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Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Dr Frederick Nesta joined UCL in 2013 as an Associate Professor and degree coordinator to establish the MA in Library and Information Studies programme in Qatar in association with the Qatar Foundation. The programme graduated just over 100 professional librarians before the end of the UCL contract in 2020. Dr Nesta's library career has included supervisory positions at major research libraries, including New York Public Library and Columbia University Library, as well as experience in corporate and special libraries, and directorships at academic libraries in New York, London, and Hong Kong. From 2004 to 2011 he was University Librarian at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
Dr Nesta holds an MLS from Columbia University and a PhD from the Department of Information Studies of Aberystwyth University. His research interests include the history, economics, and marketing of late Victorian books; the history and culture of the book in China; library management, and the interactions between people and digital and printed texts. He is currently writing a history of Western missionaries in China and Chinese typography. He lives in Athens, Greece.
Selected Publications:
Monographs:
Where the Victorians Got Their Reading. Edited by Frederick Nesta. (Writers and Their Contexts 17). Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2024.
Published This Day: Marketing Books in Victorian England. (Writers and Their Contexts 14). Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2022.
George Gissing, Grub Street, and the Transformation of British Publishing. (Writers and Their Contexts 11). Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2020.
Articles and chapters:
‘An Introduction to Alternative Sources Available to Nineteenth Century Readers’ in Where the Victorians Got Their Reading, edited by Frederick Nesta. Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2024.
‘Booksellers vs Drapers: Trade Competition in Victorian Britain’ in Where the Victorians Got Their Reading, edited by Frederick Nesta. Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2024.
‘Society, Mercantile, Mechanics, and Workingman’s Libraries’ in Where the Victorians Got Their Reading, edited by Frederick Nesta. Brighton, England: Edward Everett Root, 2024.
‘The Book in the World: Teaching a Global History of the Book’ in Teaching the History of the Book, edited by Matteo Pangallo and Emily Todd. (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book). Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2023. p. 54-62
Foreword to Inside the World’s Major East Asian and Southeast Asian
Library Collections in North America, v. 2, edited by Dr. Patrick Lo, Prof. Hermina Anghelescu, and Bradley Allard. Bingley, Emerald, 2022. p. xvii-xviii.
Review of Harputlu Shah, Zeynep. Authorship, Literary Production and Censorship in the Late-Nineteenth Century: Gissing-Hamsun-Halit Ziya in The Gissing Journal, January 2022. p. 39-44.
‘Consortia: A brief history and a call for the future’. Library Management. v. 40, no 1/2, 2019, p. 12-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-02-2018-0006
‘Pierre Coustillas: a scholar and a mentor to many’. Supplement to The Gissing Journal, October 2018, p. 31-32.
Fletcher, Richard N.; Carter, Robert A.; Nesta, Frederick. ‘Use of archival aerial photographs for archaeological research in the Arabian Gulf’. Proceedings of The Seminar For Arabian Studies, Vol 48, London, Archaeopress, 2018
‘Gissing and Advertising’. The Gissing Journal, April 2017, p. 29-36.
‘The Book in China and Modern Western Book History’. Nederlandse Boekhistorische Vereniging. Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis, no 20, 2013, pp. 48-58
‘Monograph Circulation over a Fifteen-Year Period in a Liberal Arts University’. [with Sheila Cheung and Terry Chung] Library Management, vol. 32, no.6/ 7, 2011. pp. 419-434
‘The Series as Commodity: Marketing Fisher Unwin's Pseudonym and Autonym Library’ in The Culture of the Publisher's Series, vol. 1: Authors, Publishers and the Shaping of Taste. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 171-187
‘Library 2.0 or Library III: Using Resources to Lead, not Follow’ [with Jia Mi]. Library Management, vol. 32, no.1/ 2, 2011, pp. 85-97
‘Könyvtár 2.0 vagy Könyvtár III: visszavenni az irányítást’ [Hungarian translation of ‘Library 2.0 or Library III: Using Resources to Lead, not Follow’], Tudomanyos es Muszaki Tajekoztatas, vol. 58, no. 10, 2011, pp 452-455.
Contributor, Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, London: British Library and Academia Press, 2009 (entries on Jerome K. Jerome, T.P. O’Connor, Walter Paget, Henry Paget, Sidney Paget, and the journal ‘MAP: Mainly About People’
对网络一族的图书馆服务营销 [with Jia Mi: Chinese translation of “Marketing Library Services for the Net Generation”] 图书馆管理 的特刊中文= Library Management Chinese Special Issue, vol. 29, no. 6/7, 2008 pp. 35-44
بازاريابي خدمات كتابخانه براي جذب نسلنت [with Jia Mi: Persian translation of “Marketing Library Services for the Net Generation”], Iranian Journal of Information Science and Technology, v. 23, Spring 2008, pp: 119-141
‘The Myth of the Triple-Headed Monster: The Economics of the Three-volume Novel.’ Publishing History, vol. 61, 2007 pp. 47-69
‘Bentley’s Emancipated Profit.’ Gissing Journal, (44/2) April 2008, p. 25-28
‘Managing Across Cultures: The Experiences of Three Hong Kong Academic Library Directors’ [with Anthony W. Ferguson and Colin Storey]. Library Management, vol. 28, no. 4/5, 2007 pp. 213-223
‘Marketing Library Services for the Net Generation’ [with Jia Mi]. Library Management, vol. 27, no. 6/7, 2006 pp. 411-422
‘Google Your Library’s Mission: What Librarians can learn from Google's Corporate Philosophy’. Library Journal, June (2006): 36-37
‘Digital Libraries: the Human Dimension’ [With Jia Mi]. The International Journal of the Book, vol. 3, no. 2, 2006, pp. 113-117
‘Smith, Elder & Co. and the Realities of New Grub Street’, John Hinks & Catherine Amstrong (Eds.), Worlds of Print: Diversity in the Book Trade (pp. 207-219). London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Books, 2006, p. 207-219
‘The Missing Link: Context Loss in Online Databases’ [With Jia Mi]. Journal of Academic Librarianship, vol. 31, no. 6, November 2005. pp. 578-585
‘George Gissing, International Copyright and Late Victorian Publishing’. The Gissing Journal, October 2004. p.13-19
‘The Thyrza Contract and Two Unpublished Gissing Letters’. The Gissing Journal, January 2004. p.35-42
‘Plexus and Nexus, From Ramelli to Zappa and Beyond’, in Musings, Meanderings, and Monsters, too: Essays on Academic Librarianship. Edited by Martin Raish, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003. p. 117-123
‘The Remote Reference Room’ in IOLS'98: Integrated Online Library Systems, Proceedings-1998: Embrace and Extend, ed. by P. R. Cibbarelli and C. Nixon, Medford: Information Today Inc, 1998, p. 121-130