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BooksImage:Wiktionary-logo-en.png
Look up book in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
A book is a collection of leaves of paper, parchmentor other material, bound together along one edge within covers. A book is also a literary work or a main division of such a work. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book. In library and information science, a book is called a monographto distinguish it from serial publicationssuch as magazines, journalsor newspapers. Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-proof editions known as galleys for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale. A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm. A book may be studied by students in the form of a book report. It may also be covered by a professional writer as a book reviewto introduce a new book.
HistoryImage:Old book bindings.jpg The oral account (word of mouth, tradition, hearsay) is the oldest carrier of messages and stories. When writing systemswere invented in ancient civilizations, clay tabletsor parchmentscrollswere used as, for example, in the library of Alexandria. Scrollswere later phased out in favor of the codex, a bound book with pagesand a spine, the form of most books today. The codex was invented in the first few centuries A.D. or earlier. Some have said that Julius Caesarinvented the first codex during the Gallic Wars. He would issue scrolls folded up accordion style and use the "pages" as reference points. Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books comparatively expensive and rare. During the early Middle Ages, when only churches, universities, and rich noblemen could typically afford books, they were often chained to a bookshelf or a deskto prevent theft. The first books used parchmentor vellum(calf skin) for the pages, which was later replaced with paper. In the mid 15th century books began to be produced by block printing in western Europe (the technique had been known in the East centuries earlier). In block printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved out of wood. It could then be inked and used to reproduce many copies of that page. Creating an entire book, however, was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page. Also, the wood blocks were not durable and could easily wear out or crack. The oldest dated book printed by the method of block printing is The Diamond Sutra. There is a wood block printedcopy in the British Librarywhich, although not the earliest example of block printing, is the earliest example which bears an actual date. It was found in 1907by the archaeologistSir Marc Aurel Steinin a walled-up cave near Dunhuang, in northwest China. The colophon, at the inner end, reads: Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11th May, CE 868]. The Chinese inventor Pi Shengmade moveable type of earthenware circa 1045, but we have no surviving examples of his printing. He embedded the characters, face up, in a shallow tray lined with warm wax. He laid a board across them and pressed it down until all the characters were at exactly the same level. When the wax cooled he used his letter tray to print whole pages. It was not until Johann Gutenbergpopularized the printing presswith metal moveable typein the 15th century that books started to be affordable and widely available. This upset the status quo, leading to remarks such as "The printing press will allow books to get into the hands of people who have no business reading books." It is estimated that in Europe about 1,000 various books were created per year before the invention of the printing press. With the rise of printing in the fifteenth century, books were published in limited numbers and were quite valuable. The need to protect these precious commodities was evident. One of the earliest references to the use of bookmarkswas in 1584 when the Queen's Printer, Christopher Barker, presented Queen Elizabeth Iwith a fringed silk bookmark. Common bookmarks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were narrow silk ribbons bound into the book at the top of the spine and extended below the lower edge of the page. The first detachable bookmarks began appearing in the 1850's and were made from silk or embroidered fabrics. Not until the 1880's, did paper and other materials become more common. The following centuries were spent on improving both the printing press and the conditions for freedom of the pressthrough the gradual relaxation of restrictive censorship laws. See also intellectual property, public domain, copyright. In mid-20th century, Europe book production has risen to over 200,000 titles per year. Structure of books
Depending on a book's purpose or type (i.e. Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Textbook, Monograph), its structurevaries, but some common structural parts of a book usually are:
Conservation issuesIn the mid-19th century, papers made from pulp(cellulose, wood) were introduced because it was cheaper than cloth-based papers (i.e. vellum or parchment). Pulp based paper made cheap novels, cheap school text books and cheap books of all kinds available to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations and eased the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution. However, this pulp paper contained acid that causes a sort of slow firesthat eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidificationof their older collections. Books printed from 1850-1950 are at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkalinepaper. The proper care of books takes into account the possibility of chemical changes to the cover and text. Books are best stored in reduced lighting, definitely out of direct sunlight, at cool temperatures, and at moderate humidity. Books, especially heavy ones, need the support of surrounding volumes to maintain their shape. It is desirable for that reason to group books by size. Collections of booksImage:Brockhaus Lexikon.jpg Maintaining a libraryused to be the privilege of princes, the wealthy, monasteries and other religious institutions, and universities. The growth of a public librarysystem in the United States started in the late 19th centuryand was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: The poor or the middle class had to share most books through a public library or by other means while the rich could afford to have a private librarybuilt into their homes. The advent of paperbackbooks in the 20th centuryled to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market of extremely cheap used paperbacks) owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich. While a small collection of books, or one to be used by a small number of people, can be stored in any way convenient to the owners, a large or public collection requires a catalogueand some means of consulting it. Often codes or other marks have to be added to the books to speed the process of relating them to the catalogue and their correct shelf position. Where these identify a volume uniquely, they are referred to as "call numbers". In large libraries this call number is usually based on a Library classificationsystem. The call number is placed inside the book and on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, in accordance with institutional or national standards such as ANSI/NISOZ39.41 - 1997. This short (7 pages) standard also establishes the correct way to place information (such as the title or the name of the author) on book spines and on "shelvable" book-like objects such as containers for DVDs, video tapesand software. In library and booksellers' catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as "Crown 8vo" to indicate the paper sizefrom which the book is made. When rows of books are lined on a bookshelf, bookendsare sometimes needed to keep them from slanting. Keeping track of booksOne of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. This system has fallen out of use in some places, mainly because of a Eurocentric bias and other difficulties applying the system to modern libraries. However, it is still used by most public libraries in America. Another popular classification system is the Library of Congresssystem, which is more popular in university libraries. All books of the world are said to constitute the Gutenberg Galaxy, or, to use a term coined by eBook author Rick Sutcliffein the early 1980s, the Metalibrary. For the entire 20th century most librariansconcerned with offering proper library services to the public (or a smaller subset such as students) worried about keeping track of the books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations(IFLA) they devised a series of tools such as the International Standard Book Description or ISBD. Besides, each book is specified by a International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every book produced by participating publishers, world wide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. It has four parts. The first part is the country code, the second the publishercode, and the third the title code. The last part is a checksum or a check digit and can take values from 0-9 and X (10). The EANBarcodesnumbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland and calculating a new check digit. Many government publishers, in industrial countries as well as in developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system. They often produce books which do not have ISBNs. In certain industrialized countries large classes of commercial books, such as novels, textbooks and other non-fiction books, are nearly always given ISBNs by publishers, thus giving the illusion to many customers that the ISBN is an international and complete system, with no exceptions. Transition to digital formatThe term e-book(electronic book) in the broad sense is an amount of information like a conventional book, but in digital form. It is made available through internet, CD-ROM, etc. In the popular press the term eBook sometimes refers to a device such as the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP, which is meant to read the digital form and present it to a human being. Throughout the 20th century, libraries have faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishingand the Internetmeans that much new information is not printed in paper books, but is made available online e.g. through a digital library, on CD-ROM, or in the form of e-books. On the other hand, though books are nowadays produced using a digital version of the content, for most books such a version is not available to the public (i.e. neither in the library nor on the Internet), and there is no decline in the rate of paper publishing. There is an effort, however, to convert books that are in the public domaininto a digital medium for unlimited redistribution and infinite availability. The effort is spearheaded by Project Gutenbergcombined with Distributed Proofreaders. There have also been new developments in the process of publishing books. Technologies such as print on demandhave made it easier for less known authors to make their work available to a larger audience. Related articles and lists
Online book databases and lists
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