Concept in Definition ABC

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

Often a book is composed of a cover that protects the sheets, a spine that brings together the binding, front cover, cover and back cover, body of the work consisting of pages, prologue or introduction, index, chapters and other elements complementary.

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

You can talk about books practically since time immemorial and through various techniques of production like the cave paintings in the Paleolithic, who "imprinted" their memories on stone. Although in ancient cultures such as the Egyptian Empire (with its papyri) and the Babylonian civilizations (with its texts carved in stone) it was achieved some diffusion of primitive books, during the European Old and Middle Ages books were rare and expensive and produced by hand in scrolls. Also, given the low level of

literacy In European society at the time, only a few people could to write with the precision necessary for conservation of these manuscripts; in general, only a few nobles and members of the clergy succeeded in preserving the books at this historical stage.

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

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

Topics in Book