The history of printing, books, and libraries, is confined only to a limited extent within the boundaries of individual countries. There are, indeed, few historical developments which have played a more universal
role, in reaction against all kinds of particularism, than type design, printing, book production, publishing, illustration, binding, librarianship, journal­ ism, and related subjects. Their history should be assessed and
studied primarily in an international, not in a local, context. The bibliographical resources, however, which the historian of these sub­ jects has at his disposal correspond hardly at all to the essentially inter­ national
character of the object of his studies. Since the appearance of the retrospective bibliography of BIG MORE and WYMAN, covering the subject comprehensively up to 1880, the only current bibliography has been the lnternatwnale
Bibliographie des Buch-und Bi­ bliothekswesens. Covering a representative part of newly published liter­ ature, it appeared from 1928, but did not survive the Second World War. More recently, several useful, but limited,
bibliographies have appeared.