A book is a portable object that carries written or printed content. This content may be fiction (containing invented or fictitious content) or non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). Physical books are also used as accounts, appointment books, autograph books, diaries, journals and sketchbooks.
The word “book” is sometimes taken for granted, but the attributes that signal its presence—format, shape, binding and pages, to name a few—are complex and can be challenging to define. This exhibition invites us to examine what a book is, and how it works in different contexts and cultures.
As a physical form, books come in many sizes, and are usually bound together along one edge and covered with cloth or paper. Some are designed for use by children, as in the case of paper dolls, or contain removable content like puzzles and photographs. Some books are empty for personal use, such as account books and diarys. Books can also be made in different materials—such as clay, skin, parchment and paper—and made into a variety of shapes, including ovals, squares and rectangles.
The majority of books today are printed by offset lithography. The pages are printed as a single sheet and then cut to the correct size, often using dies based on standard paper sizes that evolved 200 or 300 years ago. The sheets are then folded and trimmed, creating the finished book. Most commercial publishers in industrialized countries assign a code called an ISBN to their books. This code, which is located on the spine, relates them to a catalogue that determines their location on shelves in libraries.
In addition to the coding system, books can be categorized by subject matter using a system such as the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classifications. These systems are largely biased toward subjects that were well represented in American libraries when they were created, which limits their usefulness for collections in other cultures. This is particularly a problem with subjects that involve scientific information and other content that may be found only in books published in other languages.
The book’s ability to carry and transfer information has given it an enduring role in society, even as the meaning of its contents changes with changing technologies. The internet has changed the nature of information and has altered how it is stored, but the book retains a prominent place in the cultural landscape. This exhibition and its companion exhibition in Chicago, The Future of the Book, are part of a larger project to investigate the future of books, and what it means for our global culture when they become increasingly digital and virtual. We will continue to explore this subject in a series of exhibitions in the coming years. This exhibition was produced by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Library of Congress.