Books and Bookmaking

Experts in the study of books and their history examine the transformation of thoughts into written words as well as the history of books. Comparing and analyzing bookmaking procedures is one of the tasks in this discipline. Darnton (1982) contextualized the methodologies by making linkages between cultural, social, economic, and political systems of thought. Books and technology, as cultural artifacts, store and transfer data, reflecting cultural memory and oral traditions (Howard, 2009). Bookmaking and changes in what individuals know and convey are covered in Historical Bibliography (Lisb.net, 2016). Darnton (1982) defines the book as an art form. Another point of distinction in the book as an art form is geography. The adoption of Chinese papermaking occurred, as did the transition from papyrus in Egypt to parchment used by early Christians and Jews.

Though scrolls were manufactured from silk in China, which was formerly a private niche. They have ideograph logo graphs. T’sai Lan I, approximately 140-86 B. C., vented paper making an official under Han Ho Ti. Making books moved from silk to hemp to a blend of rag, bast, and wood. This was then soaked in a bin until it became a paste, which was then dried and hardened into smooth paper (Lyons, 2011). Several imprinting procedures have been employed throughout history. Lithography, or offset printing, is a type of imprinting method used for publications and catalogs. Xerography is done in the dark and was commonly used for wet photography in the 1900s.

The third method is xylography. Wood engraving, similar to stamps, is used in this method. Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type in the 1400s.Multispectral imaging is a technique for seeing text in paper that is visible with the naked eye. According to findings from different articles on this topic, the surface that was written on was valued more than what was written on it, hence materials like parchment were re-used. What was written in books differed based on the type of information retained, such as legal and government papers vs literature and nonfiction.Paperback sales increase as a result of public libraries. Neilson (1995) regarded the memex to be the precession of ebooks. A software called PageMaker led to Adobe’s InDesign. Gutenberg Project began in the 1970s.

Guenberg Project began in the 1970s. Desktop publishing expanded the possibilities of eBooks by allowing users to view text and visuals in the same browser window.

Libraries have a fascinating history. In Mesopotamia, the earliest library was made up of codices. They developed the first writing system around 4000 B. C. (Lyons, 2011). Reading evolved from an oral performance to a solitary, solo activity (Lyons, 2011). The Greeks influenced other languages by adding vowels to their own, which was not initially written out. Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hebrew were all influences. Vowels are not used in Hebrew. Because Greeks did not use punctuation, the language was easier to understand when read aloud (Valentine, 2012). Codex Hebrew texts were written on ceramics and animal skins (Valentine, 2012). Parchment was used instead of papyrus because it was more durable but more expensive (Lyons, 2011).Egyptian papyrus was widely used. To make a sheet, papyrus reeds were bonded together with sap. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History referred to it as Taenotica, which was popular among priests in Alexandria during Emperor Clausius’ reign. By the fourth century, parchment had supplanted papyrus.

AlphabetIn 3,000 B. C., Hammurabi’s rules were engraved in a stele after Hammurabi conquered various warring city-states under what was called Babylonia – southern Mesopotamia (Howard, 2009). The Mesopotamian writing was cuneiform, which consisted of symbols that were etched into clay tablets, which were called codices by the Romans. The codices were also used for Linear A and Linear B of the Minoan Civilization in Greece. Scholars have not been able to decipher what is written on these tablets, but the history and archeology is being studied.In the 1500s B. C. E., pictographs were used and broken down into to 800 symbols, or ideograms, and phonetic symbols (Valentine, 2012). Pictographs are drawings that represent words, associated with objects, which are called ideogram (Kallendorf, p. 40).Hieroglyphics were replaced by optimal character-based alphabet systems. We use the past of the alphabet from Romans who were used by Greeks today. There’s was from Babylon and Akkadian (Valentine, 2912).Era of the Silk Road and LibrariesBetween 660 and 750 A. D., the caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty, spread beliefs and language from Damascus, then the capital of Arab Empire, to Northern Africa, west to Spain, and east to Central Asia. People from these regions traded knowledge and goods amongst Byzantium, India, China, and Persia. In 832, the House of Wisdom was a center for book production, translation, and scholarship. This was a library and observatory where scholars copied and studied Greek scrolls (Howard, 2009). Italian and Flemish cities traded with Byzantines and Islamic cities where libraries and literacy still flourished. A duplicate of Treatise on Floating Bodies after the ordinal in Byzantine, was found written in a Christian prayer book (Valentine, 2012). Toledo and Valencia in Italy had papermaking mills, sprouting in Italy in 1276 and The Netherlands in 1390. It was easier to make paper than parchment. Growth in literacy, owning personal bibles, and book fairs spread in the 1500s.

