The book on the bookshelf by Henry Petroski

Author:Henry Petroski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Book Printing & Binding, Library & Information Science, Bookbinding, General, Books & Reading, Literary Criticism, Crafts & Hobbies, House & Home, Shelving for books, Books, Furniture
ISBN: 9780375706394
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 1999-01-15T10:00:00+00:00

In the 1777 edition of Comenius’s book the illustration of the bookseller’s shop was updated to show that the shelves were stocked with bound books with their spines facing out. (photo credit 8.3)

Problems of book size have been felt especially acutely among librarians, some of whom would go to elaborate lengths to address the matter. The New York Public Library, which dates from 1895, made “a careful study” of how to classify books. Octavos were defined as those up to 11½ inches tall, quartos were between 11½ and 19 inches tall, and folios were those in excess of 19 inches tall. If the standard height of a section of bookshelves was taken as 7½ feet, it could be fitted with no more than seven shelves and still allow a tall octavo “to fit snugly.” Another shelf might be squeezed in when shelving fiction, but not nonfiction, for too many volumes of the latter would have to be “turned down” on their fore-edges.

Melvil Dewey worried about the size of bookshelves, as he seems to have worried about everything in libraries, and he believed that “the common error is waste of space by giving too great depth to shelving.” He argued that 80 percent of the books in a circulating library were octavo size, which he abbreviated as O. In a passage demonstrating once again his zeal for spelling reform, he wrote:

The common O is only 15 cm (6 inches) wide. Large O ar seldom over 17.5 cm (7 inches), so that a shelf 20 cm (8 inches) deep allows liberal margin for books and for a little air space. It is common to make shelves 10, 12, and even 14 inches thruout the library. We hav seen them as deep as 20 inches, wasting both lumber and space, and annoying the shelf clerk constantly by the loss of books, which get pusht back into the vacancy behind the row in front.

Concerns over the different sizes of books were beginning to arise even back in the seventeenth century. Bookshelves were not then ablaze, however, with colorful bindings, garish paperback covers, or creative dust jackets. Sometimes the quires of different works were bound together, perhaps to save money, or perhaps to gain a more uniform thickness of book for the library to which it was to be added. As late as the nineteenth century, however, book collectors were advised never to bind “a quarto with a duodecimo—the latter is sure to fall out.” Even though such rules were generally followed, volumes made up of what may seem to be totally unrelated titles can still be found when older books are consulted in a large research library. When we unknowingly request such a volume in the library, the book that is finally presented to us as the title for which we asked may appear at first to be something else entirely. The title on its spine may not be the one we expected, and opening up the book to the (first) title page may do little but confirm that we have been handed the wrong book.

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