Page 38 - Virtual Research Lab flip book

many books exist in variant editions or states showing different stages of the development of their text. Textual variants, of course, occur in many books, from papyri to medieval manuscripts to printed books of all kinds, and these variants can be collected and studied whether the text is perceived as complete or incomplete or fragmentary. This returns to the larger question of whether or not the text is independent of the form and function of the book. If the book is a container should the container be defined without its content? Do we necessarily include the concept of text within our defini- tion of the book, or is it more the other way around: do we define a text by its various editions or states in books? Certainly, students of texts take the media on which the texts are recorded into account, and the field of book history encompasses fields which study texts as well as the history of the form and function of the book. Often the nature of a text affects the form, such as size or design, if not necessarily the function of a book. If images may be considered text could a video be considered a text? Until relatively recently we thought of books in codex form presenting texts that were ei- ther manuscript or printed. Audio books were mainly audio renditions of printed texts. Is there such a thing as a video book? Perhaps we do not have definite answers to these questions.
As I wrote HistoryofInformation.com online, I did not think of it as a book. Nor do I intend the website to be viewed as a book in the way that I under- stand the concept of “book.” The scope of material that I am attempting to cover in the database seems too wide and too multi-dimensional for any book in the traditional sense. An interactive database with thousands of entries and even more thousands of hyperlinks would seem to stretch the traditional definition of the book. The database hardly ever presents ar- guments. It also lacks a cohesive point of view. Instead the database is not primarily intended to present a point of view, except through the process of selection of what is included, and how those entries are indexed, and that is a continuously evolving process. The goal of the database is to present information that you can follow or use from your point of view, whatever that is. Furthermore, the thousands of links to entries within the database
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