I have just read with enjoyment David Pearson's finely produced Books as history [ Oak Knoll Press ][ Worldcat ]. His theme is that the artifactual properties of books have historic, aesthetic or other interest independent of the texts they convey. He opens with some consideration of the place of the book in the current digital environment, and then proceeds to the core of the book: a chapter each on five ways in which individual books are interesting. Books beyond texts. This chapter considers books as icons and the iconography of books. It looks at how books have been used in works of art and how works of art have been made from books. It considers the contribution of design, of illustration, and of typography to the impact of a book. Individuality within mass production. For much of its life the book has been an object of mass production, something explicitly acknowledged in FRBR, the model of the bibliographic world used in the library community, in the 'manifestation'. This chapter considers variation within the 'manifestation', whether deliberate (a luxury version printed on better paper, for example) or mistaken (a printing error, for example). Variety through ownership. This chapter discusses the traces left on individual copies of books by their owners: annotations, signatures, bookplates. Variety through binding. This chapter considers binding practices, a specialist area of this author. The collective value of libraries. T ...
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