referencebooks (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} referencebooks) wrote,@ 2005-08-19 10:00:00 |
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| Entry tags: | library science, publishing |
Encyclopedia of the Book
Encyclopedia of the Book, 2nd Edition
By Geoffrey Ashall Glaister
Published by Oak Knoll Press and the British Library, 1996.
This is a thick paperback measuring 7" by 10" and running 551 pages of relatively small type, including four appendices, plus 22 pages of preferatory material and eight pages of color plates.
This edition isn't really new; it's a reprinting of the 1979 edition with a new introduction. The work contains "three thousand alphabetically-arranged definitions of the terms used in bookmaking, printing, papermaking, and the book trade, and provides biographical details of printers, authors, bookbinders, bibliophiles, and precise notes on machinery and equipment, famous books, printing societies, book-related organizations, customs of trade, and other book lore." As such it's really more of a dictionary than an encyclopedia. Most of the entries take up less than one or two column inches, and few are more than a page in length. In addition to the color plates, the encyclopedia has many black and white illustrations intermixed with the text.
For an idea of what's here, the entries on page 133 are:
- demonym
- demotic
- demy
- demy octavo
- dendritic growths
- Denham, Henry
- densitometer
- density
- dentelle bindings
- deposit copies
- depth of strike
- De Ricci, Seymour
- Derome bindings
- De Roos, S. H.
- descenders
- descumming
- desensitization
- Design and Industries Association
Of those, four are "see" references.
The book has a British bias, using British spellings and paying more attention to the British book world than the book world in other places. It is also much stronger in book history than in modern publishing. That said, it is a unique, important, and very useful reference book.
