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"... bibliography is the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the process of their transmission, including their production and reception. ... For any history of the book which excluded study of the social, economic, and political motivations of publishing, the reasons why texts were written and read as they were, why they were rewritten and redesigned, or allowed to die, would degenerate into a feebly degressive book list and never rise to a readable history. But such a phrase also accommodates what in recent critical theory is often called text production, and it therefore opens up the application of the discipline to the service of that field too."
-- D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts 1999.