McKenzie 1986

The book as an expressive form

Walter Greg: "What the bibliographer is concerned with is pieces of paper or parchment covered with certain written or printed signs. With these signs he is concerned merely as arbitrary marks; their meaning is no business of his" (qtd on 1)

using C. S. Peirce (Ross Atkinson), could argue signs in book for a bibliographer are merely:

• iconic: representative, referential -- textual, descriptive and enumerative bibliography treat signs as miniature portraits of the whole
• or indexical: point at something else; causal; printing acts like this for analytic bibliography -- the signs point to an order of printing, etc.
• Atkinson's model doesn't account for history

as soon as one is "required to explain signs in a book, ... they assume a symbolic status" (2)

we need history now more than ever -- with the rise of history of the book, all bibliography is becoming historical bibliography (3) (Greg's definition above now too limited)