

Objective: Abstract Breast milk (mother's milk) is the only natural food for babies. Preparation for childbirth is everything that is understood and prepared in terms of welcoming the birth of a child by pregnant women. Preparation for childbirth is an important part of the delivery process, aimed at improving optimal health before childbirth. Based on 2018 Riskesdas data regarding ownership of KIA books in Indonesia, there are still 24.9% of pregnant women who do not have KIA books. This research aims to determine the use of Maternal and Child Health (KIA) books in preparation for childbirth at the Jagir Surabaya Community Health Center. Methods: This research is a quantitative research with a descriptive design. In this research, the sample collection technique used purposive sampling with a population of 45 respondents and a sample of 40 respondents. The data collection technique used in this research is primary data in the form of a questionnaire. Results: The results of the research showed that 40 pregnant women (100%) carried the MCH book during the examination well, 21 pregnant women (52.5%) read the MCH book well, and 30 pregnant women applied the contents of the MCH book well (75%). Conclusion: The use of the MCH book can be assessed from three aspects, including bringing the MCH book when carrying out examinations, reading the contents of the MCH book, and applying the messages contained in the MCH book, one of which is regarding childbirth preparation.

Children’s reading and screen media use before, during and after the pandemic: Australian parent perspectives

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s mediascape through a repeated cross-sectional study involving primary caregivers of children aged 7–13 in Australia. Survey 1 was conducted as COVID-19 lockdowns ended in 2021, to examine how extended lockdowns had affected children’s reading habits and screen media usage and how parents had adapted their media supervision and guidance strategies. Survey 2 was carried out one year later to gain insights from the post-pandemic period. The data revealed that the pandemic and lockdowns had led to a substantial increase in children’s ownership and usage of digital devices. In contrast, children’s personal ownership of traditional books and e-book readers had declined, and digital books were less popular than other digital content. Parents, who expanded their involvement in active mediation and media co-use during the pandemic, largely reverted to monitoring and restricting their children’s media activities after it.

Late-Medieval Commonplace Culture, the Pastoral Compendium, and the Form of Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living

Abstract This article examines the disjointed textual form of Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living, one of the most widely circulated English texts of the Middle Ages. It argues that The Form reflects the traditions of the pastoral miscellany and compendium, which were new kinds of texts that emerged following pastoral reforms in late-medieval Europe. Expanding book ownership among parish priests led to the development of a clerical ‘commonplace culture’ in which priests excerpted useful passages from larger reference works to fill blank spaces in their books, or transformed them into streamlined compendia for devotional reading. This article argues that an important facet of Rolle’s process of composing The Form of Living involved his excerpting and reshaping larger pastoral reference works and whatever else he had to hand. This challenges the way that past scholarship has often understood the work in terms of Rolle’s individuality and personal touch: instead, this article seeks to locate Rolle’s creativity in his unlikely transformation of rote pastoral fare into ambitious devotional literature. Contextualizing The Form in this way offers a richer understanding of its form, giving insights into why Rolle chose this format and why it was valued by medieval readers. It also suggests that developing new models for late-medieval compilatio can offer new ways to think about textual organization and authorial composition more broadly.

LATVIAN BOOKPLATE ART FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 20th CENTURY TO THR EARLY 21st CENTURY – CONTRIBUTION OF GRAPHIC ARTIST DZIDRA EZERGAILE

Book ownership determinant – ex libris – has undergone considerable transformations in Latvia – from flourishment during the second half of the 20th century to decline in the beginning of the 21st century. Artistic legacy of Dzidra Ezergaile, which includes not only graphic works but also several thousands of bookplates created in the course of a half century, leads to a better understanding of this process. Enormous interest in creating bookplates by professional printmakers in the course of a half century Latvia was secured by several factors. Alongside the broad audience among collectors, regular exhibitions of bookplates were organized by national Ex libris Society contributing to popularity of bookplates in Latvia. Not without encouragement of the teacher of the Art Academy of Latvia and a bookplate collector of global reputation Pēteris Upītis (1899–1989) many of the most talented artists of their day produced high-quality bookplates, among them Dzidra Ezergaile, Dainis Rožkalns (1928–2018) and Zigurds Zuze (1929–2003). Nowadays with increasing interest in ownership signs the bookplate regains its role in expressing visual identity of the owner of a book. Ex libris created by Dzidra Ezergaile provide numerous examples of vital transformations in the production of bookplates.

