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A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a Leaf (disambiguation), and each side of a sheet is called a Page (paper). A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book.

The purpose of a book is to be read by the eyes or by fingertips and in some cases by hearing to gather information that has been recorded or printed onto a piece for the transferring of information to the brain for processing.

Books may also refer to a literary work, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers.

In novels, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, etc).

A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm.

Etymology The word book comes from Old English "bōc" which comes from Germanic languages root "*bōk-", cognate to beech.

Similarly, in Slavic languages (e.g. Russian language and Bulgarian language "буква" (bukva)—"letter") is cognate to "beech". It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European languages writings may have been carved on beech wood.

History of books cuneiform script clay tablet, 2400–2200 BC.

Antiquity When History of writings were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay tablet, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing. History of the alphabet emerged in Egypt around 1800 BC. At first the words were not separated from each other (scripta continua) and there was no punctuation. Texts were written from right to left, left to right, and even so that alternate lines read in opposite directions. The technical term for this type of writing is 'boustrophedon,' which means literally 'ox-turning' for the way a farmer drives an ox to plough his fields.

Scroll and the weighing of the heart.Papyrus, a thick paper material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool, was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC).{{Cite book]. Tree bark such as Tilia (Latin liber, from there also library) and other materials were also used.Dard Hunter. Papermaking: History and Technique of an Ancient Craft New ed. Dover Publications 1978, p. 12.

According to Herodotus (History 5:58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the tenth or ninth century BC. The Greek word for papyrus as writing material (biblion) and book (biblos) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus was exported to Greece.Leila Avrin. Scribes, Script and Books, pp. 144–145. From Greeks we have also the word tome () which originally meant a slice or piece and from there it became to denote "a roll of papyrus". Tomus was used by the Latins with exactly the same meaning as volumen (see also below the explanation by Isidore of Seville).

Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper in East Asia, scrolls were the dominant form of book in the Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese and Hebrew cultures. The more modern codex book format form took over the Roman world by late antiquity, but the scroll format persisted much longer in Asia.

Codex . Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 AD.Papyrus scrolls were still dominant in the first century AD, as witnessed by the findings in Pompeii. The first written mention of the codex as a form of book is from Martial, in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the century, where he praises its compactness. However the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use.The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature. Edd. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, Andrew Louth. Cambridge University Press 2004, pp. 8–9. This change happened gradually during the third and fourth centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book are several: the format is more economical, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it is portable, searchable, and easy to conceal. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan texts written on scrolls.

Wax tablets were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, and for taking notes. They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, and reformed into a blank. The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares) is a possible precursor for modern books (i.e. codex).Leila Avrin. Scribes, Script and Books, p. 173.The etymology of the word codex (block of wood) also suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.{{Cite book] explained the relation between codex, book and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): "A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (codex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches."

Middle Ages Manuscripts Vergilius Romanus contains an author portrait of Virgil. Note the bookcase (capsa), reading stand and the text written without word spacing in rustic capitals.The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. saw the decline of the culture of ancient Rome. Papyrus became difficult to obtain, due to lack of contact with Egypt, and parchment, which had been used for centuries, began to be the main writing material.

Monasteries carried on the Latin literature writing tradition in the Western Roman Empire. Cassiodorus, in the monastery of Vivarium (established around 540), stressed the importance of copying textsLeila Avrin. Scribes, Script and Books, pp. 207–208.. Benedict of Nursia, in his Rule of St Benedict (completed around the middle of the 6th century) later also promoted reading.Theodore Maynard. Saint Benedict and His Monks. Staples Press Ltd 1956, pp. 70–71. The Rule of St. Benedict (Ch. XLVIII), which set aside certain times for reading, greatly influenced the monastic culture of the Middle Ages, and is one of the reasons why the clergy were the predominant readers of books. The tradition and style of the Roman Empire still dominated, but slowly the peculiar medieval book culture emerged.

Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, making books expensive and comparatively rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only some dozen books, medium sized perhaps a couple hundred. By the ninth century, larger collections held around 500 volumes; and even at the end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of University of Paris held only around 2,000 volumes.Martin D. Joachim. Historical Aspects of Cataloguing and Classification. Haworth Press 2003, p. 452.

The scriptorium of the monastery was usually located over the chapter house. Artificial light was forbidden, for fear it may damage the manuscripts. There were five types of scribes:

Copyists, who dealt with basic production and correspondence
Calligraphers, who dealt in fine book production
Correctors, who collated and compared a finished book with the manuscript from which it had been produced
Rubricators, who painted in the red letters
Illuminators, who painted illustrations

The bookmaking process was long and laborious. The parchment had to be prepared, then the unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by the scribe, who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication. Finally the book was bound by the bookbinder.Edith Diehl. Bookbinding: Its Background and Technique. Dover Publications 1980, pp. 14–16.

Different types of ink were known in antiquity, usually prepared from soot and gum, and later also from gall nuts and Iron(II) sulfate. This gave writing the typical brownish black color, but black or brown were not the only colours used. There are texts written in red or even gold, and different colours were used for illumination. Sometimes the whole parchment was coloured purple, and the text was written on it with gold or silver (eg Codex Argenteus).Bernhard Bischoff. Latin Palaeography, pp. 16–17.

Irish monks introduced spacing between words in the seventh century. This facilitated reading, as these monks tended to be less familiar with Latin. However the use of spaces between words did not become commonplace before the 12th century. It has been argued,Paul Saenger. Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading. Stanford University Press 1997. that the use of spacing between words shows the transition from semi-vocalized reading into silent reading.

The first books used parchment or vellum parchment (calf skin) for the pages. The book covers were made of wood and covered with leather. As dried parchment tends to assume the form before processing, the books were fitted with clasps or straps. During the later Middle Ages, when public libraries appeared, books were often chained to a bookshelf or a desk to prevent theft. The so called libri catenati were used up to 18th century.

At first books were copied mostly in monasteries, one at a time. With the rise of universities in the 13th century, the Manuscript culture of the time lead to an increase in the demand for books, and a new system for copying books appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves (pecia), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system was maintained by Stationery guilds, which were secular, and produced both religious and non-religious material.Bernhard Bischoff. Latin Palaeography, pp. 42–43.

Wood block printing . Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses and clasps for holding the book shut.In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. This method originated in China, in the Han dynasty (before 220AD), as a method of printing on textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia. The oldest dated book printed by this method is The Diamond Sutra (868 AD).

The method (called Woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as Woodblock printing), as well as playing-cards and old master print, began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page; and the wood blocks tended to crack, if stored for long.

Movable type and incunabula The Chinese inventor Pi Sheng made movable type of earthenware circa 1045, but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Metal movable type was invented in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty (around 1230), but was not widely used: one reason being the enormous Chinese written language character set. Around 1450, in what is commonly regarded as an independent invention, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce, and more widely available.

Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before the year 1501 in Europe are known as incunabula. A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330.Clapham, Michael, "Printing" in A History of Technology, Vol 2. From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, edd. Charles Singer et al. (Oxford 1957), p. 377. Cited from Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge University, 1980). book, in a collection at the University of California, Riverside.

Modern world Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 1800s. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour.

Monotype and linotype presses were introduced in the late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once.

The centuries after the 15th century were thus spent on improving both the printing press and the conditions for freedom of the press through the gradual relaxation of restrictive censorship laws. See also intellectual property, public domain, copyright. In mid-20th century, Europe book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.

Book structure The common structural parts of a book include:

Book cover: hardbound or softcover (paperback); the spine (bookbinding) is the binding that joins the front and rear covers where the pages hinge
Endpapers
Flyleaf

Front matter

Frontispiece
Title page
Copyright page: typically verso of title page: shows copyright owner/date, credits, edition/printing, cataloguing details
Table of contents
List of figures
List of tables
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface
Introduction (essay)

Body: the text or contents, the pages often collected or folded into signatures; the pages are usually numbered sequentially, and often divided into Chapter (books)s.

