The Book and Knowledge
Organization - Past, Present and
Future
The Royal School of Information Science in Denmark, Copenhagen
Master Thesis 2011-2012
By: Anne Vinkel Høier
Supervisor: Karen Birgitte Phillipson
Word count: 27133.
Abstract
This thesis engages in history of the book, to do so is to engage with humanity and with
the social communication processes that have underpinned the gathering and spreading
of knowledge throughout the world. The thesis primarily focuses on the development of
the book as a media through time, past, present and future. However the history of the
book is combined with the history of knowledge organisation as these are entwined both
in their history and development. This approach is selected in order to create a clear
picture of the history and the development of knowledge organisation and the book, but
also to attempt a guess at the future of both. The need for knowledge organisation
fueled the invention of the written word paralleled with the invention of different
writing materials were developed. As a result of population expansion and new and
faster wais to both produce and distribute information, knowledge became a bigger and
bigger task to manage. Different systems were invented to help manage this enormous
task and as new media came into existence these too were put to use. During history
there is especially one media that has survived longest, both in popularity and
efficiency. Since the dawn of the internet the book has experienced increased
competition as a media due to the shift from physical materials to that of cyberspace.
Though the book is still widely used today the monopoly it used to have is decreasing.
Different wives of the definition of a book fuel a debate as to its future. Some argue that
it will develop into different electronic forms, while others cling to the belief that a
book solely can be in the form of papers wrapped with a cover. Though people see that
the books number in its original form is decreasing they still believe that it will survive
some time yet.
2
Index
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………Page 2.
Index……………………………………………………………………………………………Page 3-4.
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….……...Page 5-6.
Research Questions………………………………………………………………………….…Page 6-7.
Method……………………………………………………………………………………….....Page 7-11.
Theory……………………………………………………………………………………..........Page 12-14.
The Time Before the Book…………………………………………………………………….Page 15-27.
The Beginning………………………………………………………………………………….Page 15-16.
Cuneiform……………………………………………………………………..Page 16.18.
The Hieroglyphs……………………………………………………..….........Page 19-22.
Chinese Writing…………………………………………………...…….........Page 22-24.
The Invention of the Alphabet…………………………….….………..........Page 25-26.
Knowledge Organization in the Early Days…………………...…………....Page 26-27.
The History of the Book and Knowledge Organisation up until the Electronic Age...........Page 28-42.
Books and its Keepers Before the Printing Press…………………………..Page 28-31.
The influence of the Book on society………………………………...….......Page 31-33.
Knowledge Organisation…………………………………………………….Page 33-34.
The Time of Printing…………………………………………………............Page 34-37.
The Impact of Printing on Society………………………………………….Page 37-38.
Knowledge Organisation in the Printing Age ……………………………...Page 38-41.
The Development of the Classification Systems……..…....Page 41-42.
The Book and Knowledge Organization in the Electronic Age…………………………….Page 43-48.
The Book and the New Media………….……………………………………Page 44.
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The Birth and Development of the Computer………………………....…...Page 45-46.
Knowledge Organisation and the New Media………………………...……Page 46-48.
The Effect of the Electronic Age on Society………..………………………………………..Page 48.
The Book and Knowledge Organisation in the Future……………………………….……..Page 49-68.
To Adapt Or Not to Adapt...............................................................................Page 49-52.
A Shift in Generations - the Book and the Computer……………………...Page 52-56.
What is a Book - the Book vs. the E-book ……………………...……….….Page 56-59.
Writers and Readers in a Digital Future ………………..…………..……..Page 59-62.
The Book in the Future………………………………….………………..….Page 62-63.
The Future Development of the Book…………………………………....….Page 63-66.
The Book in the Future Society……………………………………………...Page 66-67.
Knowledge Organisation and Keeping in the Future……………………...Page 67-68.
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...Page 69-70.
Literature……………………………………………………………………………………....Page 71-73.
Annex………………………………………………………………………………………...…Page 74-79.
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Introduction
I have always been fascinated with history and have always loved to explore it in many
different subjects so it did not take me long before realizing that my master thesis would
be written using some part of history. But the process from that point and to the final
subject description was long. The ideas as to a subject presented themselves during the
many class discussions and literature used during them. Some of the subjects that we
discussed in the class during my years at the school are the development and use of
knowledge organization. It is a much debated subject in class but most of the time the
discussion wouldn’t go into the details of the subject which annoyed me mainly for two
reasons. One because in my opinion you cannot have a correct discussion stating
something without having some of the foundation, the facts of why it is at it is. And two
it has always been a frustration of mine not to know the foundation of things when
expected to discuss a subject stating my opinion and presenting it to others. So these
frustrations basically were what laid the ground idea for this master thesis. Another is
the development or demise of the book as a media. This were and still is a topic I am
interested in and loved debating but which felt like it was a debate that only scratched
the surface, and never took for example the history, and other impact factors like the
society and technology into account and furthermore was only discussed with people
working within the LIS1 and book field. But how to decide which to use? At first
thought it seemed like only one of the subjects could be used at the time, but as the
investigation began the subjects were in some way connected to each other. The
findings showed that during their development throughout time after the invention of
the book they began to cross paths and furthermore that they had an impact on each
other’s development in many different ways. The focus of this thesis will thus be the
exploration of the invention and development of knowledge storage and organisation
including the history of the book with the aim of disclosing their overall history and
possible future. However focus on the book will be the prime theme in this paper and
will also be the main focus of the discussion section. The thesis will seek to give a
structured view of the most important points in the history of the written language,
discussing the development of knowledge organisation and the book through the ages.
1
Library and Information Science.
5
During the thesis the role of society and social order will be viewed and merged with
knowledge organisation and the history of books in order to present the influences these
areas have on each other. The first section of the paper will contain time-line to act as a
guide or “red tread” for the most important happenings in the development of the
subjects above. The history section has been added to the paper in order to present a
view of the historical development thus putting things into perspective. Furthermore it
provides a better basis to venture some educated guesses as to the future of both the
book and knowledge organisation. The first part of the paper will also be used to make
references to the past in order to explain why the development is heading in the way it
appears to be. Opinions from both professionals within the field of LIS as well as
people outside of the field will be used as a means to guess at the future for the book
and knowledge organisation especially so in the discussion of their further development
or potential demise. The time-line will be viewed in detail in the method section before
the chronology of the paper. The time-line is constructed by using dates for happenings
in the history conducted during my research and workings with the thesis. A list of the
research questions posed in the examination of the subjects of this thesis is listed below.
Research Questions
The Role of the Book and Knowledge Organisation through Time.
A) How and why has man stored and retrieved information through time both past,
present and future?
B) What were the media of communication before the invention of the book?
C) How and why did these develop in the period leading up to the book?
D) What is the development of the book as a media, from its making until the
Computer Age and what does it mean for knowledge organization?
E) What status does the book have in the electronic age?
F) Has it given way for newer media, or has it simply developed into something
more, coexisting within or among the other medias?
6
A list of secondary questions is shown below, they are added because of their relevance
to the primary questions, and because it makes sense to view them together as they have
an impact on the development of the subjects viewed above.
G) Who had access to the media/knowledge in the society at the given points in
time and how did this impact the social structure?
H) What role did the making of books and later the printing press play in social
hierarchy and how did this effect knowledge organisation?
I) What impact does today’s different forms of media have on the book and
knowledge organisation?
Method
Materials used in the paper
The materials used entails books, newspapers, magazines, internet pages and interviews
on the subjects of book history, information history and technological evolution.
Furthermore an ask sub-survey is conducted and combined these will form the
foundation of knowledge used in the paper. Opinions from both people within the LIS
and outside along with my own personal will be presented in the discussion section.
Discussion
Discussions on the development of the book through time and its impact will be
described and discussed seen from opposing fronts. To enable a larger perspective on
the views in our time, the quantitative research model will be used in the form of an ask
sub-survey. This is done in order to get different views of opinions from people not
working within the field of LIS. The ask sub-survey will be anonymous and will contain
questions on what the book is, whether or not is has developed into something more,
what people think of the new technologies and whether or not the book will survive in
the future. Questions on the age, gender and work relations will be asked in order to
determine how far the sub-survey has reached. In the discussion the different views on
what makes a book a book will be described and debated. Furthermore guesses and
opinions from different parties will be presented in order to discuss the survival of the
book – Will it develop into something new or disappear entirely in the future? The last
7
section will venture a guess at the future development of knowledge organisation based
on information conducted during the phases of its history.
The Selection of Questions in the Ask Sub-Survey
To get a picture of who answered the ask sub-survey, questions about gender, age,
profession and nationality are asked. This is also to ensure that the survey reaches as
broad an audience as possible. Questions about research habits are asked to find out
where they go to find answers and in which sequence they do this seen according to the
different options available today. Then questions about reading habits are asked to get
an idea of whether gender, age, work profession and nationality have anything to say
when it comes to reading habits. After these questions the ask sub-survey moves on to
discuss the book as a media and whether or not the book is dying out or has developed
into something other than pages wrapped in a cover. At the end the participants are ask
to weigh in on the new reading media they are an improvement or a turn for the worse.
These questions are formed to create as broad a perspective on the discussion about the
book as possible and to get a different angle on the subject other than the statements of
professionals and academics.
Time-line
To provide t a better view of the historical part and not get lost in all the years
presented to you during the paper, the time-line below present the most important
points in history described in detail in the first section. It also shows
the organisational process in which I have written the paper.
32000 – 30000 B.C. Cave wall paintings of for example bison and rhinos that cover
cave walls at Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc in southern France.
3300 B.C. Mesopotamians write in cuneiform on clay tablets using pictograms. The
oldest dated clay tablet found.
3200 B.C. The Bronze Age begins.
3100 B.C. Hieroglyphs become popular in Egypt.
2900 B.C. The object symbols in cuneiform is replaced with a system of straight lines.
1500 B.C. The Phoenicians invent their alphabet.
1200 B.C. The oldest known Chinese writing is recorded on shells and bones.
1100-800 B.C. The Phoenician alphabet is widely used around the Mediterranean.
800 B.C. The Greek alphabet is constructed by using parts of the Phoenician alphabet.
750 B.C. The Roman alphabet eventually evolves from the alphabet brought with the
Greek on their travels.
8
213 B.C. The Chinese refine a system of writing.
39 B.C. The first Roman public library is opened.
105 A.D. Ts’ai Lun invents writing paper.
300 A.D. The Romans replace rolled up parchment with the codex.
500 A.D. The first monasteries are created.
600-700 A.D. Paper spreads to Korea and Japan.
634 A.D The Arabs conquer Egypt and cut off the West’s supply of papyrus.
800 A.D. Vikings launch attacks on England.
868 A.D The Chinese print their “Diamond Sutra”.
1100 Paper arrives in Europe. The Monasteries monopoly on books starts to waver.
1041 The Chinese invent a form of movable type, but don’t use it much.
1456 Johann Gutenberg prints the first copy of his bible using movable type.
1600 - 1700 The Golden Age of libraries.
1605 Francis Bacon invents the Classification System.
1800 The steam powered press is invented.
1814 The flat printing press is invented.
1847-1876 John Edmund's Classification System is invented and was later improved
and expanded by William Frederick Poole.
1862 The Rotating press is invented.
1867 The Typewriter is invented.
1876 The Melvil Dewey Classification System is invented.
1897 Herbert Putnam’s Classification System is invented.
1939 - 1945 The computer takes form.
1961 “The International Conference on Principles for Cataloging" (ICCP) is held in
Paris.
1970 The first word processor is sold.
1971 The first e-book is said to have been made by a man called Michael S. Hart by
typing the US Declaration of Independence into a computer.
1977 The first personal computers are sold.
1990 The establishment of “IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records” (FRBR).
1992-1993 F. Crugnola and I. Rigamonti design and create the first e-book reader,
called Incipit, as a thesis project at the Politecnico di Milano.
2003 Scientists make advances in the invention of e-paper.
2007 Amazon launches Kindle 2 available for the whole world.
2010 Apple releases the iPad with an e-book application called iBooks.
Chronology of the Thesis:
The introduction to this paper will besides making a short introduction to the whole
paper also provide the reader with a time-line. This is create a better overview of the
events in history, which will be described later in the paper and to offer a means to get
back on track if the dates get confusing. The dates listed in the time-line are important
for the overall perspective of the history of the book as well as knowledge organisation
9
‒ These events are milestones indicating important developments in history which
should help provide a red tread of the paper.
The first section of the paper after the introduction is a more in-depth account of history
before the book, where the most influential parts of writing and the effect of these will
be described. This is written to give a sense of what led to the invention of the book.
Because there are so many different written languages only the ones deemed most
important for the development of the written languages are described. Within this
section the invention of the alphabet will be viewed as a section on its own as the
invention of the alphabet is one of the key stages in what later becomes the most used
form of writing today and possibly in the future. The knowledge organisation of the
time will also be viewed separately for two primary reasons: 1) Because knowledge
organisation maybe the main reason for why we started using the written language in
the first place and so has a key position in enabling us to grasp the development of the
written language, the book and other medias as well as a general understanding of why
we have the social structure we have today. And 2) it is presented this way to make it
more convenient to refer to later in the discussion.
The next section of the paper will be telling the tale of the book from the early days and
up until the Electronic Age. The results and impact of the book and the innovating
printing press will be viewed especially in correlation to the structure of society in the
given time periods, primarily focusing on Europe. In this first part of the paper storing,
organisation and retrieval of knowledge through time will be viewed at the end of each
era in order to keep a historical structure in the paper and because as mentioned above,
it is a key element for understanding their history. Furthermore this section will contain
a very describing written form following the ages up through time until we came to the
time. This is done both to enable the reader to know the history of the subject, but also
because to understand the past of things can enable one to better comprehend and give
qualified guesses to what might happen in the future. Finally some of the data from this
section will be used to underline arguments made later in the discussion.
The next part of the paper will describe the latest history of the book and knowledge
organisation in the electronic age. In this the books competition with the other media
will be viewed, especially the battle with the computer and later the internet.
10
Furthermore because both the books and the knowledge organisation development are
tied closely to the computer, there is a larger section about the invention of the computer
than the other new media. The last part of this section explains the impact the
technological world has on society and closes the history part of the paper.
The last part of the paper will contain a discussion of the above combined with opinions
from different parties attempting to predict the future of the book. The Base for the
discussion is the material conducted throughout the work and research process, together
with conversations and the ask sub-survey.
11
Theory
Quantitative Research Model
The quantitative research is about describing behavior in the form of models, contexts,
and numerical expressions as accurately as possible. It will generally consist of a survey
or observation of a possible large and representative sample using methods such as the
postal survey with questionnaires or the interview quantitative measure of the numerical
characteristics of one or more specific traits. These measured values are together or
with other variables to be related and the results are then generalised to the population.