Civic Fictions: Modelling book-reader interactions in the Age of Revolution

This article describes a new, database-linking project, Civic Fictions, based at Radboud University (The Netherlands), and funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), that seeks to develop digital tools to address a series of questions that have long been fundamental to literary studies, and to book history and 18th-century studies more specifically. Is it possible to model the effects that books had on real readers in the past? How can we understand such book–reader interactions using both existing and new bibliographic data collections? How might prosopographical, longitudinal studies focusing on readers supplement or enrich quantitative bibliographic sources on books? Can this enrichment offer us insights into the long-term reading habits of book readers, owners or borrowers? And can we then extrapolate the impact of books onto the various social networks in which these readers participated throughout their lives? Building on the European Research Council-funded MEDIATE database, and creating an ecosystem of linked databases, Civic Fictions seeks to empirically test various modern theories about fiction’s supposed ability to foster empathy, work through trauma and build community during the Age of Revolution (c. 1760–1830). In doing so, it addresses a major challenge in book history, the lack of comprehensive reader-reception data like ego-documents, by using large-scale data on the circulation of books among identifiable, individual readers as a reader-reception source. Thus, the project links book ownership (private library catalogues, bookseller’s archives), borrowing practices (library lending-records) and other sources to individual actors and larger (socio-economic, professional, gender, etc.) groupings. Coupling data on ownership to longitudinal studies of book owners’ lives and societal interventions, it thereby aims to reveal macro-patterns allowing historians to infer how works of fiction might historically have moved readers.

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP MARKS OF FRENCH COLLECTORS OF BOOKS IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: NEW FINDINGS AND PERSPECTIVES OF STUDIES

The article provides information on new findings and perspectives of studying French private marks of book ownership in the collections of the Scientific Library of Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University. The attention is paid to the bookplates, armorial bindings as well as owners’ inscriptions mainly in the Vorontsov collection.

The Dangers of Desire: Medieval Franciscans as Book Owners

Abstract The Order of the Friars Minor faced a dilemma from the outset: their Rule of life, written by their founder St Francis of Assisi, included a strict adherence to the ideal of absolute poverty (that is, living without property, even property held in common), and yet it was impossible to fulfil their pastoral activities in the community without at least one type of property – liturgical books. In both the earlier (1209/10–1221) and later (1223) Rules, St Francis discussed the ownership of books, but not their production. Surviving manuscripts and archival records alert us to the fact that friars did produce their own liturgical books and act as the scribes and illuminators of books made for others. As both producers and owners of illuminated manuscripts, the friars engaged in a careful navigation of the relationship between beauty (permissible as an expression of invisible divine beauty, as defined by Hugh of St Victor) and luxury. It was all too easy (as the Franciscan Durand of Champagne bemoaned) for friars to desire ‘beautiful … and … curiously illuminated [books, rather] than true and well corrected ones’. This essay explores the ways in which friars negotiated the issues of poverty, beauty and luxury, and how they expressed and satisfied their desire for books, drawing on examples from the library of the Sacro Convento in Assisi.

Seeking Oasis in Book Deserts: Building Home Libraries to Create Equity in Book Ownership

Libraries have long promoted book giveaways to increase the love of reading and books. The educational benefits are well documented for increased print and book ownership access. Libraries also leverage programs such as 1000 Books Before Kindergarten and summer learning as popular programs to help families grow home libraries.Despite these efforts, there are many socioeconomic disparities in which children in this country own books. Espinosa et al. found that children in the highest socioeconomic status have over five times the books in their homes as children in the lowest quartile. A study by van Bergen et al. found that the number of books in the home helps predict early reading abilities, yet these gaps in book ownership persist.

The Library at Bræðratunga: Manuscript Ownership and Private Library-Building in Early Modern Iceland

Library institutions did not exist in early modern Iceland, meaning that private ownership was central to the preservation of pre-modern manuscripts and literature. However, personal collections are poorly documented in comparison to the activities of manuscript collectors such as Árni Magnússon. This article examines the case study of Helga Magnúsdóttir (1623–1677) and book ownership at her home of Bræðratunga in South Iceland, concluding that Helga Magnúsdóttir engaged in library-building as a social strategy following the death of her husband, Hákon Gíslason (1614–1652). The inventory of the Bræðratunga estate from 1653 includes only four books, all printed. However, nine manuscripts are conclusively identified as having been at Bræðratunga at least briefly during the period from c. 1653 to 1677, and evidence for the presence of another five items is discussed. Examination of surviving volumes suggests that Helga’s goal was to participate in an active culture of sharing manuscript material across distances, rather than to accumulate a large stationary collection of printed books and codices for Bræðratunga. She thereby played an important but easily overlooked role in the survival of Old Norse-Icelandic literature in the early modern period. Of the manuscripts at Bræðratunga, at least two likely came from Helga’s childhood home of Munkaþverá in North Iceland, the former site of a Benedictine monastery. Her cousin Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skálholt (1605–1675) also gifted books to Helga and her family, and on his death she inherited half of his collection of Icelandic books and manuscripts, making her the owner of one of the most significant collections of Icelandic manuscripts in the country. The survival of books from Helga’s library was negatively impacted by the Fire of Copenhagen in 1728, the extinction of her family line in the eighteenth century as a long-term consequence of the 1707–1709 smallpox epidemic and collector Árni Magnússon’s antagonistic relationship with two of her children’s heirs. Árni’s relationship with Oddur Sigurðsson (1681–1741), Helga’s grandson and last living descendent, did eventually improve; an appendix includes a list of manuscripts that Oddur loaned to Árni and may have come from the library at Bræðratunga.

