The 2023 John N. King Lecture in Medieval and Renaissance Studies will be "Book History’s New Frontiers and the Perils of Big Data," delivered by Professor Andrew Pettegree from the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
John N. King was an innovator in many fields of research, among them the use of statistical analysis as a point of entry for interpreting reader responses to early printed books. Since these early experiments, the digital revolution has provided scholars with a huge amount of data, vastly accelerating progress on projects such as the Universal Short Title Catalogue (https://www.ustc.ac.uk/). In this paper, Pettegree reflects on both the opportunities and interpretative value of big data, as well as its limitations and pitfalls. We know more than we have ever done about the book world in the 250 years after the invention of printing, but our understanding of the impact on society continues to evolve, as big data presents us with new, more sophisticated interpretative frameworks.
Andrew Pettegree is professor of modern history at the University of St Andrews. A leading expert on the history of book and media transformations, Pettegree is the award-winning author of several books on news and information culture. He lives in Scotland.
This event is free and open to the public.