Often a predetermined hypothesis is checked against the data. The information gain is in
quantitative methods of data reduction. To ensure equal conditions for the emergence
of the measured values within a study, the quantitative methods are usually fully
standardised and structured, so that everyone who gets interviewed has exactly the same
conditions when answering the questions. To make the statements of respondents
comparable with each other, each observer gets the same observation schedule.2
Qualitative Research Model
The qualitative research is a type of scientific research that in general terms consists of
an investigation that:
“a) seeks answers to a question, b) systematically uses a predefined set of procedures to
answer the question, b) collects evidence, c) produces findings that were not determined
in advance, and d) produces findings that are applicable beyond the immediate
boundaries of the study.”3
Qualitative research seeks to understand a given research problem or topic from the
perspectives of the local population in the respective area. Qualitative research is
especially effective in obtaining culturally specific information such as values, opinions,
behaviors, and social contexts of particular populations. The strength of qualitative
research is its ability to provide complex textual descriptions of how people experience
a given research issue. It gives information about the general population’s side of an
2
3
Quantitative vs. Qualitative method.
Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide page 2.
12
issue. It often shows the contradictory behaviors, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and
relationships of individuals. Qualitative methods are furthermore effective in identifying
intangible factors like social norms, socioeconomic status, gender roles, ethnicity, and
religion, which role in the research problem may not be that apparent.4
“When used along with quantitative methods, qualitative research can help us to
interpret and better understand the complex reality of a given situation and the
implications of quantitative data.” 5
Findings however from qualitative data can often contain the same characteristics that
are very similar to those in the study population, which enables one to gain a rich and
complex understanding of a specific social context or phenomenon that often takes
precedence over eliciting data that can be generalised to other geographical areas or
populations. 6
The Use of the Theory in the Paper
The quantitative research model is used in the form of retrieving information on the
subject in general but is also used as a base for constructing an ask sub-survey. The
survey seeks to understand the general population on the subject of the book.
Furthermore the survey will entail some part of the qualitative research model.
As said above the ask sub-survey is made from a combination of the qualitative and
quantitative models. This is evident in the form of the questions, but also by the way it
enables new information about the subject to surface, which enables a better and
broader perspective on the matter. The questions in the ask sub-survey combine the
qualitative method that mostly ask open-ended questions that are not necessarily worded
in the same way with each participant. The open ended questions enable the participants
to freely respond in their own words. In this ask sub-survey it is used by asking the
participant to explain the answers beyond just answering yes or no. The quantitative
part of the ask sub survey will be looked upon after the sub-survey has been answered.
To get a perspective on the different perspectives of specific groups in terms of for
Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide page 2-3.
Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide.
6
Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide.
4
5
13
example age and whether or not this dictates how many books you read or where you go
first if you seek an answer to a question. To get the sampling to the ask sub-survey a
few different approaches will be used. First and for most my personal network will be
used to get into contact with different age groups, nationalities and professions. This
form of sampling is called the “snowball approach” also known as “chain referral
sampling”. The other sampling method used is the “quota sampling”, which involves
making a decision about how many people with which characteristics is to be included
as participants in the ask sub-survey. Characteristics might include age, place of
residence, gender, class, profession and so on.7
Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide and Quantitative vs. Qualitative method..
7
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The Time Before the Book
The Beginning
In the beginning of time, when man first began to form groups that lived and worked
together to form an early version of our modern day society, the use of storytelling or
the telling of stories was the primary means of communicating. Thus telling stories lies
at the heart of human communication and is found in all societies and cultures through
the ages. Human kind has always told stories, and in the early days it is through story
that knowledge, information, meaning and wisdom was passed on from person to
person and from generation to generation. From the beginning of time the ability and
skill to process, decode, pass on, and utilize knowledge and through that information
has been highly prized, individuals possessing these abilities had great power and often
had a high rank in the social structure. They were often called upon to judge, heal,
inform or even entertain, the oral cultures called these people Shamans, witchdoctors,
sages, and storytellers. Later the written cultures called upon the scribes and
philosophers to preserve and interpret human thought and activity and in today’s society
we still have people who are specifically skilled in gathering and utilizing information
in both oral and written form. Often these people have some of the same functions as
the shamans and storytellers of old, only we call them something different like spin
doctors, information officers, journalists and so on.8
One of the earliest means of communication
was through paintings, for example cave
paintings of bison and rhinos dating from
between 32.000 B.C. To 30.000 B.C. that
cover cave walls at Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc in
southern France (See picture to the right).9
Other examples of cave art also includes
symbols but no one knows what they mean exactly, experts guess that it could be the
symbol of the animal painted or could have a meaning like “this place is safe”. Some
say that the cave paintings could be a way of storing knowledge in form of a painted
8
9
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. chapter 2.
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/
15
message but it is not considered to be a form of writing. In every part of the world the
recording of history begins with the written language.10 Over time a lot of different
written languages have been invented, some of them lost to us, however others have
survived and through these recordings the past is revealed to us. In the next section of
the paper we will take look at the most widespread written systems and the materials
used to document them. This will reveal the constant development in the written
cultures of the various societies as well as the consequences and effects of some of the
decisions made by ancient people.
Cuneiform
The early societies functioned fine without the use of writing, which may have been
because the societies were not that large at the time, but as they began to expand a need
for law and order arose. As different cities/homesteads began to trade with one another
the need for a system to keep order of sales and ownership was required. Experts argue
that this may be the main reason for the invention of writing, not to document language
but to simply keep order. This form of writing was performed by scratching symbols
with different meanings into clay tables we call this form of writing for pictographic,
cuneiform script. Cuneiform deriving from the Latin word cuneius, or wedge, reflecting
the basic shape of the symbols impressed on the clay tablets.11 This system was
established around 3300 - 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamian between the rivers Eufat and
Tigris The land of Mesopotamian stretches from the Persian gulf to the point where we
find the Iraqi capital Bagdad today. Mesopotamian was inhabited by two different
peoples; the Sumerians in the south and the Akkadeians to the North. These two peoples
spoke different languages but otherwise had a similar society structure: Their societies
were formed of court officials, priests, traders, farmers and shepherds, and they
worshiped many different gods. It was the Sumerians that invented the cuneiform, later
Akkadian scribes worked out a way to adapt the Sumerian cuneiform to their own
language by taking some of the meanings of a logogram12 and substituting these with
their own syllabograms13. 14
10
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 31.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction chapter 2.
12
Logograms = Pictures that represent objects or living creatures.
13
Syllabograms = pictures that represent sounds.
11
16
The oldest clay tablets with pictograms date back to 3300B.C. found in the
Mesopotamian city at one of the old temple sites.
These clay tablets contain lists of grain and livestock, a type of inventory list for the
temple. Other tablets found later tell more about the Mesopotamian way of life and how
their society was built, some even reveal that the Sumerians had a monetary system as
well as rents and loans.15
As stated earlier the clay tablets were made
with cuneiform, some of the oldest tablet
inscriptions can be compared to our day’s
memo cards. They consist of simplified
drawings and symbols representing different
objects or creatures, which when combined in
various ways enabled the Sumerians to convey
various meanings of which we know 1500
different today. In around 2900 B.C. the symbols
Clay tablet in cuneiform script with count of
donkeys and carts, from Tell Telloh (ancient
Ngirsu), Iraq. *1
of pictograms started to vanish and be replaced by a system containing straight lines.
The reason for this is simple, the Mesopotamians had reed in abundance given the
riverbank areas and the widely spread marsh. Thus they started using reeds as pencils
and as it is difficult to draw curves with straw in wet clay the writing quickly developed
into a new and easier written system: The Sumerians started to cut the straws so they
became wedge-shaped thus enabling them to better imprint triangles and lines and
through this the new version of cuneiform occurred. In the next hundreds of years the
symbols changed in both meaning and shape so that their original significance faded
making it difficult to decipher what the meaning of the shape was at the time it was
conceived.16 Sometime during the evolvement of the cuneiform symbols, some symbols
began to containing a sound to symbolize them. This development resulted in
pictograms that did not portray the object or creature intended, but merely the sound
that the object looked like. For example George Jean describes:
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. page 22.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 10-14. Picture on page 15. and Gnanadesikan,
Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet to Book History. Chapter 2.
16
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 15-16. and Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The
Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet chapter 2.
*1 www.gettyimages.dk.
14
15
17
“Et piktogram der ikke forestillede det man så men noget der lydmæssigt mindede om
det. For eksempel udtaltes ordene pil og liv ens på sumerisk, nemlig ti. Piktogrammet
for pil kunne derfor også betyde liv.”17
Throughout the history of the cuneiform, it was used or adapted into various languages
like Hurrian and Uratian and Hittie (indo-European) as well as old Persian. The last
known place where cuneiform was used was discovered in 1929 at what is now Ras
Shamra on the coast of Syria. This was once the site of the city Canaanite of Ugarit,
which flourished between the fifteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. This last form of
cuneiform consisted of 27 to 30 signs, depending on the context used which upon
further studies was found to be an alphabet. That discovery lead to a translation into
cuneiform-type characters of the ancient Semitic alphabet from which the Phoenician,
Hebrew, and Arabic scripts springs as well as our own alphabet.18 The cuneiform
contained a lot of possibilities like for example keeping track of trade, writing down
religious hymns, or even letter-writing. The old Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians
and Assyrians was actually the first to correspond through letters using envelopes made
of clay.
Previous in this section the status of shamans witchdoctors and storytellers were told to
be very high ranking citizens this is also the case in the time of Mesopotamian. One
could be mislead to think that since cuneiform was firstly used to record trade and
ownership that it was a very common gift to be able to read and write cuneiform this
though was not the case. To be able to read and write, one had to master to print the
signs, show how they were pronounced, and had learned that the sign meant different
things depending on where the text it was presented. This meant that the scribes in old
Assyria and Babylonian became a spirit aristocracy who often had more power than the
normal educated courtiers and sometimes even more than the King. Evidence found on
clay tablets tell of a very strict discipline in the writing schools, but as the art of reading
and writing gave a lot of power, this was merely a part to be endured and the art
remained a privilege.19
17
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 16-17 line 34-40.
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. Page 25-27.
19
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 16-23.
18
18
The Hieroglyphs
Unlike the very geometric and abstract cuneiform the hieroglyphs are more vibrant and
poetic, hieroglyphs are more than just a way of writing they are also pictures and as
such they are meant to be esthetically pleasing.
Most of them consist of drawings of human
heads, birds, animals, flowers and other plants.
The picture signs can be written from right to
left, from left to right, or vertically reading
downwards. To determine which way to read a
line of hieroglyphs, one must look for pictures
of men or animals, and see which way the pictures
are facing; the text is read towards the faces:
An illustration of how complex the
system looks.*2
If they are facing to the left, the inscription is read from the left to the right. If they are
facing right, the inscription is read from right to left.20
In the beginning hieroglyphic signs were used to keep records of the king's possessions,
scribes could easily make these records by drawing a picture of a cow or a boat
followed by a number. The Egyptians and the Sumerians lived in the same area and
therefore their cultures have many commonalities, but unlike the Sumerians, the
Egyptians developed their written language much faster. The word “hieroglyph” means
“holy signs” from the Greek hieros=holy and glyphein = carving. The ancient Egyptians
thought that the hieroglyphs were invented by the god Thoth and bestowed upon the
people as a great gift. The pronunciation of a word is the crucial element in using
hieroglyphics, how a word sounds is more important than how it is spelled. For
instance, the word that is spelled "cat" is actually pronounced "kat". And the name that
is spelled "Cleopatra" is pronounced "Kliopadra". So these words would be written in
hieroglyphs the way they sound, and similarly because the words "where" and "wear"
sound alike they could be written using the same hieroglyphic signs. There are actually
tree forms of writing used in the Egyptian language; hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic,
the last two forms were invented to make the writing faster and more efficient to
20
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 24-44.
*2 www.afsnitp.dk/aktuelt/12/hieroglyffernesg.
19
everyday use. Hieroglyphs are the picture language and were most often used to
decorate temples and monuments, and to keep record of the pharaoh’s possessions. It
could be written with pen and ink on papyrus, painted or carved into stone. Hieratic
were a cursive form of writing, as script it was to print letters, which was much quicker
to write since the picture quality of the language was reduced to a pattern of lines and
squiggles. Demotic, invented around 650 B.C., was a shorthand version of the hieratic
script used during the Late Period, the word 'demotic' meaning "the peoples writing." as
it was the language used by common Egyptians who could read and write it.21
The first documents with hieroglyphs date back to around 3000 B.C. but some argue
that it must have been used even before this time. The latest dated inscription in
hieroglyphs was made on the gate post of a temple at Philae in 396 AD.22 The scripture
remains positively the same up until 390 E.C. even though Egypt was under Roman rule
under some of that time. The only significance is that the number of characters in the
system had grown considerably from around 700 to about 5000. In the beginning it was
mostly the priests that used the hieroglyphs to decorate temples and tombs but later the
language were used to record other things as well. Just like the cuneiform was used so
was the hieroglyphs used to document ownership, trade, laws and to keep record of
stock, however unlike the users of cuneiform the hieroglyphs were used to document
culture as well as the more mundane things. Egypt was immensely rich on literature in
all its forms. Like in Mesopotamian, to be able to read and write were skills reserved for
an elite group and with the ability followed power almost equal to that of the Pharaoh.
But unlike the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians had many different surfaces to write on
the hieroglyphs were cut into stone or written on papyrus. The plant called Papyrus
grew all around the Nile and was used to make not only papyrus paper but many other
things as well like writing tools and food for some animals.
The way to make papyrus was as follows: First the plants marrow was cut into thin
strips then soaked in water. When they had been soaked they were put together side by
21
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 24-44. and
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm#origins
22
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 24-44. And
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm#origins.
20
side with the edges overlapping each other. On top of this another layer was applied in
the opposite direction, and then it was dried, pressed and polished.
When an appropriate number of sheets were done they were glued together using the
plants own starch, which resulted in a meters long roll. When the writer was writing on
the roll he would most commonly be seated in legged position as to better be able to
control the roll. As a pencil he used a pies of straw cut at one of the ends. The state had
monopoly on the papyrus which gave Egypt a significant income, unfortunately the
monopoly resulted in high prizes on papyrus in Egypt as well, which meant that only
the most important things was written on papyrus or the expensive animal hide material
(to be described later). The Egyptians would use “Ostraka” to more write more
mundane subjects. “Ostraka” was ceramic- or calk hells.23 Around 200 B.C. as a result
of Egypt’s refusal to sell the papyrus to its rival the state of Pergamon in Little Asia, the
scribes there invented the parchment. The word “parchment” actually means Leather
from Pergamon. However parchment booklets dated back to a century earlier have been
found, suggesting that this account may be inaccurate.24 The parchment was a more
expensive material but far better than the papyrus, it was made out of animal hides like
goat, sheep, calf and other more exotic animals. The parchment from sheep or calf had
that advantage that one could write on both sides of it. The finest parchment was made
from calf hide and was called “velin” from the roman word “veel”=”calf”. The
production of parchment consisted of the following points: 1) The hides are soaked in
calk water. 2) Scraped free of hair and meat leftovers. 3) Sprinkled with gypsum that
removed the fat residues of fat left in the hides. 4) The hides were hung to dry. 5) Then
the hides undergo one more scraping, and to make the parchment free of bumps and
cracks a knife or pipestone was used to smooth the surface of the parchment, also to
ensure that it was left with a kind of gained surface, which ensured that the ink did not
23
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 41-43.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 35.
