Project description
Uncovering rejects of legal deposit in 19th-century UK libraries
Legal deposit libraries are supposed to preserve all published texts, but they also reject texts due to lack of space, disinterest in particular genres and other factors. In the UK in the 19th century, a significant increase in the production of printed texts placed considerable pressure on the deposit system. In this context, the ERC-funded PromPrint project analyses the rejects of legal deposit. It will investigate which texts deposit libraries have rejected, track changes in rejections over time and explore how digital tools and quantitative analyses can help identify gaps in deposit collections. Additionally, the project will use these tools to consider the preservation or exclusion of specific types of texts, such as obscene publications, colonial texts and children's books.
Objective
PROMPRINT will uncover and analyze the rejects of legal deposit: the printed texts excluded from the ostensibly universal archive promised by copyright libraries. Legal deposit works to preserve every text published in a specific group of libraries. While this principle is egalitarian, the cultural promiscuity of print has often troubled the prestigious deposit libraries, as deposit brings such historically controversial forms as novels, children’s books, almanacs, and pamphlets into elite collections. The project asks: (1) Which textual forms and genres do deposit libraries reject? How and why does this change over time? (2) How can digital tools and quantitative analyses help to map absences and gaps in deposit collections? (3) What are the best models for using these tools and analyses in relation to particular texts and types of texts, as in the examples of obscene books, colonial texts, and children’s literature? (4) How does the process of putting together local and centralized records to uncover deposit rejects lead to generalizable methodologies for finding texts absent from other archives and collections? (5) What does a focus on rejection, relegation, and negative bibliography (the study of gaps in the bibliographical record) add to book history, including current debates over digitization? The project answers these questions by focusing on a particular case study: deposit in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom. In this period, an unprecedented increase in the production of printed texts led to high pressure on the deposit system at the same time that cultural interest in deposit as a system for knowledge preservation grew. Beyond the case study, though, the project will drive forward wider understandings of how literature is canonized and forgotten, collected and destroyed.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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BN1 9RH Brighton
United Kingdom
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