An interesting article from the always valuable First Monday tracing the history of the bibliographic control of printed sermons and its role in the development of the art generally:
This essay will focus on the field of homiletics in America, especially within the mainline Protestant tradition, which can trace its beginnings to the New England settlers in the 17th century. The invention of the printing press two centuries before had increased the need for bibliographic control across Europe, and when printing arrived with the settlers in America, that same need followed. The first homiletical textbooks came from the printing of sermons, and young ministers \”turned to these ordination sermons to supplement their apprenticeships with working pastors.\” The first libraries in America were theological libraries, stemming from the work in England of an Anglican minister named Thomas Bray and his Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. By the early 19th century, homiletics was transformed into a formal academic discipline with the establishment of seminaries and divinity schools across America.
This issue also contains the article Positioning the Public Library in the Modern State: The Opportunity of the Children\’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).
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