Gatekeepers of Knowledge

Book excerpt: Throughout its history, the Western library has played a significant role in bringing the book to the hands of Western scholars. This book analyses that history, examining constructs of librarianship, publishing and scholarship within that history as gate keeping access to knowledge. Exploring significant events in the field from the time of the Lyceum to the present day in the development of repositories of books and their access by scholars. Gatekeepers of Knowledge engages in an analysis of those events from a perspective that makes visible the ways in which the production, storage and access of books, have been privileged, while others have been marginalised. - Examines its material as analyses of significant events in the development of libraries, books, and scholarship in the western world - Embeds those developments in significant political, economic, social and cultural fields of particular eras - Ties scholarship to class structures and associated protocols in its treatment of scholarship as the generation of knowledge