Readings Topic 1: The Book Form

The Whatness of Bookness

Philip Smith’s definition of Bookness: http://www.philobiblon.com/bookness.shtml accessed Tuesday, 10 March 2009 8:54:30 PM

“The qualities which have to do with a book. In its simplest meaning the term covers the packaging of multiple planes held together in fixed or variable sequence by some kind of hinging mechanism, support, or container, associated with a visual/verbal content called a text. The term should not strictly speaking include pre-codex carriers of text such as the scroll or the clay tablet, in fact nothing on a single leaf or planar surface such as a TV screen, poster or hand-bill.”

“A blank book is still a book, but a blank dodecahedron or unmarked spiral of paper is not a book, it is a dodecahedron etc”

“A text can be inscribed on anything but this does not make it a book, or have the quality of bookness, even as a scroll retains its scrollness without any text on it.”

I disagree with Smith’s definition regarding the bookness of scrolls. While scrolls could vary in length, they had to be unrolled with one hand and rolled with the other, forming blocks of content that were viewed before the next rolling revealed the next section of text and covered the previous; showing ‘pages’ of text with each rolling – the same function as a spine-bound book, but without ‘bookness’. They were made with the intention of transmitting information. Even before the scroll has any content on it, its intention is the same as that of a codex. If a hinged document (one plane that has been folded) can be regarded as having bookness, then so can a rolled one. Same with clay tablets; their intention is the same whether or not there is text on it, just as a blank codex is still a book, because of its bookness and intended purpose.

Supported by Edward Hutchins http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/bookarts/1996/10/msg00039.html

Smith’s article, written in 1996, can only have been created with an educated glimpse into what is available electronically or digitally 13 years on. It is the increase in the availability and acceptability of books accessed by the “planar surfaces” of computers that has occurred since then that make Smith’s definition at best incomplete and at worst outdated and incorrect.

What is a Book?

http://www.artistbooks.com/editions/wiab.htmlaccessed 15/03/2009 6:27 PM

“When I defined books for myself, I chose not to look at what a book is, what it is made out of, or what it looks like. Instead, I chose to consider how a book is used and what purpose it serves. For me, a book is "a structure for storing and sharing information." ”

“Defining Books in an Electronic Age”. Adapted from postings by Edward Hutchins to the Book Arts List, April 8, 1995 and October 5, 1996

This definition of ‘book’ supports my own definition. Hutchins goes on to say that although many people have tried to arrive at a definition on which everyone can agree it’s not possible. What is possible is for people to find a common ground when discussing books, by using Philip Smith’s “bookness” framework. Hutchins interpretation of bookness; “In other words, instead of saying, "a "book" IS this AND this AND this AND this," maybe we should be saying, "bookness" CONSISTS of this OR this OR this OR this."” allows non-codex or digital ‘books’ to be included when they cannot be using Smith’s definition.

Is it a book?

http://www.philobiblon.com/isitabook/history/index.html accessed 15/03/2009 4:41 PM

“Once the printing press became widely used in the West, and books in the western codex format were produced in large numbers, it became difficult to think of the book in any other fashion. Nearly everyone now expects that a book must have a beginning, middle and end between the two covers. Texts are written in this format, and books continue to be physically constructed to support it.”

This quote from http://www.philobiblon.com/isitabook/history/index.html highlights the difficulty with defining ‘book’. We are so conditioned by what we have been taught is a book, as per Smith’s “packaging of multiple planes held together in fixed or variable sequence by some kind of hinging mechanism, support, or container, associated with a visual/verbal content called a text”, that the things that still serve the same purpose as a conventional codex ie to store and/or communicate information are see and “queer”. Originally posted by Edward Hutchins to the Book Arts List, April 11, 1995 http://www.artistbooks.com/editions/wiab.html

Ironic: Medieval European “manuscripts were sometimes constructed using a tree structure to show the contents of a book in a less strictly hierarchical way than in a table of contents. A similar tree structure is now a common way to show files on a web-site map.”

http://www.philobiblon.com/isitabook/history/index.html