Goals of the Centre for Book Studies

Founding aims of the Centre for Book Studies

The discipline of book studies at the University of Munich has seen a significant improvement in recent years of both its international profile and its position within the field of book studies in Germany. The number of students enrolled in Munich’s bachelor and two master programmes has been steadily increasing. Within LMU, the book studies department has been cooperating successfully for many years with neighbouring disciplines, including the faculties of law and economics.

A decisive impulse for the establishment of the Centre for Book Studies: Book Research – Publishing Economics – Digital Media was the observation of an increasing uncertainty concerning the future direction of the discipline coming from within the field of book studies itself. Against the background of current developments in the German-speaking book studies field, it is imperative to continue in the future to uphold the name of the traditional discipline “book studies” confidently and prominently, maintaining a distinction particularly from the plethora of “media study programmes” (including media studies, media management, media information technology).

The establishment and naming of the Centre for Book Studies: Book Research – Publishing Economics – Digital Media express even more clearly the full thematic spectrum of the work already invested in research and teaching in this field in Munich. Moreover, as public debates about digitalization and its impact on society and politics become more intense, the discipline of book studies, with its international and interdisciplinary orientation and wide range of topics, gains in social and political relevance.top

Competence through cooperation

The Centre for Book Studies: Book Research – Publishing Economics – Digital Media is intended to be a place of international and interdisciplinary communication and cooperation in research and teaching. The careful concentration of resources in research and teaching aims to facilitate the cooperative development of international, interdisciplinary and innovative research programmes along with the acquisition of external funding, and to promote variety and richness in teaching programmes. In recent years, cooperation with non-university institutions has also been intensified and the teaching programme has been visibly extended.

Regular cooperation (e.g. in seminars) takes place with the Munich Literature House, with the City Library and the Munich Literature Archive, with the German Museum and with the International Youth Library in Munich. The close cooperation with the International Youth Library in particular, the largest international research institution in the world for children’s and youth books, has led to an extension and strengthening of the teaching programme in the field of children’s and youth literature. Furthermore, the book studies programme in Munich offers block seminars, for example in the German Book and Text Museum Leipzig in connection with student excursions or occasionally with specialist conferences relevant to the discipline.top

Innovation in the book market and new challenges

In the context of the increasing interest within the field of book studies in the current economic, legal, organisational and technical aspects of book production and circulation, researchers are seeking closer contact to the book and publishing industry and to its organisations and companies – particularly in Munich.

The challenges facing the discipline of book studies today are reflected even more clearly in the new name, formally introduced in June 2018, Centre for Book Studies: Book Research – Publishing Economics – Digital Media: an intensive academic and practical examination of the past, present and future of the book medium (printed + digital). The Centre for Book Studies aims to represent the discipline in a manner that is international, interdisciplinary and prepared for the innovative developments in research and teaching, including a focus on strengthening the constructive and high-potential interplay between philology and the book.top

Digital transformation and current developments in the book market

Digital transformation presents a university discipline such as book studies with particular challenges. It is necessary to investigate both the effects of continuing digitalisation on the culture of writing and books, on production, on business and on marketing, as well as the changing patterns of consumption and reading. The judicious combination of university and non-university competences and resources is indispensable for an interdisciplinary, international and innovative book studies programme such as the Centre for Book Studies.

nach obenGlobal markets and transnational perspectives

In recent years, research on books and their production and circulation processes has experienced an impressive conjuncture on a transnational level – an observation that is particularly reflected in the large number of book history studies produced in the English-speaking world. The increasingly transnational nature of book and publishing history has considerably extended research perspectives and subject material, and provides a great variety of different methodologies and approaches ranging from questions of cultural and literary studies to considerations from the fields of media and communication studies, economics and media law.top

Interdisciplinarity

Book research is a complex, extensive and in some cases confusing field, which the Centre for Book Studies aims to represent appropriately through interdisciplinary and international cooperation. The members of the Centre for Book Studies thus include representatives from the humanities (including German, Romance and English philology as well as history) along with representatives of the legal and economic faculties, complemented by research libraries, book museums and literature archives as well as institutions for the promotion of literature (e.g. literature houses).top

The book and media industry, the digital literature business and career opportunities

The book and media industry offers a great variety of possible fields of employment and activity, new and constantly changing career paths, and a considerable potential for innovation and development. But since, whatever their range of products may be, publishers need to make economic and financial decisions, students of book studies also learn about economics and environmental sustainability.

Students of book studies must recognise the potential of a particular product for value creation as well as the impact of their decisions on the success of the media and publishing company in question. Business knowledge is hence a constitutive component of the book studies programme in Munich.