introducing the book

If you haven't seen Introducing the Book yet, do open it up.

It's a Norwegian TV sketch (with English subtitles) about a
medieval monastery converting from scrolls to books. The monk
Ansgar has just called the helpdesk.

The transition from scroll to book (codex) took place pretty early in medieval times. It began in the first century AD and was pretty much completed in the fourth. There's a good article on the subject in the Encyclopedia Romana here Wikipedia's article on the codex is here.

It's interesting, is it not, that the video is nice and linear, like a scroll. You can't easily be enter in the middle of it, or peruse it backwards, or jump around from place to place in it. Nor are their any navigational aids -- title page, contents page, index, or even a scheme of organization such as page numbering.

Credit: [Web4lib] Introducing the book

{Another cross-posting from my intranet blog at work.}