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Egyptians would write on metal, Leather, clay, stone, and bone
Papyrus: Material similar to paper made from the pith of a papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge.
Most prominent reed pens to write on papyrus scrolls
Standard papyrus scroll 30 ft L 7-10 in W

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How Ancient Egyptians Made Papyrus | Step-by-Step for Kids!

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Made from treated animal skins that were scraped thin to create a flexible, even surface.
Several advantages over papyrus: more durable, both sides could be written on, trade wasn't controlled by Egyptians.

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Codex: Romans would sew together Papyrus or parchment together, binding them between wooden covers (essentially the same structure as today's books)
More portable, easier to store & handle, less expensive to produce

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Tang Dynasty China
Buddhist prayers
First known examples of printed text: 2.5 in wide scrolls of Buddhist prayers
Earliest example of a dated, printed book Diamond Sutra

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The first use of block printing on paper began in Tang Dynasty China around 700 CE.

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block book, book printed from wooden blocks on which the text and illustration for each page had to be painstakingly cut by hand. Such books were distinct from printed books after the invention of movable type, in which words were made up of individual letters each of which could be reused as often as necessary and in which only illustrations and special devices, such as initial letters in paragraphs, had to be carved individually in wooden blocks set in forms with metal letters.

The art of block-book printing is almost certainly of Chinese origin, probably of the 6th century ad. The first examples were produced by hand-rubbing impressions from the block. The method had spread to Europe at least by the 15th century, and early in the 15th century simple presses were probably sometimes being used to impress the "printing" from more elaborate text-illustration blocks. Block books were tedious to produce since each letter had to be carved each time it appeared on a page; the method was used most often for short, simple works-largely religious-in which the length of the text could be subordinated to illustration. Hardly any European block books are known to have been executed after the early 16th century.

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Block book | Illuminated Manuscripts, Woodcuts & Incunabula

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Block book, book printed from wooden blocks on which the text and illustration for each page had to be painstakingly cut by hand.

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Japan’s Empress Shōtoku commissioned the creation of Buddhist prayer scrolls. This is the first instance of text printed on paper.

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Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book published in 868 CE, is the first example of a dated, printed book.

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In many areas, the preservation and distribution of texts were largely due to the work of scribes. These individuals would copy text by hand, creating hand-written books.

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Writer’s Cramp: The Life of a Medieval Scribe

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The desk that medieval scribes used were different than today’s flat work surfaces. Medieval scribes wrote with quill pens dipped in ink.

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Invention of mechanical movable type by Johannes Gutenberg= Mass production
Printing houses spread rapidly throughout Europe

Nicolas Jenson creates 2 types of font
Most common known Times Roman

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Gutenberg used his movable type press to print 180 copies of the Bible. This is the first instance of the Bible being printed.

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In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII did not allow books to be printed if they hadn't been reviewed and approved by the Roman Catholic Church. The Bible, for example, was only allowed to be printed in Latin.

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The Protestant Reformation began when Martin Luther challenged the church's right to regulate which books were printed and distributed. He focused much of his efforts on printing the Bible in everyday, common languages—not just Latin.

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Leading up to the American Revolution newspapers and pamphlets were the publication method of choice.
They could be quickly printed and ideal for circulating short political and news items at a moment of rapid change.
Propoganda

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Copyright: allows a person the right to exclude others from copying, distributing, and selling their work.
Traced back to 1710 to the Statute of Queen Anne in England
Granted publisher 14 years of of exclusive rights & legal protection
Anyone who infringed would face consequences

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Following the American Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense is considered America's first best-seller

Around this time America placed a copyright law

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The demand for books spiked after the American Revolution. William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature became the first American novel

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Until the early 1800's most books were sold unbound.
William Pickering is known as the first publisher to sell books with a uniform cloth binding in 1820.

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The Murders in the Rue Morgue, written by Edgar Allen Poe, is considered the first detective or mystery book. The vast influence of this story on the genre led to the creation of the Edgar Awards, which honor Poe's contribution to literature.

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The United Kingdom’s Public Libraries Act of 1850 enabled the development of free, public libraries.

