ABSTRACT
An overview of developments in North America since World War II that widened interest in bibliography and book history, increasing the use of material objects in various pedagogical settings. Unexpectedly central to these developments was the decline of commercial letterpress technology in the 1960s and 1970s and the move to offset lithography. This change threw obsolescent printing equipment—Vandercook proof presses, in particular—onto the market, encouraging the establishment of bibliographical and private presses, undergraduate (and later, graduate) courses centering on book history, and typographic laboratories and workshops. The number of scholarly organizations with an interest in book history and material culture grew rapidly, accompanied by a notable increase in both serial and monographic publications. Book collecting flourished, as did village and industrial museums with history-oriented printing shops. Academic and independent interest in material culture in general and the history of the book in particular remains high.
