Many of these resources have been newly digitised for this course and uncover this fascinating time of innovation and social change.
Members of the public around the world can explore how books were made, bought, sold, and read, in the four-week online course, which starts on November 18th, 2019, and is run in partnership with FutureLearn, the social learning platform.
The free online course is aimed at anyone with an interest in the history of the printed book, the early modern book trade, the history of reading, the history of bookbinding, and the interaction between print and social change in early modern Europe.
Librarian of the Edward Worth Library Elizabethanne Boran, and one of the course designers, said: “This course is our way of sharing our wonderful collections with as many people as possible. Trinity College Dublin and the Edward Worth Library have thousands of books which bring to life the early modern period in the West. For this course we have digitised images from these books so that learners will be able to explore this fascinating period from every corner of the world.”
Learners will investigate rare treasures such as the engravings of Anthony Van Dyck, early editions of Aesop’s Fables and the bestselling Nuremberg Chronicle. Frontispieces, title pages, annotations, printers’ devices, and many more parts of the book are examined from this period.
At the end of the course, learners will be able to describe how the early modern book trade operated, and understand how the invention of the printing press changed religious, scientific, medical and political views of the world.
The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has been designed by academics from Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities, School of English, and the Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin, with assistance from the staff of the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the Edward Worth Library, Trinity’s Digital Collections, and Trinity Online Services CLG.
Interested individuals can register for the course at: http://bit.ly/2OBb8UT
Since 2014, Trinity has reached over 150,000 learners from more than 100 countries worldwide through ten free online courses with Futurelearn, the social learning platform. See more at: https://www.futurelearn.com/partners/trinity-college-dublin
About our libraries:
The Long Room of Trinity College Dublin
The Long Room, built in the early eighteenth century and expanded in the nineteenth, holds 200,000 volumes. Its collections date from the foundation of Trinity College in 1592 onwards, and offer readers a treasure trove of manuscript and print material. Find out more about the Long Room here.
The Edward Worth Library, Dublin.
The Edward Worth Library, which is run by the Worth Library Trust, houses c. 4,300 volumes which belonged to an early eighteenth-century Dublin physician called Edward Worth (1676-1733). Housed in Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, it is an invaluable resource for historians of the book for two reasons. First, Worth was a connoisseur collector, interested in rare printings and fine bindings. Second, he ensured that his collection was maintained in a unique state of preservation, allowing us to see books in their original (or at least early eighteenth-century) condition. Find out more about the Edward Worth Library, Dublin here.
Si (
No(
