Book review: Smith E (2023) Notes of a bibliophile: Why books have power over us. Moscow: KoLibri. 480 p.
The concept of “book culture”, which entered the domestic book-study discourse in the 1980s, is currently one of the central ones for both historical-book and theoretical-book studies. However, it has not yet received a conventional definition in Russian science. The purpose of the article is to formulate a definition of book culture based on the interpretative theory of culture and theoretical and methodological achievements of medialogy dominating in modern socio-humanitarian knowledge. The authors show the general theoretical context of the formation of the concept of “book culture”.
Many scholars point to the crisis in the Russian bibliology. Meanwhile, those involved in the discussion specify the origins of the crisis in the discipline differently. One possible way to overcome the theoretical crisis of bibliology is to turn to Robert Darnton’s conceptual model of communications circuit. Robert Darnton is well known for his studies in the history of book culture of the modern era yet his model, which has long been recognized as a classic in international historical book studies, has been ignored by Russian bibliologists.