Important for the definition of the concept of "book" is the study of the relationship between the concepts of "document", "book", "edition", "print", "literature", "publication".
The meaning of the term "document" depends on the context of its use. This may be the broadest possible meaning, equivalent to Document I and covering all types of documents. G.N. Shvetsov-Vodka draws attention to the fact that in addition to the general concept of "document", the term "document" can be used to refer to any phenomenon that can be called a "document" in one sense or another. The term "document" can be used to refer to any thing that represents the unity of social information and material carrier [14, p. 260].
"Book", as a concept in its broadest sense, covers objects within the scope of Document IV (except those defined as Document VI, VII, VIII, and unpublished documents with the meaning Document IV). Any book may be referred to as a "document", but not every document as a "book".
A document may be considered as a separate phenomenon within the scope of the concept of "book", as well as a part of a book document, if it has a certain autonomy (an article from the collection, an article from a newspaper).
The term "publication" refers to both the process and the result of the activities of book, magazine and newspaper publishers or publishing organizations, which ensure the official publication and replication of specially prepared documents.
The aggregate volume of publications constitutes the largest part of the concept of "book" in its broad meaning (the rest are deposited documents). Each copy of the publication is a separate document. In addition, parts of publications that are physically separated (e.g., a volume from a multi-volume publication) or by content (articles, notes) can be considered as separate documents.
Printed publications dominate among the publications. Gramplates, audio and video tapes are also publications, if they meet the mandatory requirements for publications. A publication may also be in the form of a machine-readable document, the content of which cannot be changed or destroyed in the process of information consumption (e.g. CD-ROMs) [14, p. 264-265].
A special category is electronic publications: electronic newspapers, magazines, and non-recurrent publications. In an electronic edition, the "original publisher" exists in the form of a record in the memory of a computer, and the consumer of information is given a "copy" of it on the monitor screen, which can be fixed on its own machine-readable media or printed on paper with a printer [14, p. 265].
- Print media can also be referred to as print media. In addition, a print job is any individual document that is part of a print edition. By the emblematic nature of information, printing works can be both text and non-text: isographic, cartographic, and sheet music.
Text works of the press are also called literary works, and their aggregate is called literature. The term "literature" covers both text documents published in the form of a work of printing (editions) and deposited and unpublished text documents. This value is used when talking about text (literary) documents for a certain branch of knowledge or certain types of literature for social purposes (popular science, reference, etc.). In a narrow sense, the term is used to refer only to fiction. In book science, the term "literature" is most often used in a broad sense [14, p. 265].
Literature works are text documents that can be published as a separate publication, a part of it, a set of publications, deposited documents or remain unpublished. Literature is a collective concept for documents that are literary works.
The term "publication" in the sense of "process and result of publication of documents" is used in book science and document science. "Publication" as a result of the publication of a document is a separate document published in the idea of publication or a part of it. This term does not cover deposited documents, although by law they are also considered published [14, p. 265].
Thus, the definition of the concept of "book" is one of the main problems of book science. From the moment the book appeared as a product of human activity to the present day, various definitions of the book, taking into account one or another of its characteristic features, are given. At the present stage, book science considers the book as a kind of Document IV; therefore, the concept of "book" has many meanings that differ from each other in different ways.