To those brought up in such societies, whether they read or not, the book is virtually sacred. In addition, the special status of the book is reinforced by its central position in most systems of education. Although several books together can provide a rich spread of information, they cannot be combined, sorted, and recombined as rapidly as in electronic systems. Although it has been said that print culture is in decline, the book industry has been growing during the later 20c. Much of this production is educational and informational, but works of literature, philosophy, and poetry also abound.
People appear in fact to be reading and consulting more books than ever before.
Though books may be seen as quasi-spiritual, they remain material objects. In the era of hand-printing, size was determined by the size of sheets used and the way in which they were printed, folded, sewn, and cut to produce leaves that could be turned and read. Other sizes were foolscap, crown, demy, elephant , and imperial . If a printer covers one side of a sheet with one block of type, the result is a broadsheet or broadside . If two blocks of type are printed on each side and the sheet is folded to produce two leaves or four pages of print, the result is a folio .