Book

The most likely versions of the origin of the pre-Slavic word kъniga:

• ascends through the ancient Turkic * küinig, Danube-Bulgarian * küiniv ( Uigur kuin, kuinbitig) to the Chinese küen ^{[K 1]} - “ scroll ” ^[6] ;
• the primordial addition of the prefix * knn- and the root * ig- <* jug (* ieug-) “connect, bind”, that is, “bonded sheets” ^[7] .

Antiquity

Oral transmission is the oldest way of transmitting knowledge in the history of mankind. After the invention of recording systems by ancient civilizations , people began to use almost everything that they can write on — clay tablets , tree bark , metal sheets, etc. for writing.

Labels

The tablet can be defined as a physically strong, reliable carrier of written information, relatively convenient in everyday use and transportation. The writing tool in this case, as a rule, was the stylus . Two main types of tablets can be distinguished: clay ones (for example, among the population of the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates ), which were often used for cuneiform writing ^[8] , and wax ones . The latter were planks covered with a layer of wax , while clay ones were entirely made of clay and, after inscription, were often burned to give them additional strength. After this procedure, accordingly, it was already impossible to change the text; on the contrary, records on wax tablets could be erased and reused. In ancient Rome, planks were often fastened together. It is known that there were "diptychs", "triptychs" and "polyptychs" (two, three, and many tablets, respectively) ^[9] , thereby forming a kind of prototype of a modern book - the code ^[10] .

Scrolls

In ancient Egypt , papyrus (a type of paper made from the stems of a plant of the same name) was used to record from the time of the First Dynasty . The oldest finds of this kind are papyri, in particular accounting documents, from the memorial temple of King Neferirkar Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty , found in Abusir and dating from the beginning of the 24th - the end of the 23rd centuries. BC e. ^[11] Separate sheets of papyrus were glued into scrolls for easy storage. This tradition is widespread in the Hellenic and Roman worlds, although there is evidence that bark ^{[K 2]} and other materials were also used. Papyrus manufacturing technology was described in Natural History (Book XIII, part XXIII ^[12] ) Pliny the Elder ^[13] . According to Herodotus (" History ", book 5, part 58), the Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th centuries BC. e. The biblion became the Greek word for papyrus as material for recordings, and byblos ^{[K 3]} for the book, which came from the name of the Phoenician port city of Byblos , through which papyrus was exported to Greece ^[14] .

Ink from the surface of the papyrus was easily washed off, and the sheet could be reused for new recordings. A long strip (in Greek "charter") of glued sheets of papyrus (usually about 20) was written on one side. The papyrus band was wound on a roller with handles. When reading, it was necessary to hold the roller with one hand and unwind the scroll with the other ^[15] .

Codes

In the 5th century, Isidore of Seville explained the differences between a book, a scroll and a code in accordance with the then existing notions as follows: the code is composed of many books, the book is made of one scroll. In modern understanding, the code can be called the first information carrier, which is characterized by a noticeable similarity to the book: pages of the same size are somehow bonded on one side and enclosed in a cover made of some fairly durable material. Despite its positive aspects, codes were not widely used in antiquity and gained popularity already in the 3rd – 4th centuries , in Christian society, when parchment began to be used for recordings, which, unlike papyrus, did not break when it was bent ^{[16 ]} , it could be cut. The advantages of this format consisted in its economy (it was possible to use both sides of the written information carrier), portability and the convenience of finding information. In addition, parchment is a reusable material: paint is easily removed from it. A notebook of four sheets of parchment folded and stitched in the middle was distributed, so it turned out 16 pages. Such a book in Greek was called “tetrad” (“four”), modern book blocks are assembled from 16- and 32-page notebooks ^[9] .

Bookselling

Book dealers are reported by Greek authors of the fifth century BC. e. (e.g. Xenophon ). Book sellers (bibliopolis) are mentioned in their comedies by Aristomenes and Nicophone . Book trade in Rome was already a common occurrence. Workshops appear where books are written and sold. One of the first publishers, whose name has survived to this day, was Titus Pomponius Atticus . With those of the authors who gave permission for the correspondence of their works, Attik paid with several copies of their copies ^[17] .

