The book since ancient times accompanies and pushes the thinking activity of man. At the early - handwritten - stage the book had information and cognitive functions, allowing to transfer the accumulated information to descendants.
After the invention of the printing press the book gets a new round of development. Now it becomes possible to publish more books, book trade and book business as a whole reach a new level. In this regard, the definition of the concept of "book" is expanding, the book itself acquires new functions and properties.
An important factor for the formation of the concept of "book" was the emergence of the concept of "document". Comparison of functions and properties of a document and a book allowed to reveal specific functions and properties of a book.
The book is studied in its various aspects in many disciplines. In the given work the book will be considered from the position of book science as a system science about the essence, methods, forms and regularities of existence, movement and development of the book as an objective phenomenon of social reality.
The purpose of the work is to consider and analyze the functions and properties of the book.
Accordingly, the tasks of the work are:
- consideration of existing definitions of the concepts "book",
- Analysis and comparison of the functions of a book and a document in a historical context,
- Analysis and comparison of the properties of the book and document in a historical context.
The main problem of this topic is that despite its centuries-old history, the book as a phenomenon still causes a lot of discussion. There is no generally accepted definition of the concept of "book", its functions and properties are distinguished by researchers depending on the direction of study of the book. It follows that the degree of importance of functions and properties is defined by researchers in different ways. This work will consider the views of such famous specialists in the field of book science as A.I. Barsuk, I.E. Barenbaum, K. Migon, G.N. Shvetsova-Vodka, N.N. Kushnarenko, M.P. Yelnikov.
The analysis includes articles by researchers on the declared topic with the involvement of educational, scientific, official and reference materials. In the course of comparison, general ideas about the book, its functions and properties are revealed.
Despite the fact that the book as a phenomenon of human life has existed for a long time, there is still no exact definition of this concept. This is due to the fact that the concept is ambiguous, has changed throughout history, and the boundaries separating it from the definitions of other means of communication, are mobile and not fully established.
For hundreds of years, attempts have been made to scientifically define the concept of "book". The starting point was the praise of the book as a carrier of human thought, a work of art, often of material value.
Often, when defining a book, the researchers started from two main aspects of the book - its material and substantial features. One West German encyclopedia defines the book as follows: "From the point of view of its function, a book is a graphical materialization of spiritual and nonmaterial content in order to preserve, transmit and disseminate it in society" [10, p.33].
The Soviet book expert A.I. Badger gives a detailed definition: "A book is a work of writing and printing (or a certain combination of them), which is a product of public consciousness, ideological and spiritual life of the society, one of the main means of preservation, dissemination and development of all forms of ideology, an instrument of social struggle, upbringing, organization and formation of public opinion, an instrument of scientific and technological progress" [quoted from: 10, p. 33].
When interpreting the phenomenon of the book, both the conceptual apparatus and methods of semiotics are used. The book from the point of view of the theory of signs was discussed in 1974 at the II All-Union Scientific Conference on Book Science. A.A. Grechikhin defined the concept as follows: "A book is not only a form, semiotic (a sign work of a certain genre) or materially constructive (a document, a work of printing), but also the content (social information in all its varieties). Rather, the book is a dialectical unity, always the unity of content and semiotic and materially constructive form" [10, p.34].