[6] Bowers conceived of the journal as one that encompassed all bibliographical study, with no restriction as to the geographical origins or periods or genres of the material examined.
The topics of articles in Volume I (1948-1949), for instance, ranged from an unpublished manuscript by Thomas Jefferson, Elizabethan drama, and the use of watermarks as bibliographical evidence to catalogs issued by 16th century booksellers.
[9] Articles in later issues also discussed new technology, such as the Hinman collator, which used lenses and mirrors to compare copies of a printed work in order to show the differences.
Book length publications range from bibliographies of contemporary authors such as Peter Taylor and H.D., to studies of Shakespearean promptbooks, with an especially large number of works on the problems and theory of textual editing, including collections of essays by Bowers and Tanselle.
[10] In 1991, editorship of Studies in Bibliography passed to David L. Vander Meulen, a professor of English at the University of Virginia.