Middle Ages

Manuscripts

Manuscript books ( manuscripts ) were created in script workshops (from Latin “scriptor” - “scribe”). In the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, a scriptorium (it is known that he worked already in 356) was founded by Constantius II , in whom a public library also appeared in the capital (in 475, there were 120,000 books). Scriptories were also attached to the monasteries, the largest of which worked in the Studios Monastery . In order for the lines to come out even, parchment was lined with a plate of soft lead ; later, a stylus was used for this purpose. The text of the calligraphers was inked using a reed feather ( Kalama ), a wooden stick, and later bird feathers were also used ^{[18] [19]} . Over time, the sheets of some manuscripts began to be painted in different colors, the text was carried out in colored ink. The beginning of a new paragraph was written in red ink (they were made from cinnabar or minium). The calligraphers who wrote the beginning of the paragraphs were called rubricators (from the Latin “ruber” - red) ^[20] . A soft and rounded uncial letter appeared , convenient for execution on parchment with a pen; its heyday was in the 4th century ^[21] . Since parchment was very expensive, it was often used repeatedly - the texts were washed off with special compositions, scraped with pumice and wrote new ones. Manuscripts made on re-use parchment are called palimpsests . For the most part, ancient books were destroyed in the Middle Ages, however, the reverse cases are also known - in the era of the high Middle Ages, texts of ancient authors were already written on top of the works of the church fathers ^{[22] [K 4] [20]} .

The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century diminished its cultural influence on the rest of the world. In the Western Roman Empire, the traditions of writing in Latin were kept in monasteries, since at first Cassiodor in the monastery of Vivaria , and later Benedict of Nursia in the VI century, emphasized the importance of copying texts. This greatly influenced the importance of books during the Middle Ages , although then the books were mainly read by the clergy. Before the invention and widespread use of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which is why manuscripts were quite rare and expensive. Small monasteries usually had dozens of books; larger ones had up to several hundred; by the 9th century, a large collection of 500 books was considered large, and even towards the end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and the collection of books of the Sorbonne accounted for only about two thousand publications ^[24] .

Woodcut and incunabula

At the beginning of the XIV century , woodcut appeared in Western Europe (it was developed long before that in the East (one of the earliest samples dates back to the VIII century), woodcut books have long been printed in Korea) ^[25] . In woodcuts, the matrix with the image of the page was cut out of a piece of wood. It could be dipped in ink and used to make several copies of the page. The earliest printed forms with text were used for the production of printed fabrics ^[26] . Books, as well as printed pages, playing cards, and religious images, began to be produced by woodcut. Initially, paper sheets were printed only on one side, and their empty sides were glued together. Printing on both sides of the sheet became possible after the invention of the machine. Creating a book was a painstaking process, as each page had to be carved (which took about a month). In addition, the tree was short-lived - it was easily washed and cracked, and after the wooden forms were used for printing, they were thrown away ^[27] .

Printed books, single sheets and illustrations created in Europe on December 31, 1500, are known as incunabula ( lat. Incunabula - “cradle”) ^[28] .

With the wide distribution of paper, known to Europe since the 12th century ^[29] , book printing became cheaper. The first books in which paper was used also contained sheets of parchment: usually a paper notebook of 4 sheets was wrapped in a sheet of parchment ^[30] .

Typing Form

Reproduction of the text with prints of individual stamps has been known since ancient times (the earliest known example is the Phaistos disc ). The has a Latin record of the founding of the church, stamped in 1119 ^[31] .

The Chinese blacksmith Bi Sheng (990-1051) is considered the inventor of printing with typeset plate . His method of printing hundreds and thousands of prints from one form, typed by letters from burnt clay, was described by the scientist Shen Ko in Notes on a Dream Stream ^[32] . However, due to the fact that Chinese writing is ideographic , typesetting in China was not widespread, as typesetting offices with all the necessary letters reached enormous size ^[33] .

Gutenberg

In the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg was the first in Europe to use a printing press with metal movable letters for printing, which made it possible to obtain a large number of prints. Mechanisms like Gutenberg’s machine tool have long been used in winemaking and paper production. Gutenberg also began to make letters using the word-form, greatly simplifying the process ^[34] .

Books have become relatively affordable, although for most they are still quite expensive. The fixing of the text in hundreds or thousands of identical copies led to the appearance of well-established editions of works free from errors and distortions that were inevitable when they were rewritten ^[28] .

New time

Despite the growth of book printing in the 15th century, books were still published in limited editions and were very expensive. The need for caring for them was obvious.

One of the earliest references to the use of bookmarks dates back to 1584 , when the royal printer Christopher Barker presented Queen Elizabeth I with a silk border with a border. Narrow silk ribbons became a common bookmark in the XVIII and XIX centuries , they were fixed on the cover and made longer than the height of the page. The first removable bookmarks began to appear in the 1850s , they were usually made of silk or embroidered fabric.

In the early 1800s, steam presses became popular. They could print up to 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could set no more than 2,000 characters in the same time.