*3 Illustration of how to make papyrus paper.
24
21
run. The invention of parchment enabled several new things; The scribes were able to
write with goose feathers instead of the pencils made of straw and the parchment could
be folded and sewn together in such a way that enabled the reader to get easier access to
the content - this form was called a “codex” and this was the precursor for the book.25
The method of sewing pages together was however invented
elsewhere some time before, the exact date is unknown but
we know that the world’s oldest known book was made by
the Etruskere living in North Italy around 600 B.C. It is made
out of 24 carat gold and contains 6 illustrated pages of gold
*4
held together by gold rings. The world’s oldest pressed book is from china and was
made around 868 B.C. The book is a so called block book made by carved and
imprinted woodblocks coated with ink and then stamped on paper.26
Chinese writing
The Chinese writing is a chapter of its own, estimate to have commenced around 2000
B.C, it got its final form about 500 years later. The first sign we have of a written
language in China is the so called “Oracle bones” or “dragon bones” as they were called
at the time. “Oracle bones” has its name from
the inscriptions on them which are invariably
related to divination. The ancient Chinese
priests used these bones as records of their
activity, providing us with a detailed description
of the topics that interested the Shang kings. 27
*5
Most of these records refer to hunting, warfare,
weather, selection of auspicious days for ceremonies, and so on. “Dragon bones” have
their name because of their size, they are often large bones dug up during farming and
other activity involving digging, the bones though are normally from ox or other large
dead animals and not actual dragons. The discovery of the 'Oracle bones' goes back to
around 1899, when a scholar from Peking was prescribed a remedy containing "dragon
25
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 72-83.
Illustreret Videnskab nr:10/ 2011.
27
The Shang Dynasty 17th-11th century B.C.
*4 Illustreret *5 www.china-mike.com
26
22
bones" for his illness: "Dragon bones" were widely used in Chinese medicine and
usually refer to fossils of dead animals, which for the most part were ground into dust
and used as medicine but not always too much effect. The scholar given the “dragon
bones” for his illness at the local pharmacy noticed some carvings that looked like some
kind of writing. This lucky find eventually led to the discovery of Anyang, the oldest
capital of Shang dynasty, where archeologists have found an enormous amount of these
carved bones. The inscriptions on the bones reveal that by 1200 B.C. Chinese was a
highly developed writing language, which was used to record a similar form of classic
Chinese. Later in the history of Chinese writing bronze inscriptions called “jinwen” is
implemented, these are texts/symbols either cast into bronze vessels or carved into the
surface of a pre-made vessel. These vessels were widely used during the Eastern Zhou28
dynasty, from around 1150-771 B.C. but examples are found dating as far back as the
late Shang dynasty. 29 From around the fifth century B.C.
examples of writings on bamboo strips have been found.
Here the bamboo was tied together with strings to form a
sort of roll and the writing was done using a hard brush
or a stick on the bamboo surface. The addition of this new
writing material expanded the content of what was written:
Along with recording historical and administrative
writings, the bamboo strips also recorded some of the
earliest manuscripts philosophical content. Besides the
Bamboo Scroll. *6
use of bamboo rolls writing were done on wooden tablets and silk cloth. The language
at this time is similar to classic Chinese called “wenyan”, which is more or less the
same up until the late 19th century.30 A major event in the history of Chinese script was
the standardization of writing by the First Emperor of Qin, who unified China in 221
B.C. 31 Before that time, each of the many states in China had their own style and
peculiarities which meant that, although mutually comprehensible, the scripts had many
deviations. The First Emperor introduced the Qin script as the official writing and from
there on all the unified states had to use it in their affairs. The calligraphic style of this
28
Zhou Dynasty 1121-771B.C.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 46-50. And Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The
Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. Page 56-78.
30
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. Page 56-78.
31
Qin Dynasty 221-207 B.C.
29
23
period is the "clerical script" or “lishu”. In the Han Dynasty32 they used “Lishu”
including another type of calligraphy called “Caoshu” followed by one called
“Xingshu” and these became the general typeface. The official script here broke away
from the pictographic element of ancient Chinese characters laying the foundations for
“Kaishu”. “Kaishu” was formed in the late Han Dynasty and was based on “Lishu”.
After “Kaishu” appeared, the block-shaped Chinese characters were finalized and from
here “Kaishu” has been used ever since. “Kaishu” is the standard calligraphy that has
been used for the longest period of time, and is still in use today.33
The invention of paper is another thing the
Chinese have accomplished. The person
credited with inventing paper is a Chinese
man named Ts'ai Lun. He made it by taking
the inner bark of a mulberry tree and
bamboo fibers, and then mixed them with
water, and pounded them with a wooden tool.
Then the mixture was poured onto a flat piece
Early Papermaking in China.*7
of coarsely woven cloth that let the water drain through, leaving only the fibers on the
cloth. Once it was dry, Ts'ai Lun discovered that he had created a quality writing surface
that was relatively easy to make and also lightweight. The knowledge of paper-making
was used in China for some time before word of it was passed along to Korea,
Samarkand, Baghdad, and Damascus.34 Between 800 and 1000 A.D. the method was
spread throughout the Muslim world around the Mediterranean including Spain and
eventually was taken up by the Italians who perfected the production technique during
the thirteenth century. The paper reached Europe around 1100, which led to paper mills
being set up in Fabriano, Bologna, Pudua and Amalfi that became famous throughout
Europe.35
32
33
Han Dynasty 206B.C.-A.D.8
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. Page 56-78.
34
35
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 35-36.
*7 http://ipst.gatech.edu/amp/collection/museum_invention_paper.htm
24
The Invention of the Alphabet
What Cuneiform, hieroglyphs and the Chinese writing have in common is that they all
consisted of signs which have whole words or sentences as a meaning for each given
sign. To be able to read and write these languages one has to understand the meaning of
many different signs and rules. The alphabet works in an entirely different way, with the
about 30 signs one should be able to write everything, however in the reality it is not
quite that easy. It can be difficult to learn the spelling correctly because the signs are not
always able to show the right sounds that are used when one speaks the word thus to get
it correct can be quite hard because one are not always able to hear all the letters in a
word and it is a problem that many people even today are struggling with. But it is still
considered easier to write with an alphabet than it is to write with for example the
Chinese script or Cuneiform. The first real alphabet comes from the Phoenicians around
1500 B.C., they were traders and sailed around to many ports like Syria, Lebanon,
Northern Israel and other cities in the Mediterranean Sea. As successful traders they
quickly came to need a quick and efficient way to keep account of their stock and trade,
thus they recorded these on papyrus.
The Phoenicians probably adapted
some symbols from pictograms and
other forms of Middle Eastern writing
used by the people there. For example
the Phoenicians took the word “daleth”
that means “door” and replaced the first
sound in the word, the sound we know
as “d”, with a symbol like this
.
A symbol that looks like an entrance to
a tent of some kind. It is similar to
cuneiform but the Phoenicians only
needed 22 signs or letters to be able to
*8
write their language. Throughout their travels, the Phoenicians spread their alphabet and
it worked so well that cuneiform quickly died out. Each letter symbolized a consonant
sound in the alphabet, there were no vowels until it was added by the Greeks. Around
800 B.C. in the old land Aram, today’s Syria, a new alphabet was invented, which in
25
many ways looked like the Phoenicians with only containing consonants but this
specific alphabet is famous because it is in this alphabet that part of the old testament is
written, the rest of the old testament is written using Hebrew that dates back to around
700 B.C. Around 1100 - 800B.C. the Greeks took the Phoenicians alphabet and
invented one of their own based on the Phoenician. They used 19 of the letters to
represent consonants but as the Greek language contained a lot of vowel sounds so they
needed to make symbols for vowels as well otherwise it would have been impossible to
work with. Around 700 B.C. the Greek alphabet was finished it contained 24 letters
where in 17 were consonants and 7 vowels. Over the years Greek immigrants traveled
to Italy and brought the Greek alphabet with them, so that over the next centuries it was
passed on to the Romans, who eventually was inspired to make an alphabet of their
own containing 23 letters used when writing Latin. This alphabet is still used in
languages like English, German, French, and Italy, however it is still the Greeks, who
get the credit for the alphabet because it grew from theirs.36
Knowledge Organization in the Early Days
Now we know how the development of the written word came to be and how it through
different languages and cultures has evolved into alphabets. But what about their written
knowledge, where was it kept and in what way was it organized? In the early days when
clay tablets were used, these would be covered with another layer of clay in order to
mark their possession in the archive. On this new clay they put “colophons” which is a
set of data at the end of the tablet that gives various kinds of bibliographic data like a
number and some inscriptions on what it contained. Then they burned it again so that
the new clay formed a sort of crust which could be carved of if the tablet needed to be
read again or they could simply store it somewhere.37 In summer the tablets were kept
in the temples in rooms that looked much like big caves, often without a door and one
had to descent down a hole by using a ladder. Inside the tablets were kept in wooden
boxes, reed baskets or brick receptacles. Attached to each container was a tablet of clay
serving as a form of label, which contained listings of the content. The Akkadeians who
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 50 – 70. and Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The
Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. Chapter 9.
37
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 93. And Taylor, Arlene G.:
The Organization of Information. Page 50.
36
26
later conquered the Sumerian territory were careful to preserve the old Sumerian texts
instead of destroying them as we see countless times during history.38 In ancient Iraq
texts did not have titles, here the first line on the tablet was used to identify the different
tablets from each other and when a text took up more than one tablet the first line of the
next tablet in line of a topic was imprinted in the end of the first tablet. The old
Mesopotamians kept catalogs of their collections, where the clay tablets listing all the
inscriptions for a group of tablets. One of the greatest finds of these kind of archives
were found in Northern Syria, when an Italian archaeological expedition excavated the
old city of Ebla, destroyed by the Akkadeians in 2250 B.C. In the palace they found a
few rooms containing over 15.000 tablets, these were arranged on wooden shelves,
supported by wooden posts sunk into the floor. Along the northern wall a collection of
dictionaries and syllabaries were shelved, one might argue that this is an early kind of
library mixed with an archive. The Eblaites were good at making lists, and their
catalogs of words, objects, places, names etc approached encyclopedic proportions. The
first libraries and the archive/libraries like the one in Ebla are some of the biggest means
used to preserve, organize and retrieve knowledge at the beginning. But because so
many of the texts written in Egypt and the Holy Land were destroyed under various
wars we only know what little can be deducted from the various archeological finds. We
know that the Egyptians wrote on papyrus stored in wooden chests with either a note of
the content on a slip of papyrus attached to the box, or a description made on the blank
exterior of the box. The Hebrews wrote on leather and neither leather nor papyrus was a
very sustainable material to preserve knowledge on because of its tendency to decay. 39
Knowledge of the culture though a lot of it was lost, are found carved into stone as for
example great tomes or monuments. Luckily for us they did not just resolve to writing
on easily deterring material, otherwise a lot more knowledge would have been lost to
us.
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 14.
*8 http://www.ancientscripts.com/phoenician.html
39
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 1519.
38
27
The History of the Book and Knowledge Organization up until the
Electronic Age
As the makings of parchment and later paper become increasingly widespread and more
and more people start to use the material instead of the old ones, the need for a new way
of containing the knowledge emerged. Whereas the clay tablets being single and the
papyrus and bamboo made up like long scrolls were neither very handy nor easy to use,
the codex on the other hand, made up of parchment folded and sewn together formed
the base for the new easier container of knowledge. The codex gradually evolved into
the book form we know today. In the beginning of the codex’s era the Romans preferred
the papyrus paper but slowly the transition to parchment occurred due to its superior
resilience. The early Christians of the Roman Empire however took to the use of the
codex and the more resilient parchment early on. This not only because the codex was
easier to consult, but also because it was easier to conceal and transport texts forbidden
by the Romans to other parts of Europe. The use of parchment and later paper in codex
formats affected the way knowledge was preserved and initially the method of writing.
Now the writing was preserved in the form of continuous sentences and only some time
after the seventh century A.D. methods were developed to indicate emphasis and stops
in the text through scribal instructions of points, dashes, and comas. Later yet, around
the ninth century, the monks in Europe started isolating parts of the sentences in their
texts and they began to use different colours to indicate different sections.40
Books and its Keepers before the Printing Press
The beginning of book making enabled a new form of trade to rise and a new form of
merchants called booksellers. In Rome many high-ranking citizens began using scribes
or literate slaves to translate books, this was done by hand and was a long process;
several people might work on the same translation in order to finish it sooner. Many
began collecting books and through time the first public libraries in Rome opened
around 39 B.C. These libraries were not limited to the capital Rome but were also found
in the provincial cities in the Roman Empire. Many were located within the public
baths, which at the time served as social and cultural centers, sadly though many of
these were destroyed at the fall of the great Roman Empire, when German tribesmen
40
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 35-36. And Lerner,
Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 34-37.
28
invaded, raided and burned most of the libraries and roman homes around 401-406.41
The first public library in Rome was planned by Julius Ceasar, but it was first realized
and constructed in 37 B.C. by the literary patron Asinius Pollio. The library was placed
on Romes Palatine Hill, and was named the Octavian Library. After this first public
library opened the idea took hold and many more were built. A survey over important
Roman buildings conducted in 337 A.D. indicates that at one point were 28 public
libraries in Rome alone.42 After the time when Rome fell to the Germanic tribesmen, the
civilization sank in Western Europe due to loss of a lot of Roman and Greek
knowledge, as well as very few people hereafter received any schooling and through
this many of the former art skills and craftsmanship’s of the ancient world were lost.43
This period in history were named many things for example economic historians called
it “feudalism”, the religious historians called it “the period of spiritual growth”, others
again called it “the Dark Ages” because of the literacy setback. The most common name
though for this period is “the Middle Ages”.44
As a result of the literacy’s setback in Europe, Christianity spread, until it became the
norm that monks in monasteries were the ones to record, copy and distribute the
knowledge. The founding of the first monasteries were created in Italy in the fifth
century. The initial aim of the monasteries was to form a militia dedicated to prayer and
asceticism, but instead the monasteries picked up the heritage of classical antiquity
which they adapted and with effect transferred to the northern lands.45 In around 800 900 A.D. each monastery consisted of a scriptorium and library.46 The monks working
in the monasteries became great calligraphers, miniature painters, illuminators and
bookbinders, their work more often became great works of art and not just a book with
written content. The illuminations for example consisted of three main things: The
initial, the border and the miniature. The later were not necessarily small in size but
were the pictorial element of the decoration. 47 To be able to train new monks, priests
etc. the monasteries consisted of two forms of schools the outer and the inner. The outer
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age.
Page 34 -39. And Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 34.
42
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 33.
43
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 37.
44
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 37.
45
Martin, Henri-Jean: The History and power of Writing. Page 121.
