EVOLUTION OF MODERN PUBLISHING IN NIGERIA

EVOLUTION OF MODERN PUBLISHING IN NIGERIA

Impact of Printing upon Scholarship and Libraries

While the invention of writing has enabled man to rescue what he says and thinks from the transitoriness and uncertainty of oral communica­tion, based upon the fallible instrument - the human memory thus over­coming the spatial and temporal constraints, the impact of printing with movable type upon scholarship and research has been enormous. Marshall McLuhan (1962) has branded the complex effects of the invention of print­ing “the Gutenberg Galaxy”. He sees the relatively ready availability of the printed matter, following the invention, as creating a new kind of human being, who thinks differently from the way in which people had thought prior to the invention.

Several benefits followed the invention of modem printing. First, books became available in far larger numbers. Before the invention, it was the laborious manual method used for producing books, which were then very expensive, but beautiful, as there were paid copyists, calligraphers and illuminators, who gave considerable attention to aesthetics of books. With the mass production of books went their beauty as physical objects; edito­rial quality came to be considered as more important than physical charac­teristics.

Secondly, it became possible to produce identical copies of an edi­tion of a printed book. Numerous errors had crept into the manually copied texts, and multiplication of books usually meant the multiplication of errors, transferred from the books being copied. The new printing technology per­mitted uniform edition, which is usually proceded by critical and careful editorial work and proof-reading.

                Thirdly, the size of the periodical press - the newspaper and maga­zine - was made possible. Both communication media are, today, unques­tionable social vehicles of information, education and entertainment. Up till the latter part of the seventeenth century, when scholarship and research were still largely amateurish undertakings, the spread of scientific ideas depended upon the tardy method of communication through the printed book. As the number of scientists grew, they began to band themselves together in academias to discuss their research and experiments. These  academias soon became centers of communication of scientific knowledge. The royal Society of London and the Academie Royale des Sciences of Paris intro­duced the Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Scavans respec­tively

Polymathic in nature, up to the eighteenth century, carrying book reviews, scientific news and observations, and translations of letters from foreign scientists, the journal, with the increasing specialization in science itself, began to be devoted to particular areas of science in the nineteenth century. The original purpose of journals was not so much to publish new scientific papers as to monitor and digest the learned publications and let­ters that were too much for one individual to cope with in daily reading and correspondence. Just as, in their coverage, the early journals were general, so were the early abstracting services polymathic. Discipline-oriented abstracting services emerged only much later.

Fourthly, printing made possible a well-informed public. This had not been possible because papyrus rolls, clay tablets and parcFhment were rare and highly treasured, and as few people were illiterate, they had no need for libraries or books. The motivation for literacy grew with the in­creasing availability of printed matter; so did the need to be able to read, thus sowing the seeds of the subsequent demand for,public universal edu­cation.

Fifthly, printing made library open to everyone a possibility. The libraries of clay tablets and papyrus rolls were limited collections of rela­tively rare materials, which could be acquired by the wealthy. Even in the middle Ages, book collecting was a symbol of prestige and affluence. In the ancient period, private libraries were frequently subject of satire by Roman writers like Seneca, Lucan and Petronius, who saw libraries becoming as necessary in the houses of the wealthy men as baths with hot and cold water. But the writings of Cicero, the famous Roman Lawyer and orator, frequently mention his library and those of his friends, that time, attached to private libraries.

The printing phenomenon broke the monopoly of the wealthy men in book collecting. With the spread and development of printing, the library, as a dynamic and accessible storehouse of a large portion of world’s knowl­edge, began to assert itself. It thus created the possibility of the evolution of distinctive types of libraries - academic, public, school, national and special that we have today.