Case Study of Internal and External Dimensions Causes of Stunting in Children Under Five in Jombang, East Java

Background: Stunting is the result of chronic and recurrent malnutrition in both mother and child. Globally in 2020, 149.2 million (144.4 to 154.2 million) children under the age of 5, or 22.0% (21.3 to 22.7) of all children under five, are estimated to be stunted (too short for their age). The cause of children experiencing stunting is a multidimensional factor, namely malnutrition experienced by pregnant women and toddlers. This study aims to describe the causes of stunting in toddlers. Subjects and Method: This was a qualitative study with a case study approach. This study was conducted at the Health Office of Jombang Regency, East Java, and Mayangan Health Center. A total of 5 key informants, 9 mothers of toddlers as main informants, 1 supporting informant were selected purposively and snowball. Data collection was carried out using interviews, observation, and documentation. Data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman. Results: Parents' education level, toddler's age, toddler's weight, toddler's height, role of health personals in terms of services, exclusive breastfeeding, provision of complementary foods, level of food diversity, sanitation, infectious diseases are factors causing stunting cases in Jombang Regency, East Java. Things that are less related to the incidence of stunting are the sex of the toddler, the type of parent's job, asset ownership, social protection card, health insurance, health institutions, mother class for toddlers, early childhood education, family planning participation, food insecurity, clean water, ownership of MCH books, complete basic immunization, treatment of sick toddlers, growth monitoring, deliveries at health facilities, and deliveries at health personnel. The visible impact of stunting is that they physically look small when compared to children of their age. Conclusion: There are several internal dimensions and external dimensions that are factors causing the incidence of stunting in Jombang Regency, East Java, including parents' education level, toddler's age, toddler's weight, toddler's height, the role of health personal in terms of services, exclu¬sive breastfeeding, provision of complementary foods, diversity in food, sanitation, and infectious diseases. Keywords: stunting, internal dimention, external dimention, toddler.

Flames of Time:

The manuscript as narrator in Icelandic children’s novel Bál tímans (2022) belongs to a literary tradition of sentient object narrators who document the domestic spaces in which they circulate. Bál tímans shifts the reader’s focus to normally invisible manuscript owners and users, including women and children, bringing attention to disparities in access created through archive-building activities. In domestic settings, Möðruvallabók is accessible to a broad segment of the Icelandic population through practices of social reading, women’s book ownership, and home education. In the archive, human-manuscript interactions are restricted to a narrow and initially male-only elite. While tensions between preservation and access are resolved when the codex is exhibited in a museum space where it can share its stories with a wider audience, Bál tímans examines what can be lost by bringing cultural objects into archival spaces.

Analysing an eighteenth-century Irish booklist, Part 2: the present state of somewhere else

This article is the second of a pair which consider an early eighteenth-century booklist in the library of the National Trust's Castle Ward. Part 1 identified the titles and when these were present in the Castle Ward library, today and previously. It provided an assessment of the titles in relation to patterns of book ownership in English and Irish seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century contexts. Building upon Part 1's refinement of the information drawn from the titles, library catalogues, surviving books, and known details of individual's reading interests, Part 2 uses further provenance details alongside biographical, archaeological, and architectural information to attribute the booklist to a specific time, place, and family unit. Particular emphasis is placed upon discovering the material environment in which this book collection was housed.

Trevor J. Dadson (1947–2020)

Trevor J. Dadson (1947–2020)

A Tudor Family Library: Social Ambition and Continental Books in Sir Michael Dormer's Donation to the Bodleian Library

abstract: This essay argues that an examination of the list of books donated to the Bodleian by Sir Michael Dormer in 1603 complicates our assumptions about the audience for Italian Renaissance literature in the Tudor period. Such study causes us to readjust our knowledge of the kinds of books owned by the gentry when set against the known book collections represented in the standard literature. It demonstrates that, by scrutinizing institutional donation lists in granular detail, we can increase the cumulative bibliographical data available to study book ownership across a wider social spectrum than has previously been accessible to scholars across the disciplines.

Analysing an eighteenth-century Irish booklist Part 1: a snapshot of eight shelves

This article is the first of a pair which consider an early eighteenth-century booklist in the library of the National Trust’s Castle Ward. These articles ask how much it is possible to learn from this booklist. The appearance of the present Castle Ward library room is largely the result of the early nineteenth-century renovations by Edward Southwell Ward (1790–1837), 3rd Viscount Bangor. However, items within the library, including this booklist, reveal an earlier era of book ownership in Ireland by a prominent Plantation-origin family and their descendants. This article analyses and contextualises this booklist in relation to book ownership in the period while broaching some of the challenges of working with such bibliographical sources.