46
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 82.
47
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 46.
41
29
school educated the sons of the nobility as well as aspiring secular priests. Many of
these graduates would serve the emperor or his vassals as clerks or scribes. The inner
school trained oblates and novices for the monastic life.48 The monks worked in the so
called “scriptoriums” where each monk had a writing desk containing two flaps that
could rotate so the individual monk could work with two different manuscripts at a
time. The “scriptoras”, as they were called, used goose feather pens dipped in ink to
write with, and each Scriptora could averagely reach the amount of four parchments in
normal writing each day. Hard discipline and a strong work distribution were some of
the secrets behind the makings of the beautiful artworks/books. The work in the
scriptoria was overseen by the “Armarius” who also supplied the monks with new
paper, ink etc. The scribes would only make the body text of the book in black ink and
leave the titles, headings and initials to be inserted later in red by the “Rubricator”.49 A
movie where this is well viewed is in the movie adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel “In
the Name of the Rose” with Sean Connery from 1985. There seem to be different
meanings whether or not the monks only wrote in daylight or if they also used
candlelight to write by. Some say that it was solely by daylight because the danger of a
fire was too great.50
Over time the monks' use of the codex made from parchment sewn together between
two covers, replaced the old materials like the papyrus scroll. In the beginning of the
fourth century the codex was as common as the papyrus scroll and two centuries later
the codex had almost replaced the papyrus scrolls entirely. This can also be testament to
the Arabs concurring Egypt in 634 A.D. hereby cutting of the West’s supply of
papyrus.51 As the demand for books grew, several styles of writing were evolved to
speed up the copying process. To begin with the monks used the old Roman letters
called “Majuskel”, which later developed into the more writable “Rustica”. The writing
is later replaced with the “Carolingian” script and after with the “Gothic” script from
coming from Germany. The “Gothic” script became popular because it gave the monks
more space on the page to write due to smaller letters. During the 14th and 15th century
the “Gothic” script all but disappears and the new, more “humanized” script becomes
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 45.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 45.
50
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 45.
51
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 35.
48
49
30
the most commonly used. It is similar to the Carolingian script, but more round and
broader shaped52 To be able to copy some of the many different books around the
world, the monasteries borrowed books from each other, sometimes from very far away.
Sometimes a monastery would send a scribe to another monastery to copy a book there
and then return home and make more and at other times they would simply send for the
book to be brought to the monastery for copying. As a result of this exchange and
borrowing of books to and from the different monasteries the different monasteries
began keeping an exchange catalog to keep track of the books.53
The libraries in the monasteries were not like the ones we know from our day or even
the ones from the Roman Empire were one can lend a book and take it home. The books
were expensive and revered as a great treasure, so to be able to borrow a book one had
to stay in the library and if one in rare cases were allowed to borrow a book and take it
from the library, one first had to lay down collateral equal to the value of the borrowed
volume. Lending was done only as a favor to the borrower, or as a curtsey to a powerful
ecclesiastical of temporal authority. There were no recognized right to borrow books
and no real public libraries. The books in the library would be used only by people of
the church and the society’s elite. Because the books were so treasured, valuable and
portable the monastery would take some precautions to protect the library, in fact they
took as many security measures with the library as they did with protecting the alter
plate and priestly vestments. Among these precautionary measures was an inventory
listing the libraries holdings, which later evolved into the library catalog we know
today.54
The Influences of the Book on Society
Up until and throughout the early 1500s when the printing press was invented, the
writing and knowledge were confined to the social elite, such as the nobility, law,
priests and monks. The monks that came to the monasteries were, often from high
ranking families within the society.55 To own books meant power in the society and
functioned as a mark of wealth and social status. Because books were revered as great
52
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 92-93.
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 45.
54
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 48.
55
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 36.
53
31
treasures and because the materials that went into making books were expensive, the
aristocracy held ownership of books with the same importance as possession of land and
as a result many began making their own collections of published books. In this period
writing served to crystallize and amplify political and religious authority, hereby
keeping peace within the evolution of nation states.56 As the Roman Empire fell after
the German invasion, the system of government and most of the social structure were
destroyed, which lead to the 800s being characterized by a largely divided Western
Europe, wherein large estates were ruled by a few land owners. In areas with a broader
social structure it was due to the Christian church: Popes, bishops and other church
officials took over many government functions; they collected taxes and maintained the
law system. The church functioned as both hospital, inns for travelers as well as the
only center of learning. Later though the church relented some of these responsibilities
to the anointed kings and nobles, but the final authority still rested with the church.
Because of the church's power it is not surprising to find that the clergy undertook the
transcription, supervision and over all compilation of knowledge at this point in time. 57
The rise of regional power and structures made a requirement for written codes and
decoding; the scribe’s official role was to record, decipher and disseminate information.
As a result the scribe became the eyes, ears and voice of the respective ruler and the
political elite, hereby gaining a position of significant power within society similar to
the old Mesopotamian courts.58 At the end of the 1100s the monastery's monopoly on
the book trade began to waver, as some of the scribes working with the monks in the
scriptorium started opening independent shops. Here they took on written jobs for the
social elite and some even wrote books of their own, which previously only had been
permitted to the clergy. Books on philosophy, logic, mathematics etc. were now written
and published, and in correlation with this an increasing amount writers chose to
publish their works in their original tongue instead of Latin. This enabled a whole new
group of people to be able to read and for the first time the middle class got access to
books and literature. The demand for books increased as a result of more and more
literature being published in different languages as well as needs of the students of the
universities that started opening when the church monopoly declined. The write wards
56
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 38.
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Chapter 5.
58
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 37-38.
57
32
grew exponentially and this causes the variation of literature to grow. In the late
medieval period the book trade was centered on the commercial scriptoria which
supplied the universities or luxury manuscript collectors and in general served a limited
clientele.59 But as the demand for books grew a new tendency originated; many
bookmakers begin to specialize themselves and often form small fraternities that guard
their trade secrets and rights closely. Within these fraternities the training of new
recruits are much like that of the monks; teaching was strict and the student start with
doing small easy jobs and worked his way up the ranks. The training period was often 7
years long, where the last year was centered on an exam project. If the fraternity
deemed the student worthy he passed and could open up his own shop somewhere
though not to close to his masters shop.60 The growth of the book trade and that of the
universities illustrates Europe’s emergence from the Middle Age and entry into the
Renaissance, the thirst for new knowledge was continuous and as this desire grew many
began to look for inspiration and knowledge from the old works of Greek and Rome.61
Knowledge Organization
As more and more literature saw the light of day, the need for libraries increased
exponentially. In the monastery library the books lay on their sides in so called
“amorias” that were a form of wardrobe. Here the books were protected from the cold
and damp of the unheated monastery, and some of the more valuable books were even
chained to the shelves as a safeguard. Most of the books in the monastery library were
religious but there were also few on other subjects like for example medicine. The
books in the library were in the care of the “bibliothecarius” or “amarius” who also
supervised the monks in the scriptorium. Prior to this, when books only consisted of
service books, the choirmaster served as librarian. 62 No literature on library
organization existed, nor was there any special training for librarians improve his skills.
Some already had experience from other places having sometimes traveled to other
monasteries and shared their experiences, helping catalog the local book collection.
Many monasteries collected the catalogs of other monasteries in order to get a view of
59
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 46.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 88-90.
61
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 35.
62
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 46.
60
33
what books they had and to see what books they might like to borrow in the future.63 In
this period it was also the monks, who compiled the encyclopedias of the age.64
Different inventories and catalogs were kept of the books, some inventories listed the
comings and goings of books borrowed or being lend to and from the monasteries,
others listed the inventory of the monastery library. Although the book market increased
exponentially during the Medieval Period and as a result there were many more books
out among the public. Books were still treasured as a valuable commerce and were still
protected fiercely. In most libraries, like the Sorbonne Library in Paris (in 1250 A.D.)
they began to divided the books into sections depending on their value; the most
expensive books were often chained to the shelves or desks to keep them from being
stolen or taken from the library. The chains were of course long enough so that one
could move it from a shelf and to a desk to read it.65
The Time of Printing
A new revolutionary method to producing and distribute knowledge set the stage for a
new age of books and of knowledge keeping. In Europe woodblocks had been used for
decades to print playing cards, religious illustrations and chapbooks. In China where the
invention originated, the method had been used since the 9th century if not for longer,
having sprung from stone carving.
The inventor of the printing press is the German Johann Gensfleisch Zum Gutenberg
(1399-1468), who lived in the German town Mainz. Here he combined the technology
of the goldsmiths' punch with that of a wine press and as a result came the printing
press. Before Gutenberg’s invention people in Europe had used the hand press to make
textile printing, to smooth out paper and to press fabric. 66 The Gutenberg printing press
used a movable type reinvented by one of Gutenberg’s fellow goldsmiths Peter
Schöffer. Originally it was invented in the 1200’s by the Chinese, where the Chinese
printers made movable types from baked clay, wood, tin and bronze. However the
technique was used more by the Koreans whose writing system was syllable rather than
ideographic like the Chinese. There are findings of books printed with metal type date
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Page 48.
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 38.
65
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 35.
66
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 93-95.
63
64
34
back as far as the 1230s. Another element inspiring Gutenberg’s invention could have
been the availability of paper, which was much cheaper than parchment and being made
in larger quantity than ever before. The printing press was a machine that combined
flexibility, rapidity and economy, which allowed for the production of books that the
increasingly literate population could afford to buy and read and not just the high born
in society. The invention of printing transformed books into a trade able commodity that
required a system of production, sales and distribution as printing made a greater variety
and quantity of books available. In the beginning of the printing culture all the functions
of the printed book production, like the printer, publisher and bookseller were combined
– The cutting of punches and types, the operation of the press and the selling of the
finished product were some of the things a printer did. Until the 1700’s there were still
very little distinction between the publishers and booksellers, but this method could not
hold up for long and soon the responsibilities became separate jobs.67 However printing
did not revolutionize at first, like with all new things the spread of new ways takes time
and often only takes hold when a generation has grown up with the new method as a
part of their intellectual structure and the printing press is no exception to this. From
early on the people working with the printing of books realized that their survival
depended on efficient distribution of producing books as fine as those from the write
wards.68 The printed work looked much like the books made by hand and this was done
intentionally because the buyers went for the books that looked like those made from a
scribe. The first book printed by Gutenberg was his 42-line bible and this as well was
printed to look very much like a fine manuscript. The printing press allowed the rise of
a flourishing trade in papal indulgences, printed forms for example commuting the pains
of purgatory. It also gave Martin Luther (1483-1546) a way to get his condemnations of
the corruption within the Roman Church out to the public.69 The printing press even
played a role in survival of languages, I if a country had two spoken languages then the
language first printed as a bible were often the one to win out over the other. Printing
spread over Europe rapidly, partially due to the raid of Gutenberg’s city of Mainz in
1462, which spread the knowledge of his invention. In the 1500’s every significant
urban centre in Europe could boast of at least one printing workshop and the average
67
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 46-47.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 94-95.
69
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 49-52.
68
35
print shop supported half-a-dozen workmen as permanent workers or as journeymen.
Tens of thousands of titles had been published and at least 10 million volumes had come
of the press, of these almost half were bibles or other Christian texts70 and many printers
including Gutenberg made a living by printing documents for the Church. Later though
the Church discovered that the problem with printing was that it was very hard to
control and enabled people like Martin Luther to get their messages out and through that
damage the power base of the Church.71
As the art of printing evolved, printers developed their own aesthetic book production,
they were influenced as much by the technological possibilities of movable type as by
the heritage of calligraphy and illumination. People like the binder and later the
illustrator, the engraver, and the lithographer added their skills to the design and
realisation of the fine book. During the early days of the printing press many craftsmen
worked with making the metal types imitations of writing by hand. One of the many
results became known as “Antikva” and was developed by an Italian called Aldus
Manutius and this particular form of type became the most commonly used in Europe in
the 1700’s. Another typographer who influenced the printing art was a man called
Geoffrey Tory, who published a book on typographic and writing.72 One of the most
important aspects of movable type for printing was that it now was possible to edit and
correct the work without leaving any telltale correction marks. This became particularly
important with the makings of encyclopedias, where new information could be inserted
without changing any of the surrounding pages.73 At one point the development of the
printing press underwent experimentation and some improvements were made, however
a long time passed before any drastic changes was made to the type of printing press
invented by Johann Gutenberg. Up until 1783 the printing facilities used a hand press
and a day’s production was around 300 pages. When change came, presses made of an
iron plate and a press plate of copper enabled the printing of larger formats. The
inventor was the Swiss typograph Wilhelm Haas, though his invention was later
improved by the Englishman Lord Stanhope, who changed it so the press now printed
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From The invention Of Writing To The Computer Age. Chapter
7.
71
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. page 256.
72
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 98.
73
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 47.
70
36
using a plate which was pressed against a cylinder.74 In 1814 the “flat printing press”
was invented, it pressed paper that was rolled up in what seemed endless lanes. It is also
in the 1800s that the steam powered press appeared. Later in 1862 the printing using
individual sheets of paper was replaced by the “rotating press” that printed with the use
of two cylinders and this press could produce 9000 newspapers per hour and it is said to
be the milestone of the industrial press production.75 After the “rotary press” came the
“typesetting machine” which worked by typographers pulling up types and formed them
into words, then lines and columns and when all of that was done, it was held together
with a column string. The weakness of this process was that it had to be done by hand,
and it was not until the Dane Christian Sørensen made his “Tacheotyp” 400 years after
Gutenberg printing press that the process was made automatic. Christian Sorensen’s
invention was later improved by the German watchmaker Ottmar Mergenthaler.76
Experiments by various engineers from the end of the 1800’s and throughout the 1900’s
meant that innovations like rotary pressing, inking systems and stereotyping gradually
became standard features. Industrialization of most of the book production meant
lowered costs and an increase in output and through this the book publishing became a
boom industry. The book trade further benefited from enhanced networks of
communication and distribution, improved roads, telephones and railways.77
The Impact of Printing on Society
Printing became one of the world’s most revolutionary innovations, it has spread
knowledge far and wide through books and later newspapers and magazines. It broke
down rigid class distinctions based on the ability to read and write, and enabled the
development of a literate working class. It was instrumental in the making of modern
democracy as this form of government required a high percentage of literate voters.
Printing particularly gave mankind a new way to preserve knowledge and this in much
larger quantities than ever before. Books have permitted us to investigate the past with
some degree of accuracy, and have allowed long dead people to reveal their wisdom to
the later generations without judgment and critique. As early as the 1500s more than
eight million books have been printed. Printing ended the Church dominion over written
74
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 106.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 107.
76
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Page 111-113.
77
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 60-61.