Back matter

Appendix
Glossary
Index (publishing)
Notes
Bibliography
Colophon (publishing)

Flyleaf
Endpapers
Book cover

Sizes (1566), oil on canvas, at Skokloster Castle, Sweden.The size of a modern book is based on the printing area of a common flatbed press. The pages of type were arranged and clamped in a frame, so that when printed on a sheet of paper the full size of the press, the pages would be right side up and in order when the sheet was folded, and the folded edges trimmed.

The most common book sizes are:

Quarto (4to): the sheet of paper is folded twice, forming four leaves (eight pages) approximately 11-13 inches (ca 30 cm) tall
Octavo (8vo): the most common size for current hardcover books. The sheet is folded three times into eight leaves (16 pages) up to 9 ¾" (ca 23 cm) tall.
DuoDecimo (12mo): a size between 8vo and 16mo, up to 7 ¾" (ca 18 cm) tall
Sextodecimo (16mo): the sheet is folded four times, forming sixteen leaves (32 pages) up to 6 ¾" (ca 15 cm) tall

Sizes larger than quarto are:

Folio: up to 15" (ca 38 cm) tall.
Elephant Folio: up to 23" (ca 58 cm) tall.
Atlas Folio: up to 25" (ca 63 cm) tall.
Double Elephant Folio: up to 50" (ca 127 cm) tall.

Sizes smaller than 16mo are:

24mo: up to 5 ¾" (ca 13 cm) tall.
32mo: up to 5" (ca 12 cm) tall.
48mo: up to 4" (ca 10 cm) tall.
64mo: up to 3" (ca 8 cm) tall.

Types of books Small books can be called booklets.

Notebooks are blank books to be written in by the user. Students use them for taking notes. Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to record their work. Many notebooks are simply bound by a spiral coil at the edge so that pages can be easily torn out. Books to be partly filled in by the user include a personal address book, phone book, or calendar book for recording appointments, etc.

photograph albums are books for holding collections of memorabilia, pictures or photographs. They are often made so that the pages are removable. Stamp album hold collections of Postage stampss.

Books for recording periodic entries by the user, such as daily information about a journey, are called logbooks or simply logs. A similar book for writing daily the owner's private personal events and information is called a diary.

Businesses use accounting books such as journals and ledgers to record financial data in a practice called bookkeeping.

Pre-printed school books for students to study are commonly called textbooks. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework.

A book with written prayers is called a prayerbook or missal. A book with a collection of hymns is called a hymnal.

In a library, a general type of non-fiction book which provides information as opposed to telling a story, essay, commentary, or otherwise supporting a point of view, is often referred to as a reference book. A very general reference book, usually one-volume, with lists of data and information on many topics is called an almanac. A more specific reference book with tables or lists of data and information about a certain topic, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called manuals.

An encyclopedia is a book or set of books with articles on many topics. A book listing words, their etymology, meanings, etc. is called a dictionary. A book which is a collection of maps is an atlas. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as Engineering Index, or abstracts such as Chemical Abstracts, Biological Abstracts, etc.

Bookmark (books)s were used throughout the medieval period,For a 9th century Carolingian bookmark see: {{Cite book| publisher = Ashgate| isbn = 0859679047| pages = p. 123| last = Szirmai| first = J. A.| title = The archaeology of medieval bookbinding| location = Aldershot| date = 1999--> For a 15th century bookmark see Medeltidshandskrift 34, Lund University Library. consisting usually of a small parchment strip attached to the edge of folio (or a piece of cord attached to headband). Bookmarks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were narrow silk ribbons bound into the book and become widespread in the 1850's. They were usually made from silk, embroidered fabrics or leather. Not until the 1880's, did paper and other materials become more common.