At the end of the 19th century, monotype and linotype presses were introduced. It was possible to put up to 6000 characters on them and even entire lines at once.

Many years, starting from the 15th century, were spent on improving printing presses and adopting freedom of speech , gradually reducing censorship ^{[K 5]} . And by the middle of the 20th century , book production in Europe had crossed the mark of 200 thousand items per year.

In total, today there are approximately 130 million titles of books ^[35] .

Today, in the manufacture of books, the technology of offset printing or lithography is most often used, in which ink from the printing form is transferred to paper through an intermediate cylinder. Pages are sequentially printed on roll paper, which is subsequently divided into separate sheets, so that in the end the book will immediately be assembled in the correct order. Such a machine, respectively, is called roll, or rotary; There are also offset machines that print on separate sheets, not on rolls.

After collecting sheets with prints , binding works are carried out. In the middle of the last century, the corresponding part of the work was carried out by separate enterprises that did not engage in printing and did only work on book binding; Currently, the active processes of mergers and reorganizations of companies lead to the fact that the integration of various tasks within the same publishing company is growing, and now it is difficult to find an enterprise similar to the one described above. The popularity of book binding without traditional firmware is growing, however, the old stitching methods are also used in the printing process.

Modern typography is characterized by standardization: books produced usually have a certain size and format . In English-speaking countries, with the exception of the United States , British standards prevail; own rules and regulations apply in Europe . Paper is also made specifically for printing needs; To facilitate the reading process , it is traditionally made not pure white, but slightly darkened, and also has a certain density so that the text printed on one side of the sheet does not shine on the other side. Depending on the specific type of book, paper of a certain quality is used; the most common variety is coated paper of one sort or another.

Digital Printing

Among other things, at the present stage, books are also produced by digital printing . In this case, the pages are formed in approximately the same way as documents printed by office equipment - laser printers or copiers , using toner rather than ink . This approach allows you to print small runs of publications (up to several hundred copies), including due to the lack of preparatory steps necessary in working with an offset press. The advent of digital printing contributed to the formation of a new approach to book publishing - the so-called print on demand , when copies of books are made specifically for a particular client, after he places an order for a particular publication.

E-book

The term “ electronic book ” (also an e-book, English e-book ) is applied to a book containing information from a regular book, but presented in digital format and placed on electronic media ( CD-ROM , DVD-ROM , etc.) .

An increasing number of publications (the so-called information explosion ) posed the issue for libraries of storing such a large amount of information. The advent of electronic publishing and the Internet allows you to not print information in the form of paper books, but to store it on much more capacious electronic media in electronic libraries , providing access to it both locally and remotely - through the World Wide Web .

Books in this form have both their pros and cons, but due to some inconvenience of existing e-book reading systems (for example, the speed of reading electronic books, according to a study by the Nielsen Norman Group , is 10% lower than the average reading speed paper analogues ^[36] ), traditional paper is often preferred, maintaining their production at a sufficient level.

Nevertheless, many are currently trying to digitize existing books in order to ensure the convenience of storing them on electronic media and unhindered access for all who wish them. There are also developments for the process of their publication, for example, printing on demand , electronic magazines , etc.

Audiobook

To create an audiobook, the text of a work is read by a person - usually a professional actor or a group of those - or (less commonly) a speech synthesizer , after which it is recorded on some kind of sound medium. A certain noise or music may also be added to the text. Audio books have both advantages (for example, the ability to perceive information by people who for one reason or another are unable to read), and disadvantages (in particular, the sound file is much more voluminous than the text itself).

Depending on the type of book ( encyclopedia , dictionary , textbook , monograph , etc.), its structure may change, but usually ^[37] it contains the following parts:

• Dust jacket - a paper cover over a book cover.
• Binding - a strong, usually hard, cover made of cardboard, leather, fabric, paper, which encloses (glued) the stitched pages of a book.
• Cover (soft or semi-solid, the title and author of the book are indicated on it).
• Bookend - double sheets of thick paper located in the book between the block and the binding cover. Connects the block with the book and protects the extreme pages of the book from pollution.
• Spine - a place where sheets of a book, notebooks are sewn.
• Title page (contains the title of the book, its author).
• Imprint (in Soviet and Russian editions) or imprint (in editions of some other countries).
• Schmuttitul - a separate sheet of the book with the title on the next section or part of the book.
• Annotation (short description of the publication for buyers, sellers and librarians).
• Introduction - a section preceding the main theme of a work or one of its parts and preparing its appearance.
• The text of the book itself is a book block.
• Index ( Glossary ).
• Contents (literature) or Table of Contents (may be at the beginning or at the end of the book).