75
37
knowledge, as the power of the Roman Catholic Church was based in part on the ability
to enforce the use of Latin as the language for the worship of God. Printing gave way to
new interpretations of old works such as the Bible and thus gave way to a new world
view. Printing also decreased the price on books, which allowed a new class in society
to buy and read books, thus paving the way for a more equal society. Seen according to
the gaining of knowledge and understanding the economic development in this time is
also one of the factors that enable the spread of print. Another aspect in which the book
became important and coveted was with the discoveries of the New World, for example
when Prince Henry of Portugal sent his fleet to explore the coast of Africa in the 1440s,
and when Columbus stumbles over America at the end of the century. One of the
consequences of these discoveries is that books become a way of disseminating
information about the outside, new information about an unknown world is what many
Europeans were curious of and wanted to read about. Given that most of the artists and
authors had not traveled to the New World to see for themselves, they were forced to
rely on the descriptions of those who had made the journeys. This led to some
interesting representations of faraway places. Within the universities the discovery of
the new world resulted in printed books containing emerging scientific fields of botany,
geography, and astronomy.78 In large part, the rise of science as a replacement for
religion being the way of seeing the world has to do with the changing nature of
libraries. Instead of a few repositories, usually in the control of the Church, people
began to accumulate their own private libraries to a higher degree, which enabled a
broader public reading them. In the early 1400’s, science got a boost from the crusaders
returning from the Holy Land. They brought back more lost copies of the texts of the
Greeks and Romans, including science texts from Greece.79
Knowledge Organisation in the Printing Age
Printing brought on an increase in the publishing of books, and later on newspapers and
magazines. The innovations and industrialisation of the period helped the book become
more widely spread than ever before and the variations within literature equally
increased. As a result of this, the need for storage facilities arose and opened the way for
libraries, in fact the golden age of libraries in Europe is considered to be sometime
78
79
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 56-57.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 36-44.
38
between the 1600's and the 1700's, because most of the great collections of books were
said to be begun here. For instance the Royal Library of Denmark was founded in 1657
and the Library of the British Museum was established in 1759 along with many other
libraries at this time. These libraries were not free for the public to use at the beginning,
the modern free-circulating library, supported by taxes and individual donations was not
known until the 1850's. With the increasing number of books some rational system for
cataloging needed to be devised, as Stockwell writes:
“Disorganized knowledge is almost of as little value as to have no knowledge at all.”80
The result of the need for organisation was the people we might now call
bibliographers. Another addition was the need and subsequent construction of
references starting in the 1500's. An examples hereof is the English bookseller Andrew
Maunsell, who in 1595 compiled a catalog of English printed books used as an
inventory. In 1697 Frederic Rostgaard in his discourse on cataloging called for subject
arrangement that was subdivided, chronologically and sorted by the size of volume. It
was not until the 1700's that the catalog was beginning to be looked upon as a means to
finding material rather than just an inventory list. Following the French revolution the
new French government gave instructions for cataloging the collections of the nation’s
libraries and they were told to begin making card catalogs, which were used for many
years henceforth in libraries around the world. 81 The person credited with being the
first to directly express requirements for catalogs was the American C.A. Cutter. His
formulation of the requirements originates from his study from 1875 where he dealt
with users in a number of libraries, which was first published in 1876. The possibilities
with which a catalog should provide the user are listed as following:
1) To enable a person to find a book of some sort either
J) The author.
K) The title is known.
L) The subject.
2) To show what the library has
M) By a given author.
80
81
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 95. Line 30-31.
Taylor, Arlene G.: The Organization of Information. Page 53-55.
39
N) On a given subject.
O) In a given kind of literature.
3) To assist in the choice of a book.
P) As to its edition (bibliographically).
Q) As to its character (literary or topical).
Cutters cataloging rules became widely spread after they were published and are still
something we refer to today.
During the years many different study councils and conferences have been appointed to
discuss matters that should determine rules and goals for bibliographic data in order to
better organise and retrieve knowledge in an information universe that keeps expanding.
One of these are the 1961 “International Conference on Principles for Cataloging"
(ICCP), which was held in Paris. The goal of the conference was to facilitate the
international communication of knowledge by achieving the widest possible uniformity
in library catalogues and other means of bibliographic communication. This uniformity
should be achieved by coming to an agreement on the general principles of choice and
form of regime elements for titles and authors. It ended up being 19 general principles
which formed the basis for planning future cataloging both internationally and
nationally. The conference adopted " the Statement of Principles" or the “Paris
Principles” as they are usually called. These principles became the foundation for the
international standard description of documents and were important for the following
two reasons: Firstly, new cataloging rules was constructed by using the principles like
the Anglo-American cataloging rules that had spread globally. Second, the information
technological development facilitated the exchange of bibliographic records, where
from uniformity in choices and form of search elements was an advantage. 82
Another conference is the “Seminar on Bibliographic Records” in Stockholm 1990,
which resulted in the establishment of “IFLA83 Study Group on the Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records” (FRBR). The group was to deal with two
primary objects namely to provide a clearly defined, structured framework for relating
the data recorded in bibliographic records to the needs of the users. Furthermore the
82
83
http://itlab.dbit.dk/projekt/epub/pdf/katalogiseringsteori.pdf
IFLA= International Federation of Library Associations
40
group recommended a basic level of functionality for records created by national
bibliographic agencies.84
The Development of the Classification Systems
To sort the problem with cataloging the library books and other materials, many
classification systems were invented, one of the most famous by Francis Bacon (15611626), who in 1605 made a classification system that classified knowledge into three
large divisions: History, poetry and philosophy. Later, in 1876, the American librarian
Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) invented the Dewey Decimal Classification System, which
is still widely used throughout the world today. The Dewey system divides books into
ten main categories, each represented by a three digit number ranging from 000 – 999,
each of the ten main groups is further divided into more specialised fields and when a
classification needs additional distinction decimals are used. For example, books on
useful insects are grouped at 638 and a book on beekeeping might be designed at 638.1.
A third classification system was invented by Herbert Putnam in 1897. This system was
based in the same respects as the Dewey Decimal System, the difference being that it
classifies books into 21 major divisions with numerous subdivisions. This system was
especially designed for the Library of Congress in America to meet the needs of that
specific library’s huge book collection. The Library of Congress classification system
has been adopted by many university libraries across the world. Another expansion of
the Dewey system is the Universal Decimal Classification which uses symbols in
addition to the numbers in the Dewey system to create long and expressive notations for
particular documents. The Universal System was invented by Paul Otlet and Henri
Fontaine in France and it was later adopted by the International Organization for
Standardization which has ensured its use worldwide. As the printing evolved through
the ages, periodicals like newspapers and magazines started to appear in a larger scale
than ever before and this presented an even greater urgency for a way to classify and
index. One of the first acceptable indexes for periodicals was invented by a student
librarian named John Edmands in 1847 to help his fellow students find debate material
at Yale University. Edmands' system was expanded and published by William Frederick
84
http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf
41
Poole in 1876. 85 Another problem with the increasing number of published materials
was the spaces in which the various books, newspapers and magazines were stored, a
problem that to this day is still relevant. The mass productions of medias on the same
subjects containing very little or nothing new to the field is one of the reasons for the
storage issues. Many works refers to other works on the same subject already present in
for example the library but they often do not contain anything new. It is the same
information in a different package which contributes to the overflow of materials in
library space and makes it hard to find the really useful books in between the rest.
However as Stockwell points out, the answer is not to purge the library shelves because
within each of the hundred of books there is usually at least one gem of knowledge
despite the fact that most of the material might by some be considered a waste of paper.
The dream of having a universal compendium containing all the most important
knowledge located within easy reach has powered the development of encyclopedias
through time.86
85
86
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 90-96
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 97.
42
The Book and Knowledge Organization in the Electronic Age
As the innovation of the world progressed and the inventions of faster ways to produce
materials grew during the 1800’s, it brings forth the era we know as the “Industrial
Revolution”. Throughout the end of the 1800’s and most of the 1900’s communication
materials and information was improved dramatically. Furthermore it was a period of
increased urbanization, which resulted in improved transportation means, new markets
and a new range of products for printing. The growing population of both Europe and
America combined with a rising literacy level meant that the demand for books and
magazines increased as well, resulting in the need for the print industry to take
advantage of the technological developments such as steam powered presses etc.87
Books were required for reading on train journeys, in the new state schools, libraries
and for general information, all of which were new needs brought on and solved during
the Industrialization by the invention of for example paperback books.
The dawn of the paperback originates as a result of intellectual property rights. As the
concept of copy rights occurred in the book industry in the beginning of the 20th
century, the book began to be exploited across a number of new popular media such as
cinema and radio in the form of radio reading of books and cinema movies based on
books. Publishers sought new means of appealing to the mass audience that these new
medias had revealed; one of these ideas was that of Allen Lane, who launched the
pioneering Penguin brand of paperbacks in 1935. The inspiration for the launch was the
Albatross paperback reprint that at the time were popular on the European continent and
out of his dismay by the lack of reading matter available to him on long train journeys.
Over time the Penguin Paperbacks became the synonym for quality paperback
publishing, booksellers however feared a reduction in profits compared with hardcover
editions of books but they need not have worried. Traditionally paperbacks were
reprints of hardcover titles, but as the paperback trade progressed, some publishers
began publishing their first editions in paperback form, which kept the costs down and
enabled the work to be reached by the largest possible audience. The paperback crossed
87
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 59-62.
43
the Atlantic where US companies in time infused book design and marketing. Penguin
opened an American branch shortly before World War II began. The World War
became an important factor in the democratization of reading, both in the areas of
fiction and non-fiction, the paperback provided inexpensive vehicles for knowledge that
could both inform and educate at the same time. And in correspondence with this, many
began to exploit the growing market by producing their own brand of paperbacks. The
paperback quickly became a desirable commodity affordable by all. 88
The Book and the New Media
During the later part of the 20th century more and more publishing houses came together
through mergers to form large and often transnational conglomerates. Three main
factors were behind this tendency: 1) An awareness of the international nature of the
publishing industry and the opportunities for transnational marketing of products. 2)
The need to exploit products across a number of different media hereunder including
film and television. 3) The general under-capitalization of smaller independent houses.
Because of these factors, two types of conglomerates emerged: One which was
primarily print based and operating in a number of different locations in different
countries; and the other which operated in different media available and not necessarily
first and foremost books. But it was not just the publishing industry that saw the growth
of transnational chains, the book selling industry also began to exploit these
possibilities.89 During the rise of new media like film, radio and television, the book
repeatedly had to fight for its status as the mass medium, the biggest battle so far has
been against the computer, computerized digital medias and the world wide web. Some
might say that it is a fight the book already has lost, but to be able to discuss that we
first have to know a little about the electronic media and the dangers it presents for the
book.
88
89
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Chapter 3.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 64-65.
44
The Birth and Development of the Computer
The computer evolved over the past 60-70 years from a roomful of vacuum tubes and
wires capable of executing perhaps 500.000 instructions pr. second, into a chip one
square centimeter or less in size capable of working 20 times faster. The number of
components a single chip can contain has been doubling every 18 months according to
the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. The person who is credited for the invention
of the computer is a man called Charles Babbage (1792-1871). Babbage spent his
enormously large fortune on meticulously constructing a machine that eventually would
evolve into the computer we know today. Babbage called the machine his “Analytical
Engine” though it acted more like a calculator than a computer. The machine Babbage
constructed consisted of two parts: 1) The store in which all the variables to be operated
upon as well as those quantities which had arisen from the result of other operations are
placed. 2) The mill into which the quantities about to be operated upon are put. Today
we call Babbage's “the store” “memory”, the “internal information” we call “numerical
data” and “mill” becomes the “central processing unit or CPU”. Later others began
perfecting Babbage’s machine and at some point the radical concept of constructing a
single machine that had no fixed purpose were invented. The computer development
flourished during World War II mainly because there was a need to be able to quickly
and precise calculate precisions used for for example aiming but also to break the
enemies' secret codes. One of the most important innovations of computer advancement
in those years came from a Hungarian, who had immigrated to the United States called
John Von Neumann (1903-1957). He developed the technique for storing a computer
programme in the memory of the machine. By the 1950's computers were able to
perform thousands of calculations pr. second and those of the 1960's were able to
perform ten times as many pr. second.90 Ever since the development of the first
computers the progress in science no longer had to be determined by the number of
people who were able to solve intricate problems, now the supreme problem solvers
were the machines. In a very short time span science with the use of computers has
exploded. It has extended our knowledge of things from the behavior of galaxies to the
behavior of particles in the subatomic world that is all around us. One of the main
advances in computer development is the dawn of the Internet also known as the World
90
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 161-163.
45
Wide Web. Another important aspect is the amount of menial labour which can now be
done my machines as opposed to humans. But as with all new things fear follows in the
wake of evolution: Some were afraid that machines would make people obsolete, a fear
which has generated many fantasies over time, some of which have been made into
science fiction books or films. This kind of fear is also what has enabled the discussions
of the books demise to take hold.91
One of the newest additions to the media today are the electronic books also called the
E-book. The E-book emerged in the last years of the 20th century, existing as a virtual
entity stored in a digital file. The first e-book is said to have been made by a man called
Michael S. Hart in 1971 by typing the US Declaration of Independence into a
computer92. Like many new technologies it started out small but in time like in our
modern day the electronic book would be capable of being easily read from a wide
variety of devices like the Ipad, the Amazon Kindle and other E-book readers developed
by different companies. During its development onto other media than the standard
computer, its potential as a new media began to be more noticeable. Some even argue
that the e-book represents the next leap forward in the onward march of the book but
this a matter that will be discussed later. The E-book can represent traditional texts and
by this replicate all existing literature, it also has the potential to become a layered and
interactive multimedia experience. The book of the future could even be spontaneously
assembled from multiple sources for specific educational or entertainment purposes, by
a single reader or group. The e-book therefore holds some promise of adding to the
concept of the book.
Knowledge Organisation and the New Media
Computers enable us to store vast amounts of data in huge databases that are accessible
by different search terms. Some of the new knowledge organisation done through the
use of computers involves making online catalogs that enable the searcher to find
material from a distance, to perform searches from different search surfaces and doing
91
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 160-163.
www.gutenberg.org
92
46
so in a much faster way than ever before. Computer technology is gradually becoming
the key to storing knowledge and making this accessible to all. Storage, registration,
manipulation (selection, processing and updating) and retrieval of information are now
more often than not done electronically. The new way to store and retrieve information
has inspired many different search databases: We have full text databases, which
contain the full or main parts of the text of a document, where in all words are
searchable. This means that this kind of database is one of the most difficult databases
in which to find precise, relevant information as it demands great skill and precision
from the user in order to work inefficiently. Another type of database the facts
databases, which contains facts mostly in numbers accompanied with short describing
texts. Then there is the numerical database containing table works that can be updated
when new information occurs. Others again are called bibliographical databases, which
contain bibliographical posts chosen after a user specified criteria and serve as an
identification marker for documents as well as often containing data on where to locate
the material at a library. Some posts even hold abstracts and/or tags. All the electronic
retrieval systems are based on the matching of terms or images. Electronic indexing is a
vast improvement in most respects over conventional indexing. The use of “Boolean
logic93” and intelligent searches based on various encoded dictionaries offer reference
capabilities not available elsewhere. With the use of the electronics and now the
internet, communication and information adds up to a higher degree.94
The influence on knowledge organisation are many but none greater than the problem of
“old” the problem of storing and retrieving knowledge. The still growing load of
information now contained in different media like for example movies, books and so on.
in the world, makes it a hard and complex job to index, preserve and make the
information available. Stockwell describes our need for electronic media as:
“We need computers and hypertext today if for no other reason than to digest the mass
of records that proliferate throughout our society…. The internet holds the greatest
promise humanity has known for long-distance learning and universal access to quality
93
Boolean logic was created by the English mathematician George Boole(1815-1864).
