This article examines the seventeenth-century private library of the Danish noblewoman Karen Brahe (1657-1736). Surviving intact, the collection's contents have been carefully catalogued, offering an entry point into the world of female book owners and users in earlier times. Through quantitative analysis of the digitally encoded bibliographic metadata of the library's catalogue of printed items, this article identifies large-scale patterns across the collection and demonstrates how female book owners in Denmark were connected through their reading to broader European book markets and networks, mapping the interplay between production, distribution, and reception that shaped the book ownership and intellectual life of women in the past.
This paper addresses the role of the invention of tradition in early library history writing and its influence on the subsequent discourse. 'The invention of tradition' is a phrase coined by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger to describe cultural practices that appear traditional but which are of comparatively recent innovation. Examples include neo-classical civic architecture, the symbolic construction of national identities, and the adoption of anachronistic rituals in essentially modern institutions. Hobsbawm and Ranger argue that invented traditions have an important social function in helping to foster cohesion, legitimising authority structures, and cementing social values by rooting contemporary institutions and social practices in a factitious past. This paper argues that early library history writing can be understood as an invented tradition that acted to validate the social function of libraries by appeal to the distant historical past. While library history lacks ritualistic and ceremonial aspects, it displays a similar ideological function in securing an ostensibly novel social institution against the authority of tradition. It first discusses the nature of invented traditions and their relevance to library history. The paper then analyses library history writing between 1859 and 1914, and its influence on subsequent library discourse. Finally the paper analyses the specific tension in the nineteenth century that gave rise to the invented tradition of early library history writing. The paper predominantly addresses the development on library services in Britain.
This paper discusses the library of the Swedish King Oskar II (1829-1907) and its uses for him as a private person and as head of state. It also discusses the transformation of this library from privately owned to an accessible library museum, archive and research facility. The major research questions concern the history of the library from its beginnings in 1853 until today, and its function as a legitimation tool for Oskar II as well as his descendants. In order to study the library, I have used object biography, a method originating in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, but which has several advantages within the framework of the history of libraries and collections as well. The article is based on the author's doctoral thesis in library and information science (LIS) at the University of Boras, Over djupen mot hojden: en biografi over Oskar II:s bibliotek ('Over the depths towards the heights: a biography of Oskar II's library').