Ngrams are graphs formulated by data to trace how I often certain words were used in history. This can show how words were used in one culture or time period and why, as opposed to another culture in that time period (Michel & Aiden, 2011). One example was the use of musical script used in America, but through the graphs, the words were not used in Germany. This suggested that this particular script, written by a German Jew, was suppressed during the 1930s and 1940s, but the music was accepted in America. Another example is that people were less interested in writing about 1950 after the year 1950 (Michel & Aiden, 2011). We lose interest in the past more rapidly. NGram helps us see types of words people care about, by how often it is mentioned in literature. People in the 90s, for example, would have read a lot about heroes in children’s literature. In the 21st century, the Young Adult genre increased the popularity of archetypes, like heroes and villains. Politics became more popular also. A common theme for least popular topics to read was math (Michel & Aiden, 2011).

Another use of ngrams is signal-processing. This allows a researcher to view areas of censorship (Michel & Aiden, 2011). Wider and narrower distribution in the graphs can help determine propaganda or censorship, added to a “Suppression Index.” This is related to massive-scale data collection and analysis to the study of human culture (Michel & Aiden, 2011). While censorship is counteracted by the globalization of the internet, roles of distributors within Bookmaking have been divided among different people. Paper-making and bookbinder saved time and expenses with offset printing. Booksellers could have print-on-demand to reduce loss of profit if the extra copies of a book were not sold. Traditional book selling was and is changing as a result (Lyons, 2013). Print-on-demand is cheaper for bookstores. If there is less content, such as anthologies and poetry collections. Growth of ebooks has led to changes in distribution models and enforcement of copyright laws (Gallagher, 2014).

Reference List:

Articles:

Darnton, R. (1982). What is the history of books? Daedalus, 111(3), 65-83.

Erünsal, I. E. (2015). A brief survey of the book trade in the Ottoman Empire. Libri, 65(3), 217-235.https://doi.org/10.1515/libri-2015-0007 Feather, J. (1982). The History of Books as a Field of Study: A Review Essay. The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), 17(4), 463-467. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25541324.

Galey, A. (2012). The enkindling reciter: E-books in the bibliographical imagination. Book History, 15, 210-247. https://doi.org/10.1353/bh.2012.0008

Gallagher, K. (2014). Print-on-demand: New models and value creation. Publishing Research Quarterly, 30, 244-248. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-014-9367-2

Goffin, J. (2014). Two colonial bookbinders on the wrong side of the law. Library Quarterly, 84(3), 387-389.

Howsam, L. (2013). New directions for research and pedagogy in book history. Knygotyra, 60, 7-18.

Kallendorf, C. (2013). The ancient book. In M. F. Suarez & H. R. Woudhuysen (Eds.), The book: A global history (pp. 39-53). Oxford University Press. http://www.lisbdnet.com/historical-bibliography/

Tanselle, G. T. (1995). Printing history and other history. Studies in Bibliography, 48, 269-289.

Valentine, A social history of books and libraries from Cuneiform to bytes (pp. 47-74). Scarecrow.

Valentine, P. M. (2012). Books and printing: Fifteenth-nineteenth centuries. In P. M.

Books:

Murnane, Gerald. A History of Books. RHYW, 2018.

Lyons, Martin. “Books: A Living History.” 2011.

Howard, Nicole. “The Book: The Life Story of Technology.” 2009.

Videos:

Bu, L. (2013, Feb.). How books can open your mind [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_bu_how_books_can_open_your_mi nd

Michel, J.B., & Aiden, E. L. (2011, July). What we learned from 5 million books [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/what_we_learned_from_5_million_book s.

ND College of Arts and Letters. (2013, Jan. 17). The great age of books.

Hobbins, Associate Professor of History [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-M_7IyrBsk.

Matas, M. (2011, March). A next-generation digital book [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas TEDxTalks. (2012, June 21). The blurring line between books and the internet: Hugh McGuire at TEDxMontreal [Video]. TED Conferences. https://youtu.be/T5iNeDwve1U

Timeline – World History Documentaries. (2018, Aug. 25). The machine that made us. (Gutenberg printing press documentary) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ88yC35NjI

Website: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hypertext-history/