Andersen, Axel: Veje til viden. Page 77-91. and Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage
and Retrieval. Chapter 18 and 19.
94
47
education. It offers the best chance yet for developing countries to take their rightful
place in the global economy”95
He have a point, we need to be able to keep up with the enormous amount of
information generated and to be able to do so, we need a set of rules or guidelines to
make the process as smooth and effective as possible. As a result the rule of legal
deposit is put in place to ensure that every piece of information made in various forms
are handed in to be stored, index and preserved for the future. However with the rise of
the internet and its popularity, the task seems impossible and maybe it is, all we can do
is try to keep up with the flow and try to quickly and efficiently integrate the new forms
of data collecting devices into the equation.
The Effect of the Electronic Age on Society
The new media and its effect on society are very noticeable. Where in recent history the
holder of information meant that the men and woman in the high line of the society
were those who held all the power - The development of the electronic world shakes
this power boundary tremendously. Now almost everyone can get information about
almost anything and it is very common that every man, woman and child knows how to
search the internet for information or as a forum for their opinions. The electronic world
can be used help communication, for education, to disintegrate governments, to pave the
way for new ones as we see happening in the Middle East and so on. Technology gives
power back to the normal citizen, who often have not had a chance to state their
opinions or share their wisdom with a large amount of people. The electronic Age
means a new power structure in the world of knowledge, blurring of national boundaries
as no government can completely control the flow of information though they may try The dawn of the internet is the dawn of a new age and land of knowledge.96
95
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 173. Line 12-13.
96
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. Page 176.
48
The Book and Knowledge Organisation in the Future
Today computer technology is everywhere and computer software is used in various
areas, hence our society more or less dependent on the computer and its technology
some might argue that we are too dependent. This issue includes the internet, where vast
amounts of data and knowledge are uploaded, more and more every second. We use
computer technology in our work life as well as our social life, to communicate and
interact with other people, as well as for various pastimes such as computer games etc.
Furthermore the internet allows us to learn new things, to find and deduce information.
The loss of the dominance of print, its industrial dilution within the multimedia
conglomerates, the globalisation of information and culture itself based on the
exploration of secure intellectual property rights has all led to a questioning of the
future of the book.97
As you can deduct from the above the future of the book debate is not a new topic. This
discussion has been ongoing for decades increasing in volume with the in 1980's, when
the personal computer became common place and again in the 1990's with the dawn of
the internet, and now with the increasing success of the e-book. The book is in many
respects viewed as a treasure and is described as one of humanity's most enduring
cultural artifacts and treasures. As it evolves, the greatest threat to its future is not
technical advances but the danger of new generations losing the inclination to read. The
ability to read and write is our greatest tool in education and, apart from the family, the
single most important medium for the transmission of ideas and the continuation of an
evolving human culture.
To Adapt or Not to Adapt
Jeff Gomez, a senior director of online consumer sales and marketing for Penguin USA,
writes in his book “Print is Dead” about the use of printed books:
“While print is not yet dead, it is undoubtedly sickening….More and more people are
turning away from traditional methods of reading, turning instead to their computers
and the internet for information and entertainment. Whether this comes in the form of
97
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 65.
49
getting news online, reading a blog, or contributing to a wiki, the general population is
shifting away from print consumption, heading instead to increasingly digital lives.98
In other words now a day people have adapted to communicating mostly electronically,
and stay connected through many different electronic devises like never before. In the
past we used to use the postal service and expected that someone respond in the form of
a letter several days later. Today however people have come to expect answers to within
seconds through email or instant messaging. Those of us who are used to get our news
from newspapers a day or so after the fact, now we expect the news almost as it actually
happens.
This new faster world of information has both its positive and negative sides. Seen
according to the entertainment industry which has had to adapt quickly in order to stay
with the flow and keep in business. Furthermore there is a whole new digital generation
– kids who have grown up with the internet and who are accustomed to the many
technological gadgets and are waiting to get their various needs fulfilled. As a result of
the shift in culture many have had to adapt to new ways like for instance the film- and
music industry have had to adapt, to a whole new set of rules in order to keep up with
the new way people old and young buy music besides incorporating all the new
electronics that become available on the market. It is a development that happens faster
and faster, just think about an age not so long ago where CD’s were the means to
getting the newest music and where the big electronic stores contained more CD’s than
any other merchandise – Today those same stores are filled with gadgets and electronic
devises that often do not even have a use for CD's. Now a days we get our music
electronically and we can listen to it almost anywhere at any time on a MP3 player or
something similar. This has forced the industry to change tactics and adapt to new ways
fast in order to keep up with demand.99 Those same changes now apply to people
working within the world of books, they must either learn to adapt or run the risk of
being out competed and in the end become obsolete. Another factor that has a say in the
future developments are the said generations that has grown up using the internet and
other electronic devices and whom are accustomed to getting new stimulating ways to
learn and interact. The future that the book publishing industry has to look forward to is
98
99
Jeff Gomez Page 3. Line 8-8 and 12-18.
www.guardian.co.uk/books/
50
decline in sales and decreased market share. The printed word is being supplanted by
any number of other online attractions like for instance YouTube, Facebook, Roleplaying interacting video games and of the many IPods. But if anyone else is adapting
to new ways then why is the book industry so slow at following suit? One of the main
reasons is that the book has been the prime media for so long, which makes some
people within the book industry hesitant to change both because of the relatively limited
competition since its invention and because past challengers never posed much of a
threat. Like when the computer started to gain ground, the saying went that people
would cease to read books, libraries would close and the world of books would end. Of
course there have been some changes but none so drastic that the book has been in any
danger of becoming obsolete. Another huge factor is the old known fear of the new that
always seem to effect the process of adapting to new things. Five hundred years ago,
when books were first introduced, they were greeted with the same level of scepticism
that digital reading is facing today. Gutenberg’s bibles as much as we revere them now,
were not welcomed with open arms or eager hands. All change is difficult, but difficult
does not mean that change will not come to pass in the end. An additional reason for the
slow wide scale adoption of technological advance is that as it is now there is no real
trouble associated with reading books; they are easy to find, relatively inexpensive and
there is a huge selection available.100 One thing becomes clear with regards to the
transition into the Electronic Age; if the book industry does not wake up soon and start
adapting they eventually run the very real chance of downsizing to the point of
extinction. This is not to say that change will be easy for neither the industry nor the
consumer but as we can see from the development of other media, like the success of
the iPod, when the decision has been made to embrace the changes, the adjustment
happens fairly quickly. In the end, we may be in love with books but I cannot help
wonder if it is truly the book that has conquered our hearts, or the text within it? In my
opinion it is the stories that make us believe in other worlds, that keep us company
when we are bored on a plane, on trains and other places. It is the words and not the
books, the paper, papyrus or vellum on which they are written that transform our lives.
It is curious that people cannot seem to intellectually separate their love of reading from
100
Jeff Gomez page 40-42.
51
their love of books. Furthermore is publishing a book different for printing a book? In
my opinion the book publishing industry is, in the end about marketing, sales,
distribution and risk. The book in printed form is not essentially what should matter to
the publishing industry the hard part is not to get the printed format but getting someone
to want to read the story instead of the thousand other out there and keeping them
coming back for more. That is what the publishing industry should worry about not in
which form the story comes in.
A Shift in Generations - The Book and the Computer
What impact has the computer and its technology had on book development and usage?
The answer is that the emergence of a new media marked not only an increasing
competition for the book, but it was also to some extent a confirmation that the book has
lost a lot of ground. The book is no longer the primary media, though reading has
continued to be as important as ever since many of the new media rely on people being
able to read. The earliest films relied on the audience’s ability to read to fill in the gaps
in the narrative or to explain complex elements within a film. Even today’s television is
characterized by this to some extent for example the news broadcasts, where we often
find two or three static or rolling banners of text in addition to the pictures and sound.
101
The notion that the book is an obsolete medium originates as pointed out above in a
fixation with the pace of technological change and the concomitant rapid introduction of
new and newer media and forms of information storage, retrieval and communication.
But also may have developed as a result of fear of the, like digital media, CD-Roms, the
world wide web, and now the e-book overtaking the old and crushing it so it ceases to
exist. In some sense this is correct, the printed work loses out to the rapid search
function and the possibility of retrieving a diversity of information as well as to the
abilities of digital media to integrate text, sound and images both still and moving. The
printed work however still gains support as it is found in many different languages,
where as the internet still is mostly in English, and additionally the roman alphabet is
the most used alphabet on the net.102 A computer screen is a gateway which is forever
101
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 115.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page119.
102
52
replenishing itself by either scrolling or replacing old information with new. A piece of
paper is merely a clean slate that can be filled one time before we has to replace it ore
add a new sheet. In modern society screens dominate our lives in a way never seen
before. From large plasma TV screens, to mobile phones, to Ipad etc. Most of the larger
cities in the western world have even gone wireless so that it is possible to use the
different electronic computer devises everywhere at any time. Another factor which is
effecting the change are the new generations which have and still are growing up with
more and more electronic devices. They use these devices to interact with each other
effectively and fast, so why would they want to take up a book and spend hours reading
soundlessly for themselves. Reading a book is not a social activity, one cannot share the
experience per say and there is no way to customise a book to suit individual taste.
Instead the new generations use the internet to communicate through computer games
designed to allow people to interact and share in an adventure, or by just having fun
exchanging YouTube clips on Facebook or something similar. So when books become
electronic and start adapting to the technological advance, it will only be a matter of
time before the younger generations embrace it, especially when material can be
accessed at anytime anywhere. In some terms we are seeing this already, many students
around the world are switching the heavy schoolbooks out with an e-book reader, which
contains all the books they may need for their respective studies. In the future it may
even enable students to quickly and efficiently download the material for a whole
semester in five minutes instead of using countless hours locating and buying texts that
may be up to a month arriving and even prevent episodes like when some text only can
be required by copying an enormous amount of pages from a book in printed form,
where a lot of students need to borrow the same book in order to get what is needed.
The dream of making books electronic and available through electronic media is not
new, in 1999 electronic books or e-books as they became known were going to change
everything and replace the existing use of books. The topic of e-books fueled many
debates, heated discussions and predictions for the future were made. Early projections
had printed books becoming obsolete by 2001 or at least losing half their market to the
e-books by then, however this did not happen. From the beginning e-books faced a great
battle generating and sustaining consumers interest, which was not an easy task because
everyone learned to read from physical books and books has been a constant in society
53
for many hundred years. That the e-book at the time did not catch on were probably
because people were not ready for more change, they had just started to accept the
computer as an everyday tool but they were not prepared or ready to lose the safety of
the well known book. Other factors that hindered the e-books adoption were the small
selection, pricing, format and confusion of digital rights management.103 Additionally,
many still find words in books sacrosanct, most people love books and love having
them on display on shelves, having them beside their nightstand or on their coffee table,
or even love the way a book feels and smells when you hold it. Real book lovers revere
their books as great treasures as the society of the previous ages did or as a musician
loves their instrument.104 If people love books in such a way how can they be replaced
and cease to exist? The answer seems simple enough, they will not disappear at least not
entirely. Though the world may move on to use more electronic media there will still be
book lovers to collect books.
“In many ways, we have, for better or worse, already moved beyond the book….Even
the crudest, most materialist standard involving financial returns, we no longer find it
at the center of our culture as the primary means of recording and decimating
information and entertainment”. 105
Whether or not we have moved beyond the book is not that easy to see. But what is
evident is that book sales and other printed materials, which for centuries were at the
center of our technological world, are diminished and are now lying behind the sales of
televisions, cinema tickets, and video games. Furthermore we have changed the way we
find answers or seek knowledge, where before we used books in the form of lexicons or
other textbooks found in the library, we now use the internet as a first priority to finding
answers or collect knowledge about a subject. Let us take a look at the results of the ask
sub-survey to get better perspective on this:
103
Jeff Gomez Page 119.
See the Data collection of the ask sub-survey.
105
Gorge P. Landow in 1996 in his essay The Future of the Book. Jeff Gomez Page 13.
104
54
How and where are you looking for
answers if you have a question ?
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Number of persons
Library1
Library
Library3
Internet1
Internet2
Internet3
lexicon1
lexicon2
lexican3
Friends/Family1
Friends/Family2
Friends/Family3
School1
School2
School3
Workplace1
Workplace2
Workplace3
Other1
Other2
Other3
%
In this diagram people's priorities are put to show where they go to collect information
or get answers. They were asked to put priority marks from 1-3. As we can see from the
results of the survey people in general use the internet as their first priority in the search
for information. The next most used choice to find information is lexicons and thirdly
libraries. There are some variations as to order but in general the picture clearly portrays
that the internet is the most used by far, which is a tendency seen more or less
everywhere in today’s society. A new generation as noted above is already bypassing
printed material for electronic alternatives and getting most or even all of their
information from the internet or other electronic devices. As the years pass and the new
generations become the primary in society, print will look seriously endangered. As Jeff
Gomez Writes;
“There are those who speak of it as going the way of the Dodo.”106
The idea that computers are cold impersonal things is something that often is used as an
argument when discussing the future of the book. Especially the older generations think
that to read books on a computer is something that will never happen, because we never
will be able to interact with it as we do a book.107 Older generations have a tendency to
106
107
Jeff Gomez page 14. Line 22-23.
Jeff Gomez Chapter 1.
55
view the computer and other electronic materials as the bad guy and the books as the
good guy that can do no wrong. These are some of the reasons why the development is
moving as slow as it is, but as the newer generations used to working with electronic
media grow, so will the opinion of electronic materials change. But why do we even
spend time discussing the wrapping, is it not the words within it that are what really
matters? Is it not the stories that we want and collect, value and treasures? If that is the
case why is it so important to discuss the wrapping? These questions and more will be
discussed in the following section of the paper, when we look at what a book is and
compare it with the e-book.
What is a Book - The Book vs. the E-book
What is a book, what is an e-book and what are the similarities and differences? The
most common definition of a book and an e-book is described in the Information
Handbook which:
“A book is a collection of sheets possibly seamed or sampled together along one end so
that the collection can be opened up different places and functions as a physical unit.
And an e-book is a literary work which is published in electronic form. An electronic
file which is made for the purpose of being read on a screen, in printed form or reading
through an e-book reader. An e-book reader is a hand held device especially designed
for reading books in electronic form. The device furthermore contains edb-programs
that enable work with the text, pictures and sound.”108
But the information handbook also writes that within the field of literature research the
term “book” means all kinds of written material like for instance papyrus scrolls.109 If a
book is all kinds of written material then what is not defined as a book? Is an e-book, an
audio-book, an internet page or a film a book? In some sense I guess they all could be.
