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CHAPTER V
How Printing Changed the Ways that Books Were Used, while Manuscript Production Persisted
COMPARED to the extremely gradual rate of change that had occurred in the form, function and usage of manuscript books since the papyrus rolls of antiquity, and the slow rate of technological
advance that generally characterized the Middle Ages, the introduction of printing in the second half of the fifteenth century caused transformations that were significantly more rapid, even if they were not necessarily as rapid or disruptive to manuscript book production as we might assume. Previ- ously I discussed how printing changed the graphic form of the codex, and how it evolved by adapting, systematizing, and changing elements of the manuscript book. Even more than these changes to the form and function of the book, the growth of information as a result of printing, and the in- creasing availability of books to wider and wider markets had significant impact upon society. As more and more printed books were available on an increasingly wide variety of subjects, at lower cost than had been possible in manuscript production, to an ever-widening market, the nature of reading and study gradually changed, both for scholars and the literate public, and the percentage of literate people in society increased.
One admittedly indirect method of measuring the growth of information resulting from the introduction of printing is to compare present German library holdings of medieval manuscripts, accumulated over many centu- ries, with their holdings of fifteenth-century printed books. Compared to their holdings of 60,000 manuscripts which survived from the entire Mid- dle Ages, or roughly nine hundred years, German libraries preserve 135,000
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