Books may also be categorized by their binding or cover. Hard cover books have a stiff binding. Paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable.

Publishing is a process for producing books, magazines, newspapers, etc. pre-printed for the reader/user to buy, usually in large numbers by a publishing company. Such books can be categorized as fiction (made-up stories) or non-fiction (information written as fact). A book-length fiction story is called a novel.

Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-publication copies known as Galley proof or 'bound proofs' 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.

Collections of books Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In ancient world the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been either private or public, i.e. for individuals that were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in the fact that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the third century there were around 30 public libraries, public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient History of the Mediterranean region (e.g. Library of Alexandria).Miriam A. Drake, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (Marcel Dekker, 2003), "Public Libraries, History". Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities had also libraries that could be accessible to general public. Typically not the whole collection was available to public, the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading stands to prevent theft. was built in 135 A.D. and could house around 12,000 scrolls.The beginning of modern public library begins around 15th century when individuals started to donate books to towns.Miriam A. Drake, Encyclopedia of Library, "Public Libraries, History". The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: The poor or the middle class had to access most books through a public library or by other means while the rich could afford to have a private library built in their homes.

The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led 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.

In library and booksellers' catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as "Crown 8vo" to indicate the paper size from which the book is made.

When rows of books are lined on a bookshelf, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.

Identification and classification number with barcode.During the 20th century, librarians were concerned about keeping track of the many books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), they devised a series of tools including the International Standard Book Description or ISBD.

Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, world wide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X (10). The European Article Number Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland (imaginary place), and calculating a new check digit.

Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs.

s, and call numbers visible on the spinesA large or public collection requires a Library catalog. Codes called "call numbers" relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside.

Institutional or national standards, such as American National Standards Institute/NISO Z39.41 - 1997, establish 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 tapes and Computer software.

One 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. The Library of Congress Classification system is more popular in university libraries.

Classification systems

Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
Library of Congress Classification (LCC)
Chinese Library Classification (CLC)
Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
Harvard-Yenching Classification

Transition to digital format The 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 e-Book sometimes refers to a device such as the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP, which is meant to read the digital form and present it in a human readable form.

Throughout the 20th century, libraries have faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishing and the Internet means that much new information is not printed in paper books, but is made available online 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 domain into a digital medium for unlimited redistribution and infinite availability. The effort is spearheaded by Project Gutenberg combined with Distributed Proofreaders.

There have also been new developments in the process of publishing books. Technologies such as print on demand have made it easier for less known authors to make their work available to a larger audience.

Paper and conservation issues

Though papermaking in Europe had begun around the 11th century, up until the beginning of 16th century vellum and paper were produced congruent to one another, vellum being the more expensive and durable option. Printers or publishers would often issue the same publication on both materials, to cater to more than one market.

Paper was first made in China, as early as 200 B.C., and reached Europe through History of Islam territories. At first made of rags, the industrial revolution changed paper-making practices, allowing for paper to be made out of wood pulp.

Paper made from wood pulp was introduced in the early-19th century, because it was cheaper than linen or abaca cloth-based papers. Pulp-based paper made books less expensive to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations, and enabled the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution.

However pulp paper contained acid, that eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers, which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Books printed between 1850 and 1950 are at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections.

The proper care of books takes into account the possibility of physical and chemical damage to the cover and text. Books are best stored out of direct sunlight, in reduced lighting, at cool temperatures, and at moderate humidity. They need the support of surrounding volumes to maintain their shape, so it is desirable to shelve them by size.

Uses for books Aside from the primary purpose of reading them, books are also used for other ends:

A book may be studied by students as the subject of a writing and analysis exercise in the form of a book report.
A book may be evaluated by a professional writer in order to produce a published book review.
A book may be read by a group of people to use as a spark for social or academic discussion, as in a Book discussion club.
Books are sometimes used for their exterior appearance to decorate a room, such as a study.