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Public Libraries Act 1850

The Public Libraries Act 1850 is an Act of the British Parliament. In the 1840s, support grew for the concept of providing public libraries for the British people championed by chartist Edward Edwards and the liberal Members of Parliament (MPs) Joseph Brotherton, and William Ewart. In 1849, a Bill was introduced by William Ewart in the House of Commons to provide for a system of "libraries freely open to the public...in towns in Great Britain and Ireland." However he faced considerable opposition from Conservatives opposed to the idea of free public libraries that might encourage the working class to challenge their betters. Eventually a watered down Bill was passed in 1850 but it was still this Act that provided the genesis of the modern public library system in Britain. It was amended in 1853 to include Scotland, and again in 1855. It still took a long time for many towns to adopt the Act, as they had to raise a local rate or tax to pay for the library service.
External links
* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Llibrary.htm History of the Public Libraries Act]

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The Public Libraries Act 1850 is an Act of the British Parliament. In the 1840s, support grew for the concept of providing public libraries for the British people championed by chartist Edward Edwards and the liberal Members of Parliament (MPs)...

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Harriet Beecher Stowe startled the literary market with her perspective of slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her book was a remarkable success, second only to the Bible in this century. Her book is considered an "important touchstone of American literature" (3.3, para 6).

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Public libraries flourished in America after the American Civil War. In 1881, Andrew Carnegie began a project focusing on the development of public libraries. Over a period of four decades, Carnegie founded nearly 2,000 public libraries.

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Andrew Carnegie was once the richest man in the world. Coming as a dirt poor kid from Scotland to the U.S., by the 1880s he'd built an empire in steel - and then gave it all away: $60 million to fund a system of 1,689 public libraries across the country.

Carnegie donated $300,000 to build Washington, D.C.'s oldest library - a beautiful beaux arts building that dates back to 1903. Inscribed above the doorway are the words: Science, Poetry, History. The building was "dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge."

It opened in 1903 to women, children, all races - African-Americans remember when it was the only place downtown where they could use the bathrooms. During the Depression, D.C.'s Carnegie Library was called "the intellectual breadline." No one had any money, so you went there to feed your brain. Washington writer Paul Dickson, author of The Library in America, says the marble palace was an early and imposing Capitol institution.

"This went in well before the monumental limestone and marble buildings of Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue. This was one of the first really beautiful public buildings," he says.

Carnegie libraries are still the best buildings in many towns. Over the years some have been expanded or torn down. And, in addition to books and computers, Carnegie libraries find new ways to serve the community.

The public library in Woodbine, Iowa, loans cake pans - people don't keep all sizes and shapes of cake pans at home, "so they check 'em out and bake their cakes and bring 'em back," explains Woodbine library director Rita Bantam. "[It's] offering a service that people need. It brings people into the library."

Andrew Carnegie gave $7,500 to Woodbine. That paid for the 1908 building itself. The towns had to raise money for books, salaries and maintenance. Before Carnegie, Bantam says, the library was located in an unusual section of Woodbine's town hall: "It was over the jail," she explains, "they had to close the library when the jail was occupied."

From jail to cakepans, public libraries are embedded in their communities. In South Carolina, the Union County Carnegie Library - named best small library in America a few years back - invites Ronald McDonald over to lure kids into summer reading programs. Director Ben Loftis says there were subscription libraries in South Carolina before 1903 when his was built - with a $10,000 Carnegie grant - but this was the first public library.

"It went from being for just the wealthy elite landowners and planters to actually being a service for the entire county that everybody has access to," he says.

It was pioneering - public and free. Those were the visionary keystones of Carnegie's library mission. The mission was born in Allegheny City, Pa., where Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy in a textile mill - his job was to fill the bobbins with thread and oil them for the machines. He was determined to improve his lot, but he couldn't pay the $2 subscription for a local library that was available only to apprentices (and he certainly couldn't afford to buy books).

He sent a letter to the library administrator asking for access to the library, but the administrator turned him down flat. So 17-year-old Andy got the letter published in The Pittsburgh Dispatch.

"He made his case so well that the administrator backed off immediately," explains Carnegie biographer David Nasaw. "And the library was opened to working men as well as apprentices. He got what he wanted."

The man who dies rich dies in disgrace.

He usually did. Quick, smart and self-educated, "the little Scotsman from Pittsburgh" went from bobbins to telegraphs to railroads to iron and steel. In 1901, when he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan for almost half a billion dollars, it became part of U.S. Steel - and Carnegie became the world's richest man. And then he gave it away: a total of $350 million.

Was he the Bill Gates of his day? "I think Bill Gates would very much like to be known as the Carnegie of his day," says Nasaw.

In 1889 Carnegie wrote an article called "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he spelled out his views on philanthropy: "In bestowing charity the main consideration should be to help those who help themselves."

The rich should give, so the poor could improve their own lives - and thus the lives of the society. Giving was a code of honor. "The man who dies rich dies in disgrace," Carnegie said.

Nasaw says the steel master was in his 30s when he decided he was merely the shepherd of his wealth.

