How we search for information, how we read and how we process it has changed radically. Agents and institutions responsible for processing, making accessible and selling knowledge have likewise been subjected to this profound transformation. In this volume, Helmut Zedelmaier examines the working practices of scholars between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Which techniques and methods did scholars use in order to find the information they sought? How did they manage and process their knowledge? Which forces and contexts effected changes of the practices and in the institutions generating knowledge? Today's visionaries of the digital world of knowledge want to convince us that we are moving into a society in which ever more people know ever more. However, the much vaunted "digital revolution" loses much of its revolutionary character the more one delves into the book-facilitated world and their places of creation. The author shows that knowledge has always been a product underlying history's changing practices and tools.