Is It A Book?

Curator: Addi McDowell

4mm Microminiature Bible

Tokyo: Toppan Printing Co., 1964

University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections, and Archives, Smith Collection

What Is A Book?

One of the most common questions we are asked is “What exactly do you keep in your repositories?” To answer that question, you first have to understand just how many types of books they are! They can come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and forms. This exhibit aims to teach you just how varied our collections can be!

In The Ages of Olde...

Some of our oldest books looked nothing like the books we read today. In fact, most of them did not even have paper! Instead, people would write on clay tablets. Most of the clay tablets that have been found are records of purchases and food that farms produced, but a few of the most famous works, like The Epic of Gilgamesh, were written on tablets.

11th tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh, depicting a “Great Flood,” 7th cent. BCE

Neo-Assyrian tablet of proverbs

Think About This...

How long do you think it would take for someone to write on clay? Do you think it would take longer than with a pencil?
Would you consider a clay tablet a book? Can something be a book if it does not have any paper or a binding?

The words on these texts are written in a writing form called cuneiform, the world’s oldest written script. Many ancient languages and cultures used this writing system. It was used for many purposes, but writing in the ancient world was most commonly used for record keeping. Most of the cuneiform tablets that still exist were not actually stories, but receipts!

Notice how there are not a lot of curves in the cuneiform writing... no “o”s or “u”s like you would find in the English language. That is because it was so much easier to write on clay if you only had to use straight lines.

Once paper was invented, stories were written on scrolls like this one. Scrolls were large sheets of parchment or paper that could be rolled up for easier storage. Scrolls do not have bindings and covers like most of our books do today, as it was very expensive to bind a book.

This scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls of the “Habakkuk Commentary.”

Different Shapes...

There are all kinds of shapes that books can be! The most common shape, of course, is a rectangle, but many book artists like to challenge the idea that books can only be rectangles. They make books that some in all different kinds of shapes, including circles and triangles!

Can you believe that all of these pictures are of the same item? This is called a 360 book, as it can open up to be a 360 degree circle! To form the circle shape, artist Yusuke Oono, had to thread not only the spine but also the bottom of all of the pages.

This book does not have any words on the inside, and most of the “pictures” are created by cutting out the pages. It is called “Earth and the Moon.”

Think About This...

Why do you think that Yusuke Oono would want to make a circular book? What do you think it means?
If you were a book artist, what unique shape would you choose for a book?

This is the Triangular Book of St. Germain, written and published in the 18th century. The text is written in code and contains rituals and magical spells to make the reader live longer. The triangle has been used throughout history to emphasize spirituality and magic, which may be the reason St. Germain made this book triangular. It currently resides in the Getty Research Institute.

...Different Sizes!

Did you know that books can be smaller than your finger? Or even smaller than your fingernail?

Tiny books were made so that people could carry them around easily. Some people owned micro-miniatures, books too small to read. But why have a book that is impossible to read?

Wealthy people liked to have micro-miniatures in their libraries to show off to their guests, and book makers liked to show people their printing skills by making these tiny texts.

Think About This...

Is a micro-miniature a book?
Does something have to be readable to be a book?

What is actually written in micro-miniature books? Usually, micro-miniature books were short and well-known stories. Sometimes, only a small piece of a book would be printed in a micro-miniature.

This book is a copy of the Gettysburg Address, a speech made by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. This micro-miniature was made 100 years after the speech was written. It was an important text... so important, that someone chose it as the content of their micro-miniature!

Think About This...

What text do you think could be made into a micro-miniature?
If you owned a micro-miniature, what text would you want it to be?

The miniature book that our curators are looking at in these pictures is called “The Life of Washington,” housed at the Bentley Rare Book Museum at Kennesaw State University.

On the right is a drawing of the infamous story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. Though we know today that this story was made up by Mason Locke Weems in 1800, the people who published this book in ____ believed it was real!

Curator’s Corner: Special Tools

Sometimes, people want to look at items with tiny text. When a librarian or researcher wants to look at a miniature book, they use a loupe, a type of magnifying glass. Loupes are usually used for looking at jewels, but they work well for looking at tiny words and pictures, too!

No words?

There are plenty of books in our collections that do not have very many words at all. Some are collections of various items like stamps, playbills, and quarters. Some books only have illustrations, like the one below.

Other books are made specifically to be pieces of art. The book below was made by Christian Kelly, digital archivist and book artist at Kennesaw State University. It was made to be a collage representing his identity as a Korean-American man; sometimes words are not needed to make an impactful statement!

So... What Is A Book?

There are many, many different items preserved by rare book repositories all over the world, some of which you might not even consider a “book.” Nevertheless, we keep them safe for their historic and educational value. If you are interested in learning more, please visit our “Modules” or “Collections” tabs! Just like in a rare book repository, you never know what you’ll find next! There are so many wonderful things to explore in the world of rare books, and we encourage you to continue investigating!

Resource Information:

Suggested Age Group: 5-11