"It is his responsibility to give it back," Nasaw says, "to return it to the community because the community - all of those men and women who contribute to the making of Carnegie steel, the mothers who feed their children, the day laborers, the whole large community - is responsible for making this wealth and they're the ones who have to get it back."

So public libraries became instruments of change - not luxuries, but rather necessities, important institutions - as vital to the community as police and fire stations and public schools.

Now, Carnegie was a complicated man. Brilliant, charming, generous - and brutal. Carnegie biographer Les Standiford, author of Meet You in Hell, says the industrialist presided over what is considered this country's most bitter labor dispute.

"The Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 - in which he and Henry Clay Frick conspired to mercilessly beat down the steelworkers who were striking for better pay and better working conditions. It stands to this day as the worst labor conflict in American history," Standiford says.

"Increase our wages," the workers demanded. "What good is a book to a man who works 12 hours a day, six days a week?"

Nasaw says Carnegie thought he knew better and replied to his critics this way: "If I had raised your wages, you would have spent that money by buying a better cut of meat or more drink for your dinner. But what you needed, though you didn't know it, was my libraries and concert halls. And that's what I'm giving to you."

And so he did: 1,689 public libraries. Temples of learning, ambition, aspiration for towns and cities throughout the United States.
How do you use your local public library? Please tell us in the comments below.

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How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy

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At the start of the 20th century, the ruthless, self-made steel industrialist paid $60 million for 1,689 public libraries to be built in communities around the U.S. "The man who dies rich dies in disgrace," Carnegie wrote.

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Cost of books decreased substantially due to the improved technology aiding in production.
By the end of the century books were now in competition with films, television, video games, and the internet.

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During the Great Depression, paperback books were marketed as an inexpensive alternative to hardcover books. The introduction of this format was revolutionary.

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Paperback books first outsold hardcover books in 1960, indicating their growing popularity.

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Bowling, Beatniks, and Bell-Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20th-Century America

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Paperback BooksThe first paperbacks were published in 1841 by a company called Tauchnitz. But for the next ninety years, other publishers around the world continued to make hardback books, which, for many, were an expensive luxury. In 1934, first Albatross, then Penguin Books, began publishing paper…

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Increased from 14 years, 28 years to now a "term consisting of the author's life and 50 years after the author's death"

1998 Copyright Term Extension Act: extended further to 70 years plus 20 year extension to all currently copyrighted works

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1970-1999 Bookstores (Boarders/ Barnes & Noble, etc.) reshaped the retail of books as convenience stores such as Walmart, Costco, Target, began outdoing their book sales.
2005 was the biggest decrease

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Personal digital assistant (PDA) devices enabled some markets to read digitized books. However, the PDA devices were not widely popular at this time.

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Amazon Kindle began outselling paper books in 09.
Oprah praised the Kindle on her show.
Apple iPad 2010-1.5 million book sales in 1 month
Issues with illegally downloading
e-book sales are constantly growing
Said to hurt the idea of "ownership"

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In the years before 2005, Google Books had digitized millions of books with unclear legal status. Publishers and authors were furious. So, in 2005, the Authors Guild of America and the American Association of Publishers (AAP) sued Google for copyright infringement.

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Amazon released a new e-reader: Kindle.

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Google agreed to a $125 million settlement with the publishers and Authors Guild.

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Google Settles Suit Over Book-Scanning (Published 2008)

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Google agreed to pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits by book authors and publishers over its book-scanning project.

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Oprah Winfrey praised the Kindle on her show in October 2008. Her seal of approval boosted sales of Kindle, increasing the market for e-books.

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Amazon Kindle began outselling paper books.

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By 2010, the popularity of e-books was continuing to grow. When Apple released its iPad, it made 1.5 million e-book sales in the first month of its release.

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During this period, Amazon controlled a 90 percent share of the e-book market. Traditional publishers worried that the company's control over the market would impact their sales. As a result, Amazon was strong-armed into a deal that allowed traditional publishers to make a better profit off of Amazon's sales.

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Stores materials in digital format, accessible by computers.
Public libraries, schools, apps
Google Books: Largest online library
Commonly used in today's society

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by Mike Paulus, Digital Services & Marketing Specialist

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Explore | L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library

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Find what you looking for from a wide array of trusted resources which include automotive repair, genealogy and history research, online courses, downloadable music, ebooks and audiobooks, and much more.

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Books will likely continue adapting to technological innovations. As stated by Jacks Thomas, director of The London Book Fair:

"People always need knowledge and people always need stories, so from that point of view, the very core of the book industry I am sure is very strong...the book, in whatever format, has a strong future."

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What is the future of the book in the digital age?

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What is the future of the book in the digital age? How do we view the printed book today and what type of reader does it make us?