Article: 'What good is an old book?"

Daniel Traister's article, "What good is an old book?" provides insights of the "well-publicized" canonial literature in the eighteenth century. According to Traister, if we look closely to the Anglo-American literacy tradition, it contains no surprises that eighty-five percent of the "canonical authors" awere male, Protestant, were White, and none of them was working class. Little known literature has not been taken seriously or has any chances to "survivie." This canonial theory at academia has been a great impact on curriculum and as well, on the standards of the literacy collection at the libraries.

The most "striking" part of this article is that Traister suggess that the "power" of the librarian is "the literacy critic's act of discovery, the shock of recognition."

The entire article was published in Rare Books and Manuscripts, March 20, 1992, Vol. 7, No.1, pp. 26-41.