Book Definition

A book is a work (which can be handwritten, printed or painted) arranged on bound sheets of paper and protected by a cover. In general, to be considered a book, it must have at least 50 pages, and it can be distributed in several volumes or volumes. Is called book to a work that deals with any subject and even that does not contain words, but only images.

A book is often made up of a cover that protects the pages, a spine that gathers the binding, front cover, front and back covers, body of the work made up of pages, prologue or introduction, index, chapters, and other complementary elements.

A book can be scientific, literary or linguistic, travel, biographical, text or study, reference or consultation as a dictionary, and many other variants.

One can talk about books practically since time immemorial and through various production techniques such as cave paintings in the Paleolithic, which “printed” their memories on the stone. While ancient cultures such as the Egyptian Empire (with its papyri) and the Babylonian civilizations (with their stone-carved texts) achieved some diffusion of primitive books, during the European Ancient and Middle Ages books were rare and expensive and were widely used. produced by hand on parchments. Also, given the low level of literacy in European society at the time, only a few people could write with the precision necessary for the preservation of these manuscripts; in general, only some nobles and members of the clergy managed to preserve the books at that historical stage.

From the creation of the movable type printing press by Gütenberg around the year 1450, with the associated lowering of costs, a “bibliographical explosion” began that generated the proliferation of printed books. The emergence and popularization of libraries are linked to this explosion that reached outstanding levels in the Modern Age and became more acute in current times.

At the end of 1971, the development of what is now known as a digital or electronic book began to be developed, and in 1981 the first book of this type went on sale. One of the pioneers in the use of this technology was Stephen King, who launched his novel ‘Riding the Bullet’ on the Internet. An idea linked to this technology was the Gutenberg Project, which sought to create a completely free digital library. The current technical means have thus allowed the installation of a paradox; On the one hand, the appearance of the texts in PDF format or in the form of e-books have given rise to a historic step in the diffusion of the books, putting them almost within immediate reach of any user connected to a computer or mobile phone. However, the fear of the dissolution of copyright could be a way of discouraging writers who make a living from the commercialization of their books, so that fewer texts would be written over time. The web itself has offered a solution, with the advent of micropayment systems that allow a writer to charge small fees for downloading each of their digital books. Consequently, many librarians believe that books are actually in a transition phase similar to that seen with the advent of the Gütenberg press mentioned earlier. However, unlike those days when the handwritten book became a collector’s item, today’s printed books will probably never disappear from circulation, due to their portability and the pleasure many users enjoy reading, whether they are whether or not they are familiar with new technologies.

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