For at least fifteen years the LCC MA Publishing programme has invited the LCC Library Collections lead to make a presentation of works from the LCC Printing Historical Collection and deliver a class to illustrate the history of publishing in the west. The strength of the collection is in showing how the book has evolved, been influenced by social and historical factors and shaped by key practitioners in the various fields of printing technology and book production. For the last three years I have delivered this talk making minor adjustments year-on-year from the the maximalist approach outlined in the inherited lesson plans / book lists. I intend now to adapt to a more focused chronological account of how individual titles can represent key changes in material, social, literary and publishing culture.
Fig. 1. Current reading and motivational mug. Clarke, G. (2026)
My colleague’s evaluation of my teaching this class confirmed my concern that my custom of over-fast delivery together with a compendious selection of works shown may have proven exhausting for the students. I reflect here on strategies planned for adapting this talk to one which I hope will encourage active learning in class, pique student interest in the research possibilities of the collection and impress on them how book and manuscript traditions still shape book-making and publishing. My training and inclination encourage that this is best realised by shaping a chronological narrative engaging fewer works that represent key changes in publishing history – emplotment, as Hayden White (Vann, 1998) terms this storytelling technique. A recent model for such emplotment / narrativising is Adam Smyth’s The Book Makers, my challenge is to convey in 60 minutes something of the sweep of change Smyth covers in 350 pages.
My intention is to incorporate Vygotsky’s ideas on scaffolding and modelling to the revised class. My introductory remarks will form a conceptual wrapper caveating that such narrativising may simplify historical events into literary tropes, scaffolding comprehension of a centuries long tradition. Thereby the class may reflect on and consider alternatives to my critical positionality. Further scaffolds will be a glossary (definitions shown on screen and on a hand-out) of terms included in the class or likely to be met in follow-on study and my posing guiding questions before demonstration (modelling by describing my thought process) of key morments of cultural shift.
Not all students seem to grasp the relevance of the class. In the learning outcomes I will reference how the creative attributes of storytelling, connectivity and communication (derived the UAL Creative Attributes Framework, CAF) are embedded in the teaching and offer a model to be applied to their research and professional practice with the potential to enhance their employability prospects.
I want to impress on the students how an understanding of visual and material qualities of the works presented are evidence of the shaping effect of trade organisations, economic demand and material availability (Gants, 2004). I will show a slide diagram of this circuit of industry – author, typographer, illustrator, printer, binder, bookseller, reader – asking how it could, with minor adjustments, describe the publishing world today – students can add post-its to overlay the projection.
For a class of c.30 it is not feasible to give equal access as students crowd in to view works, slides are a poor substitute. I intend to use a visualiser (adjustable rostrum camera set-up) to stream to the screen my engagement with various works. The final 15 minutes of the class will be scheduled to allow the students to study and handle individual items and complete an object based learning task based. A plea for an extension of the class to 90 minutes will be made.
Reference List:
Gants, D.L (2004). Bibliographical Scholarship and the History of the Book. The Huntington Library Quarterly, 67(3), pp. 473-479,505. Available at: https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/bibliographical-scholarship-history-book/docview/215265758/se-2?accountid=10342. [Accessed 17 March 2026].
Smyth, A.. (2024) The book-makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives. London: The Bodley Head.
Vann, R.T. (1998) ‘The Reception of Hayden White’, History and Theory, 37(2), pp. 143–161. Available at: http://www.jstor.org.arts.idm.oclc.org/stable/2505462. [Accessed 16 March 2026].
Image List:
Figure 1. Clarke, G. (2026) Current Reading and motivational mug [Photograph].