An e-book is an electronic representation of a book, a film a visual representation. A
book, an audio book is a sound representation, and an internet page would be all tree
combined to make a multi representation of a book. Could it be just a new development
in the evolution of information dissemination where the old oral culture relayed
information verbally as stories or through songs are combined with the written culture
108
109
Informationshåndbogen se under bog og e-bog.
Informationshåndbogen
56
where writing in signs and alphabets were used in order to form a new multi usable
mass that can entail all the above. Others have come to the same conclusion, however
there are those that think that a book is limited to the description as written in the
information handbook. Though there seems to be some tendency for people seeing a
book and an e-book as the same thing and some even count the audio-book among
books as well. Not many however think that films or web pages are books.110 There may
be a need for the definition of a book to be reassessed. The question then is whether a
book is the wrapping, the words written, the story told or all of these combined?
One of the biggest reasons for the discussion of the wrapping is the reading experience,
the way in which you read and where you can do it. In the beginning when computers
were big immovable objects which weighed a ton, the debutantes in favour of the book
as the best reading experience might have had a valid argument, but today, where the
different e-books can be taken and read everywhere without slowing us down that
argument ceases to have any merit. Some might argue that the book is easier and gentler
for the eyes to read. But where this argument may have been valid in the past, it has
ceased to be as the engineers developing the e-book readers have recognised the
previous problems and improved the new versions of electronic devices so that they are
as good or possibly even better to read on, for example out in sunlight. So to talk about
one format being superior to another is irrelevant, it is not a joust, it is about utility and
the fact that electronic books with their portability, search ability, and the way you can
carry around every book you own at once, are some of the prime things that makes the
digital reading experience which is somewhat the same and somewhat more than a book
can do. Another part of the discussion is the transportability of books which has been
addressed before: Books have more or less been mobile since Gutenberg’s invention of
the printing press and this has for a long time been deemed one of the best things about
books, the fact that you could put one in your traveling bag and read when you fell like
it and especially with the emergence of the paperback which made them even easier to
carry around. Most book lovers carry books around with them all the time, but usually
only one at a time because as delightful as reading is, carrying a 500 page book around
110
See the Data collection of the ask sub-survey.
57
is not. But since the computers and especially the e-book readers have become as small
and transportable as a book, they increase the carrying capacity which promptly
annihilates one of the biggest advantages of the printed book.111 But even with this
advance in electronic reading devices there is still a larger percentage of people (As
seen below in the schematic), who sees to cling the traditional book with its pages
combined with a front, back and spine as preferable. Though there probably has been
some shift towards an acceptance of the e-book devises in the last 10 to 20 years the
main answer is still that the book can only be pages combined with a front, back and
spine. But in the future we will probably see an increase in positive answers and a
decline in the negative responses as the newer generations become the dominant.112
Are the different reading media
available today as good to read on as
a book?
Number of persons
%
57.5
38.75
31
46
3
Yes
No
3.75
Dont No
So what is a book really? It may be necessary to define the concept of the book in two
categories; the first category covers the physical medium of the book; the second
defines the content of a book. In the ask sub-survey the participants were to answer
questions relating to both sides of the concept. I asked questions as to what they meant a
book was and gave examples of other media like the audio book, internet pages and
films, and asked them to answer yes or no as to whether or not they in their opinion
could be seen as being books as well. Like in question 9. where I asked if the concept of
111
112
Jeff Gomez chapter 9.
See the Data collection of the ask sub-survey question 12.
58
a book include something other than a regular book made and printed in paper; Here I
was a bit surprised because 48,75% actually said yes to this and 51,25 said no. Then I
looked at the data containing the questions about what people thought could be the same
as a book. First I asked those whom had answered yes in question 9. if a movie, a game
or a website could be a book? And subsequent asked all, if an E-book (electronic book)
still could be a book? To the first question I however was not surprised to see that
82,05% answered no to this, but I was a bit surprised that 68,75% of all the people
asked in the survey saw an e-book as being a book, this because most of those I have
debated the subject with during my months working on this thesis was of the opinion
that the definition of what a book is was what have been said earlier that it had a front,
back and spine wrapped around a number of written paper pages and nothing else could
possibly be defined as a real book. The conclusion one can make of these results is that
the e-book is steadily, nice and easy beginning to win people over. As to the question of
being a book or not, however many still don’t think that all the e-book readers are good
enough to replace the old fashioned book seen according to the reading experience.
Furthermore people in the survey do not see the other media as the same as a book,
some though write that they see the other medias like movies, and internet pages as a
representation of the content found in books which is my opinion as well.113
Writers and Readers in a Digital Future
So while the literary culture as we know it today is undoubtedly threatened by the rise
of the computer and its technologies, this same development also offers authors many
opportunities in terms of exposure and marketing, potentially opening new markets and
different ways to interact with readers all over the world. Authors will also be able to
invent new ways of writing and contribute to new ways of reading as long as they keep
adapting and they may be able to open up for new work relations with the publishers.
Technology has always played a big role in the creation of reading material. In the
fifteen century Gutenberg’s invention allowed for information to travel in different
directions at once. Before Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press information on
the various medias like the beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the middle age114, the
113
See the Data collection of the ask sub-survey.
114
Reference see Thesis Page 34-37.
59
codex’s of the Roman empire115, the papyrus scrolls of Egypt116 and as far back as
where it all began with the clay tablets information recorded in cuneiform in around
5000 B.C.117 consisted of handmade, one of a kind objects that very rarely was
produced in more than a couple of copies which prevented the information to travel far.
Before the most normal transfer of information was done from person to person using
the book, scroll est. as a form of baton. The printing press invention herby opened up
for medias to be transferred easier and faster than ever before and hereby enabled
information of the world to travel faster as well. There would go a long time before the
next innovation would bring a accelerating shift in distribution. The invention of the
typewriter in the 19th century opened up for the authors to get a new way to produce
there material before that the innovations had primarily been on the publishing and
distribution side of the equation. Now the way of writing began a new age from the
handwritten material in many different styles to the identical writing form of the
typewriter. Furthermore the invention of the personal computer and the development in
sophisticated word-processing on the computers altered those forms even more and
made the writing process a lot easier. Writers where suddenly freed from the dodgy
tasks of the writing process in much the same way as the computer removed a lot of the
mathematical calculations from others. They were able to go into the text after it was
written to rewrite a section or correct or change names or other words. Countless hours
were saved and the process of composition and revision were incredibly simplified by
the computer. Given that writers now a day almost exclusively write and experience
their work in via a computer, and only once the book is finished and published does it
appear in paper from, why should question the electronic form as an equally valid media
for the reader? This is also a point Jeff Gomez makes in his book “Print is Dead” where
he writes:
“So if writers can spend months and years composing on a computer – not only reading
words on a computer screen, but writing them as well – then it’s not unrealistic to think
115
Reference See Thesis Page 28.
116
Reference See Thesis Page 20-21.
117
Reference See Thesis Page 16-18.
60
that most readers will one day also consume those books on some sort of electronic
screen.”118
The idea may scare many authors because they have come to think of their works as
physical artifacts but ultimately most of them will not care. Like the musicians they will
adapt in time and perhaps come to see the book as a form of container for the real work
that never ceases to exist.
The internet and the interconnectedness of the people using it is proving to be a great
place for growing and sustaining an audience online. A series of new ways of
advertising books have already emerged as some authors have created online
communities and web pages where fans can subscribe to newsletters, browse the titles
or few chapters of different books. Some even have a calendar, where they post their
activities and events for fans to feel more connected, and furthermore some have
designated chats, where readers can discuss things and where the author can answer or
just see what he or her readers think. All of this enables the author to make a kind of
virtual book tour that is cost free in the terms of travel and such. Most of the web pages
created by authors use all the new graphics available to make the site look more inviting
to the fans. Another advertising scheme which is seen more and more are book trailers
whereas you make a trailer much like a movie trailer with actors but instead of a
manuscript they use the content you would normal find in writing on the back cover of
the printed book. This may just be a taste of how authors can use make of the electronic
world to further their careers, and we will probably see many more new and
sophisticated ways to promote books in the future whether or not they are in printed or
electronic form.
The internet is indeed proving to be a tool for new marketing for publishers and writers
allowing them to get exposure for books to exactly those who want them. Authors that
choose not to engage and use the internet in any way to promote their books are
undoubtedly at a disadvantage: It will be harder getting book deals because publishers
will be less inclined to sign a contract with someone unwilling to use the resources
118
Jeff Gomez page 138. Line 22-26.
61
available to maximise exposure and profit. Competition amongst authors has always
been fierce and with the internet opening new ways for authors it also reveals a new
arena where authors fight to find and keep readers. Both newcomers and established
writers will have to embrace the technology in order to survive, and eventually they will
have to adapt to the new forms of reading as well as new ways of publishing.119
The readers should be one of the prime focuses in the debate about the future of the
book, but during previous eras it has been the industry that dictated the rules rather than
the reader, this however seems to be changing. According to Gomez,
“The internet will change more than the way readers consume books. It will and
already has to some extend change the way people buy, learn about and discuss
books.”120
The numerous social networking sites enables readers to connect much easier as well as
providing a more swift and direct interaction with both authors and publishers.
Furthermore websites are created in still greater numbers, which enable the reader to
browse more or less all books available in various other countries than just their own .
Of these sites one of the most successful is Amazon – Amazon contains not only books
but all kinds of merchandise and exists in many different languages. On sites like this
readers are able to create book lists that can guide or entice other readers to buy a book
they would not normally think of or find. The websites themselves have similar systems
which show a number of titles bought by others who bought the specific item the reader
has viewed, hereby alerting customers to books they would not normally have heard of
otherwise. At the same time, online search that are available today enables discovery
and put enormous amounts of information at the reader’s fingertips.
The Book in the Future
A series of questions arise when pondering the book in the future: How will people
physically read books in the future, will technology unbind books, as it has unbundled
119
120
Jeff Gomez Chapter 8.
Jeff Gomez page 157. Line 28-32.
62
other media such as music albums? Will reading habits change? And does the book even
have a future? These questions will be debated in the next section. There are many
different views of the book and what it entails and what it is good for. Many have an
almost romantic notion as to what a book does like the following;
“Why should we continue to value, preserve, read and write books? Simply because of
what they represent; Books record our past and progress; contain our experiments,
fancies, knowledge, and accumulated wisdom; proclaim our fears and ideas; and
champion our ideals, dreams, and hopes for the future. More than any other medium,
books carry the heart and soul of our civilization forward, and keep it accessible. Long
live the book!”121
Many share this opinion, but does the physical book really contain all these things or is it
merely a form of written, printed, or copied container for all these? Jeff Gomez writes:
“Burges was on the right track in realizing that a physical book is merely a container, and that
its printed form and shape is a concession to the marketplace…What’s important is the
knowledge, and most of this knowledge can be contained in a variety of digital formats that are
much more efficient than a simple box of physical print.”122
But if we have all these different notions as to what a book entails then the nuances of the
discussion of the book becomes quite colorful and in some cases may seem chaotic. So to really
be able to process and discus the future of the book one first has to decide what a book means
for one self. For instance if the book is mealy the wrapping of content or if it is the contained
knowledge or both est. Then when one have decided what a book entails one can begin to
address the future of the book. Hereby not said that ones opinion stays the same as the
discussion progress but to have a notion of one’s own opinion enables a better debate and
eventually a better understanding of the subject.
The Future Development of the Book
Jeff Gomez has a theory about the future of the book; he thinks we should simply look at the
direction music has taken. Music has made various technological leaps over the years from one
format to another from a wax cylinder, vinyl, eight track, cassette tapes, compact disc, mini
121
http://www.e-book.com.au/bookhistory.htm
Jeff Gomez page 18. Line 12-20.
122
63
disc, to MP3.123 Since the evolution of the 1500's the book has halted development almost to a
standstill. Books have evolved from clay tablets, scrolls to hand illuminated calfskin
manuscripts and to bound paper volumes, but except for minor changes like the paperback there
really have been minimal changes to the book and its industry for hundreds of years. Gomez
envisions a development of the printed word similar to that of music. In some respects we
already has seen some of this with the use of computers, Ipad and other e-book reading devices
the words in the end become an electronic file, which only exist in cyberspace as it is with
MP3's and it will only be distributed and consumed on via a digital media.124 This may very
well be the future of the book and it is a development that in some sense is already happening.
So will the book survive the transition? This is a question often asked these days when
discussing the books future and some answer that the book in its paper form is going to be okay
no matter what new media and electronic gadgets that are invented. The author John Lanchester
is one person that has this form of argument of the future of the book:
“Personally, I think that books are going to be OK, for one main reason: Books are not only, or
not primarily, the information they contain. A book is an extraordinarily effective piece of
technology, portable, durable, expensive to pirate but easy to use, not prone to losing all its
data in crashes, and capable of taking an amazing variety of beautiful forms.”125
So the book will survive because it is an extraordinarily effective piece of technology? It is true
that a computer may crash but today almost every electronic reading device contains a mail or
website where all the data of for example the books bought are stored so if a crash should
happen a new download will be at hand. Contrast if a books get wet it isn’t always salvageable
but one may need a new copy like one needed a new download and isn’t that kind of the same
thing? So in that respect the book is not that extraordinary. You still need a new representation
of the same work. As to pirating, Lanchester may be right but it is a problem that will always be
present when knowledge is recorded. The Christians for instance in the Old Roman Empire
primarily began making books as a means to better contain, hide and distribute forbidden
knowledge. Furthermore if a book has to have and amazing beautiful form in order to serve its
purpose then an E-book reader can do that as well. Many of them like amazons kindle can have
their covers changed or get a wrapping so it looks and gets the same shape as a book you can
even get a container for it with space to money cards, even some comes with a little lamp that
123
Jeff Gomez page 15-16.
Jeff Gomez page 15-16.
125
www.guardian.co.uk/books
124
64
can be pulled out when reading so one can read even if it is dark. Because many have this
romantic notion that a book is extraordinary, they often seem stuck and blind for new advances.
But perhaps they contain this notion about the book because of the lack of competition during
the years, but eventually the book may be outdated like the clay tablets and papyrus scrolls.
David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery expresses their opinion on the books future in “An
introduction to Book History”:
“The book will co-exist alongside new developments in technology, the nature and effect of
which are notoriously difficult to predict… books will continue to fulfill needs, although their
function will be more severely circumscribed to leisure. Their production will be chiefly in the
control of traditional media conglomerates that view them as just another product, albeit one
that has a consistent record of supplying the intellectual property from which other media
products can be fashioned.”126
They may be right in this assumption which seems to be more or less descriptive of the general
view of the books future. Furthermore Finkelstein and McCleery write that the different states
may need to intervene increasingly in the future to ensure the promotion and to protect the
reading of books as it does for other activities considered positive assets to society like for
example art.127 The general population seems to think that the book will survive for some time
yet even with all the new advances in technology. Seen from the collected data in the ask subsurvey collected for this thesis, where people were asked to voice their opinion as to whether or
not they thought the book was dying out the result is shown below;
126
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 131, Line 34. And
Page 132, line 2.