From the second half of the 19th century, paper began to be made from cellulose ^[38] . Novels, school books and books have been made public. However, that paper contained acid, which causes a kind of delayed combustion, which gradually destroys the paper from the inside. Therefore, modern libraries must take measures to neutralize acids in old books. Books published between 1850 ^{[K 6]} and 1950 ^{[K 7]} are affected by this phenomenon.

When storing books, you need to consider the possibility of chemical changes in the cover and text. Books are best kept away from direct sunlight, in a cool, darkened room, with moderate humidity. Books, especially heavy ones, must be supported by adjacent volumes in order to keep fit. For this reason, it is advisable to sort books by size. At home, books are usually stored in bookcases or on shelves. When there are few books on the bookshelf, sometimes a book holder is needed to prevent them from skewing.

In recent decades, electronic ^[39] photocopies of old books have been widely used by readers, and the original is kept in special conditions.

A collection of books can be either private ( collection ) or public ( library ). To have such a meeting for the first time was the privilege of nobles and wealthy people, as well as monasteries and universities . With the cheapening of books and an increase in their number, public libraries became widespread, making books accessible to the masses. However, for various reasons (speed of access, tastes, considerations of prestige ), some preferred (and prefer) to have their own (personal) library.

The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular literature. Due to the falling prices of most books and the spread of bookstores, owning a private library has ceased to be a symbol of social status.

In large libraries, the search for books was rather time-consuming, therefore, cataloging systems were created - by topic, author names, country of publication, etc. - simplifying the search and sorting.

In the 20th century, librarians faced the problem of tracking the many books that were published every year around the world. In this regard, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has developed several tools to solve this problem, including the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). In accordance with it, each edition is assigned an international standard book number - ISBN. ISBN, respectively, is a unique identifier for each edition of a book produced in any country in the world, if the publisher accepts this standard. The system is supported by a special ISBN community. The identifier consists of four parts ^{[K 8]} :

In addition to ISBN, there are other classification systems - for example, LBC or UDC .

Russian writer Maxim Gorky advised: “ Love a book - the source of knowledge, only knowledge is saving, only it can make you spiritually strong, honest, intelligent people who can sincerely love a person, respect his work and heartily admire the fruits of his continuous great work ” ^{[40 ]} . In the same spirit, the Soviet writer P. A. Pavlenko spoke about the role of the book: “ The book is a collective experience. One who has read two dozen great books has lived two dozen great lives ” ^[41] .

Speaking at the celebration of the Orthodox Book Day on March 14, 2014, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill , spoke as follows about the role of the book in modern society: “ Today we use the book so often that we don’t even pay attention to the fact that we are holding in our hands a unique monument of the human culture. Indeed, thanks to the book, knowledge is transmitted not only horizontally, from one person to another, but also vertically - from the past to the present, from the present to the future. The books contain the wisdom of mankind ” ^[42] .

• The largest book in the world is the Codex Gigas, a grand manuscript codex of the beginning of the 13th century (640 (624) pages, binding size - 92 cm high, 50 cm wide; book thickness - 22 cm, and weight - 75 kg )
• The smallest book in the world ^[43] is A.P. Chekhov's Chameleon 0.9 × 0.9 mm in size. It contains 30 pages of 11 lines of text on each, 3 color illustrations. The book was printed and bound by A. I. Konenko in 1996 in Omsk, Russian Federation.
• Brewster Cale is about to open the world's first archive of all printed books in Britain ^[44] .
• Since 2012, International Book Donation Day has been celebrated ^[45] .
• Since 2008 The Family-book binding workshop produces leather-bound books .

Comments

Used literature and sources

• Book // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Добиаш-Рождественская О. А. История письма в средние века. Руководство к изучению латинской палеографии. - 3rd ed. — М. : Книга , 1987. — (История книжного искусства. Монографии и очерки). - 5,000 copies.
• Немировский Е. Мир книги. С древнейших времён до начала XX века / Рецензенты А. А. Говоров , Е. А. Динерштейн, В. Г. Утков . — Москва: Книга, 1986. — 50 000 экз.
• Шапкина О. И. Символистская книга в России начала XX века // Известия высших учебных заведений. Проблемы полиграфии и издательского дела. — 2014. — № 5. — С. 115—122
• Георгиев П. В. Библиотека и традиционная бумажная книга // Учитель истории в социокультурном пространстве Евразии в конце ХХ — начале XXI в .: Материалы Всероссийской научно-практической конференции. — Казань: Изд-во Казан. ун-та, 2016. С. 361—368.