FBTEE Database

I am co-author (with Simon Burrows) of the French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) database, an online digital resource that details the trade of the Swiss publishers the Société typographique de Neuchâtel. This database is currently hosted here!

4 thoughts on “FBTEE Database”

Shelby Shapiro September 3, 2010 at 5:59 pm

Amazing! If & when the records of other publishers, booksellers, etc. become available, will the website be flexible enough to incorporate these streams as well?

-Shelby Shapiro

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markcurran September 3, 2010 at 6:56 pm

Well, in its initial form (from summer 2011) the database and site will concentrate solely on the dissemination of the works the STN traded in, so c. 4,000 books and 400,000 sales between 1769 and 1794.

The technology it is based upon could (relatively) easily be transferred to other archives and projects – and it would certainly make sense to try and house all this data in one place on the net.

So, it’s largely a case of working through complicated questions of 1) funding, 2) scope (c18? Europe only? Books only? ), and 3) control (stay in house, licence the technology to research teams, crowd source?).

One of the main reasons for opening up the site and blog now, rather than in a years time, was to work through and consult widely on these issues. We are, after all, French historians really – so we don’t claim to be experts!

Mark

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Eleanor Shevlin September 5, 2010 at 8:52 pm

Hi, Shelby and Mark

I saw Mark demo this project at Material Cultures 2010 Edinburgh and then further discussed this project with Simon and Mark at SHARP 2010 in Helsinki this summer. It offers a stellar resource for 18th-century resources, but I also thought strongly it offers the structure for other projects.

I have invited Simon and Mark to come to SHARP 2011 in Washington, DC next July and also hope to see if they can do something additional at the Library of Congress while they are in town (non-WAGPCS because we don’t meet in summer). My thoughts about the wider potential for this project dovetail with yours. Yet, as Mark, says, it would be a matter of funding by an interested group, host site, and so forth.

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