Defining the BookmarkbyFrank X. Roberts
-- Ivan IllichA “bookmark” is a finding device acting as a kind of portable (or sometimes stationary) substitute “index” either to guide readers back to where they left off reading, or to help readers relocate some particularly interesting, appealing or useful section of text in a book. What a bookmark is not is a device for locating a book or other document. (But see comments on the use of bookmarks in computers, below.) The foregoing paragraph (aside from its obviousness) may to the collector of bookmarks smack of a certain amount of irrelevance. But the question—What is a bookmark?—if the word is to be allowed its normal dictionary definition, must be answered in every context where the word is used, not just in terms of its use within the world of the collector of bookmarks. From the late 4th century A.D., when it seems the only bookmark available to St Augustine was his finger, to the present where they have become cultural artifacts as numerous as golf balls, bookmarks have remained extremely difficult to define. Dictionaries and glossaries on the book do not normally define the word as something to be collected. On the contrary, the definitions usually devote themselves fully to the finding device function of the bookmark. Perhaps lexicographers might be convinced (though it is doubtful) to limit “bookmark” or “bookmarker” to the definition of the collected item. The way would then be opened for applying to the used item a much more logical defining term such as placefinder, pagefinder or better yet pagemarker or placemarker, not forgetting the older term register. A recent, commercially-produced bookmark, with a light flexible spring for holding down the pages of a book, calls itself the Pagekeeper. All are possibilities, but members of the reading public, while perhaps wondering briefly at the seemingly endless shapes and materials of contemporary bookmarks, will no doubt continue to call them by the traditional appellation. Still, the question remains, and not even the “duck test” will answer it. If it looks like a bookmark . . . If it acts like a bookmark . . . But what does a bookmark look like? Bookmarks do, for example, come in the shape of large, soft pillows with braided cords for holding down and marking the pages of books (making “reading heaven on earth,” as the gift catalogs put it), or in the shape of small leather-encased weights (for laying across the pages of a volume to keep it open at a selected place) and, of course, in any of the other numerous shapes and materials between these two extremes. And what does a bookmark “act” like? Some bookmarks slip between the pages of a book, some sit on the top edge of a page, some clip to the fore-edge of a volume. Some are a permanent part of a book, some can be transferred from book to book. For the collector the ultimate test is to have the word “bookmark” itself appear on the item, but this merely begs the question: Is it a bookmark because it says it is? Frank Hamel, in a 1906 article entitled “The History and Development of the Bookmarker” for Book-lovers Magazine, added some early obfuscation to the question by including as the first of his three classes of bookmarks “those permanently affixed in a particular position to indicate a special portion or the commencement of a section of the work . . ..” Such bookmarks though they are certainly placemarkers or pagefinders, are probably more readily recognized as tab indexes or thumb indexes by most people. Thus introduced into the discussion is the further question: When is a bookmark an index? But the discussion does not end there. Two other areas for consideration also form part of the question. The first concerns those marks found usually in the margins of manuscript books or early printed books which point out, lead to or exemplify portions of text on a page. These may be given the name “textual bookmarks.” A second interesting area for consideration is the use, in the Middle Ages, of devices (such as revolving disc markers, cavillae, and others) designed to help readers find their way about in hand-produced books where little or no pagination or indexing was available. (The question asked about certain of these devices is whether in fact they were bookmarks for use by readers or tools designed to be used by medieval copyists in scriptoria and elsewhere.) So even to start to answer the question about what a bookmark is one would need to return to the beginning (to the time at least when the first codex “leaf book” began to replace the “roll book”), to study in detail the many and various devices used through the ages to mark a place in a book. From at least the 19th century, bookmarks have been thought of and treated as things of beauty and value to be collected, preserved and admired. In all periods they have been useful tools, but also ephemera to be discarded when worn out or no longer needed. Most recently, the word “bookmark” has been borrowed by producers of computer software to designate signs or symbols which appear on the computer screen to identify files in a database. Such bookmarks have no real permanence, though the computer screen containing them can be printed and saved of course. Would those “bookmarks” on the printouts then be collected bookmarks? And what of the computer-generated ones that can be created or obliterated at a key stroke? Ephemera indeed! Frank’s extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. Contact Frank.
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