127
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Page 132.
65
Do you think the book as a medium is
dying out?
24%
Yes
No
76%
The survey showed that 76% of the participants do not think the book will disappear fade
anytime soon and many added that the feeling and smell of holding a book is part of what
makes a book and that in their opinion nothing else can be designated as one. The participants
seem only to see a book as the wrapping and do not really seem to take the content into
account.128
The Book in the Future Society
Will books as we know them eventually disappear? Though printed materials such as papers,
magazines and books will get smaller in time and lose some ground to digital books, it is
doubtful that they will disappear entirely. Most likely they will be bought and collected by
book lovers, those who love to hold, touch and smell the pages and covers. They will never stop
collecting books, but books may eventually become rare objects like the writing materials of
old. In the future when people have been accustomed to getting and consuming their chosen
information through a digital interface and begin demanding and expect it in that format books
will become works of art much like the illuminated books of the middle age and the hieroglyphs
of Egypt are considered history and art. Supply and demand will continue to decide the fate of
books as long as there is an audience, there is a printing market. But as time progresses and the
demand for printed books wanes book enthusiasts will have a harder time obtaining new and
various titles in printed form.
In the end, it really won’t be software or technology that kills books or print. It won’t be the
internet or some organized challenge or even an attack upon the kingdom of reading. Print
disappears merely because of lack of interest. Because no one or just a few wants it or most will
128
See the Data collection of the ask sub-survey.
66
forget about books. To paraphrase Nietzsche’s famous edict “God is dead, and we killed him”
here we could say “books are dead, and we killed it”. The future development of society will
decide what comes to pass, just as it was society’s development that gave the book its position
to begin with, society will potentially be its downfall.
Knowledge Organisation and Storage in the Future
The future of knowledge organisation is rather difficult to predict. If we look at knowledge
organisation through time we have had three stages of information decimation: 1. The autograph
period (Hand writing), 2. The typographic period (printing age), and 3. The Computer period
(screen writing). All three periods have created new revolutionary ways of storing and
communicating information. Each of the stages have made an acceleration in the information
community development possible, and furthermore have had an influence on intellectual life.
The invention and development of the written media itself meant a revolution in the terms of
decimation of knowledge in every form129 – In some sense we have already entered into a fourth
age, the age of the Internet and the virtual world, which have already changed the way we
create, find, organise, store and distribute knowledge. The technological world is changing the
way in which we live our lives and has yet again accelerated the flow of information. In our
information society issues of collecting and keeping knowledge have arisen once more: Today
we are presented with vast amounts of both new knowledge as well as the knowledge and
information acquired throughout history, and the prospect of preserving all of this for future
generations is none to promising. For example in almost every new work made today contains
references to more or less the same core of authors who have described the subject before, and
the new work may contain nothing or only very little new information. The question then is how
do we decide which work to keep and which to abandon to be forgotten? This problem has been
a topic for libraries and information specialists for many years and has become an increasing
problem as the flow and production of knowledge has accelerated. Even with the virtual world
in which we can now store wast amounts of knowledge presents some questions especially as to
the preserving of knowledge. There are those who rejoice at the new ways in which to store
knowledge, because it partially solves the issue of storage space as virtual storage does not take
up much room in the physical world and does not offer the dangers of degradation to the same
degree. The danger herein, which many fail to see, is that to rely completely on a virtual world
for knowledge keeping and organisation might prove catastrophic if the electronic world were to
collapse. We see this fear depicted all the time in doomsday books, games and films where
129
Andersen, Axel: Veje til viden. Page 43.
67
society has been set back due to some kind of catastrophic event and has to rely on nontechnological materials and knowledge in order to rediscover the past. Granted the prospect of
this is not likely any time soon however the future is impossible to accurately predict and the
risk is still present and in my opinion should be taken seriously. If the collapse of technology
should in fact occur sometime in the future, it would be an even greater catastrophe than the fall
of the Roman Empire wherein most of its collected knowledge was lost. But if we cannot rely
on the virtual world what do we do then? We can keep using the old ways of organising and
keeping knowledge, which have risks of their own or take a chance in the virtual world and
hope that disaster does not strike, or we could utilize both methods to ensure that at least some
knowledge is preserved regardless of future events. It will never be possible to have an all
encompassing method but by using both old and new systems knowledge stands a better chance
at survival. And that is exactly what I think will happen in the future, we will have to decide
which versions of the knowledge we wish to keep and in order to preserve it all we will need a
combination of the old systems as well as new in one big incorporated formula.
68
Conclusion
The terms “book” does not need to be limited to the material object and its context. The
book can be different things and one has to make a clear distinction of which in order to
understand it and its development through time. If we follow history and the
development of media through time, it speaks of a steadily progressive development in
synch with a growing population and innovative science, through which new knowledge
is discovered. In the footstep of these developments the need of organising is mandatory
in order to keep a functional society going and to be able to pass on knowledge to the
existing populations as well as generations to come. To keep up with the still growing
amount of information, systems have been invented to help with this process. As
science invent new technologies for faster ways to conduct, store, organise and retrieve
knowledge, the world becomes more connected than ever before, but this also adds to
the problem of keeping track of the knowledge and how to store and preserve it. It is an
ever ongoing problem and as we keep developing so will knowledge organisation seek
new ways and develop in order to keep up. Whether or not the development is fruitful in
the future is anyone’s guess, we can only do our best by implementing new strategies
with old in the hopes of continuously solving the problems as they arise.
As science and technology create a more open world and knowledge and information
becomes accessible almost as fast as it is discovered affects the world including the many
media existing within it. It gives ways for new media to arise or for old media to develop into
something else. The result of the faster world is that older medias such as the book in its
original form with front, cover and spine seems to be insufficient and a new version
appears to be needed. This need brings about the invention of the electronic book or ebook as they are often called. The qualitative and quantitative differences between
printed and electronic books are distinctive: like for instance electronically supported
production, electronic storage and possible distribution of contents. Even with these
differences in the book and e-book it is still possible to discuss whether or not this is a new
version of the book, though this is a heated debate where strong opinions clash with
each other. There seems to be two opposing fronts: Those who revere the book as
treasure based on its original form, and those who see the content of the book as the
essential. Because of these two very different definitions of the book, the discussion of
its future becomes double-edged. If we look at the first perspective then the book can
69
only be what it is in its paper form and new medias like the e-book simply become a
different media coexisting with the original book. However if we look at it from the
other point of view, the book has room for development and growth though not
everyone within this group are in agreement as to what the book has become or might
develop into in the future. One thing both groups seems to agree upon is that the book in
its original printed form is diminishing and that though the development might not be
immediate, it will eventually become a smaller media in a world of many. For the book
to have a real future other than eventually becoming an antiquity, it is important not to
limit the existence of the book to print. In order to go back behind the Gutenberg
threshold, it is equally important to be able to look beyond it.
70
Literature
Books
Almerud, Peter: Nya vägar för boken – Rapport från ett projekt. Kungl.Biblioteket (2000). 60
pages.
Andersen, Axel: Veje til viden. Gyldendals boghandel 1 udgave, 3 oplag (2004). 385 pages.
Birkerts, Sven: The Gutenberg Elegies – The Fate of Reading In An Electronic Age. My sky
Blue Traders (2002). 251 Pages.
Brown, John Seely and Duguid, Paul: The Social Life of Informaton. Harvard Business School
Press (2000). 319 Pages.
Cope, Bill and Phillips, Angus: The Future of the Book in the Digital Age. Chandos Publishing
(2006) 219 pages.
Darnton, Robert. The Case For Books – Past, Present, and Future. Public Affairs in Paper
(2009). 209 pages.
Finkelstein, David and McCleery, Alistair. An introduction to Book History. Routledge (2005).
152 pages.
Gleick, James: The Information – A History, a Theory, a Flood. Fourth Estate London (2011).
505 pages.
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E.: The Writing Revolution – Cuneiform to the Internet. WileyBlackwell (2009). 297 pages.
Gomez, Jeff: Print is Dead – Books in Our Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan (2008). 215 pages.
Jean, Georges: Skriftens historie gennem 6000 år. Roth (1993). 151 pages.
Kvale, Steinar: Interview – En introduktion til det kvalitative forskningsinterview. Hans
Reitzels Forlag (1997). 318 pages.
Lerner, Fred: The Story of Libraries – From the invention of Writing to the Computer Age. The
Continuum International Publishing Group Inc (2001). 237 pages.
Martin, Henri-Jean: The History and power of Writing. The University of Chicago Press (1995).
591pages.
Moltke, Erik: Runerne i Danmark og deres oprindelse. Forum (1976). 408 pages.
Møller, Eva: Sumererne – verdens ældste by-samfund. Munksgaard (1994). 63 pages.
Nunberg, Geoffrey: The Future of the Book. University of California Press (1996). 295 pages.
Roaf, Michael: Mesopotamien og den nære orient i oldtiden. Samleren (2004). 214 pages.
Robinson, Andrew: The Story Of Writing – Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms. New
Edition. Thames and Hudson 2009. 232 pages.
Ryan, Johnny: A History of the Internet and the Digital Future. Reaction Books (2010). 235
pages.
71
Stockwell, Forster: A History of Information Storage and Retrieval. McFarland and company,
Inc., Publishers (2004). 197 pages.
Taylor, Arlene G.: The Organization of Information. Libraries Unlimited Inc (2004) Second
edition. 407 pages.
Weller, Toni: Information History – An Introduction: Exploring an Emerging Field. Chandos
Publishing (2008). 143 pages.
Newspapers / Magazines
Illustreret Videnskab no.: 10/ 2011
National Geographic no.: 7/2011
DVD
Time life’s Lost Civilizations - Mesopotamia Return to Eden.
Time life’s Lost Civilizations – Egypt Quest for Immortality.
Time life’s Lost Civilizations – Aegean Legacy of Atlantis.
Internet pages
http://www.bibliotekshistorie.dk/
http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html
http://www.historyofinformation.com/outline.php?category=Preservation+%26+Conservation+
of+Information
http://www.zencollegelife.com/the-history-of-libraries-through-the-ages/
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.html
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/egyptian.htm#origins
http://blog.chinesehour.com/?p=589
http://www.chinavista.com/experience/hanzi/hanzi.html#1
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/
http://itlab.dbit.dk/projekt/epub/pdf/katalogiseringsteori.pdf
http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/frbr/frbr_2008.pdf
http://www.fhi.org/nr/rdonlyres/etl7vogszehu5s4stpzb3tyqlpp7rojv4waq37elpbyei3tgmc4ty6du
nbccfzxtaj2rvbaubzmz4f/overview1.pdf / Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s
Field Guide.
72
http://imihome.imi.uni-karlsruhe.de/nquantitative_vs_qualitative_methoden_b.html
/Quantitative vs. Qualitative method.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n24/john-lanchester/let-us-pay /Let Us Pay; John Lanchester on the
future of the newspaper industry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview2 / Its a Steal.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart
73
Annex
Questionnaire (English)
I am currently in the process of writing my Masters Thesis in Library and
Information Science at the School of Library and Information Sciences in
Copenhagen. In this connection, I seek help for a study on different views of the
book versus the alternative media available today. As such I would like to ask
you to answer the twelve questions below, which should only take 5-10 minutes
of your time. The survey is anonymous and will only be used in my paper.
Questions:
1) Male
Female
2) Age: 0-15 years
16-35 years
36-55 years
56-75 years
76-100years
3) What nationality are you? (e. g. Danish, Swedish)
4) What is your profession? (e. g. student, tradesmen)
If you are retired, what was your profession in the past?
5) How and where are you looking for answers if you have a question? (e.
g. when were the pyramids built?) Please set 1st, 2nd and 3rd priority.
Library:
Friends/family:
World Wide Web:
Lexicon:
Other:
School:
Workplace:
Where?
6) Do you read books? Yes
*8
No
If yes, how often?
7) Do you think the book as a medium is dying out?
74
Yes
No
8) If yes to question 7, is it due to other media such as the dvd, computer,
consol games, the internet and so on?
9) Does the concept of a book include something other than a regular
book made and printed in paper (e. g. could it be an internet site or
audio book?)
Yes
No
If yes, what in your opinion:
10) If yes to question 9 is a movie, a game or a website also a book?
Yes
No
Why:
11) Is an E-book (electronic book) still a book?
Yes
No
Why:
12) Are the different reading media available today as good to read on as a
book?
Yes
No
Why:
Thank you for your assistance.
75
Spørgeskema (Danish)
Jeg er en pige på 25år der i øjeblikket er i færd med at skrive mit speciale i Biblioteksog informationsvidenskab på Det Informationsvidenskabelige Akademi i København. I
den forbindelse søger jeg hjælp til en undersøgelse omkring forskellige menneskers syn
på Bogen som medie i dag. Herunder er der 12 spørgsmål. Undersøgelsen er anonym
og vil kun blive brugt i henhold til min opgave. Det tager kun 5 - 10 minutter at udfylde.
Spørgsmål:
1) (Sæt kryds) Er du Mand
Kvinde
2) Alder (sæt kryds): 0-15år
16-35år
36-55år
56-75år
76-100år
3) Hvilken Nationalitet har du? (Fx Dansk, Svensk…)
4) Hvilken profession har du? (fx folkeskoleelev, studerende, håndværker, osv.)
(Hvis du er pensioneret hvad var din profession førhen?)
5) Hvor leder du efter svar hvis du har et spørgsmål? (Eksempel: hvornår blev
pyramiderne bygget?) Sæt 1, 2 og 3 prioritet.
Biblioteket:
Venner/Familie:
Internettet:
Skolen:
Leksikon:
Arbejdspladsen:
Andet:
I så fald hvor?
6) Læser du bøger? (Sæt kryds) Ja
Nej
Hvis ja Hvor tit?
7) Tror du bogen som medie er ved at uddø?
(Sæt kryds) Ja
Nej
76
8) Hvis ja i spørgsmål 7, er det så pga. andre medier så som DVD, Computer,
Consolspil, Internet mm.?
9) Kan Begrebet en bog efter din mening være flere ting? (For eksempel en
internetside el. en lydbog)
(Sæt kryds) Ja
Nej
Hvis ja i så fald hvad:
10) Hvis ja til spørgsmål 9. er en film, et spil eller en internetside så også en bog?
(Sæt kryds) Ja
Hvorfor:
Nej
11) Er en E-bog (elektronisk bog) stadig en bog?
(Sæt kryds) Ja
Hvorfor:
Nej
12) Er de forskellige læsemedier der er tilgængelige i dag lige så gode at læse på
som en bog?
(Sæt kryds) Ja
Hvorfor:
Nej
Mange tak for din hjælp.
(Note that all the filled questionnaires from the
ask sub-survey can be presented if needed.)
77