The monograph "Наука о књизи" by Milena Tsvetkova primarily deals with the history, development, forms and functions of the book as a medium. The author tries to connect book science with other disciplines and to point out to readers the possibility of a more comprehensive approach to traditional and modern communication models. In this paper, the book is not only viewed as a tool, product or object, but its true value is realized far beyond the material-physical level.
Before the readers is a polymorphic, hybrid and innovative theory about the book, i.e. the volume 1 of the monograph, composed of parts: What is the book?; Etymology of the book; Genealogy of the book; Evolution of the book; Archeology of the book; Post-Gutenberg book; Media studies of the book; and Book Feedback.
In the First Chapter, it is firstly argued and scientifically based that it is explained why the book cannot and must not be studied one-dimensionally but multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, from the point of view not only of the known sciences about the book - such as bibliology or bibliography - but also from the point of view of history, psychology, literature , political science, anthropology. The synthesis of different but related scientific views on the book allows us to explore it far beyond its physical limitations and to treat it as a mediator - between the author and reality, the author and the text, the author and the reader, the text and the reader, between the readers themselves and between the past and the future.
Precisely thanks to such an organization of key terms and definitions, we can predict the future of the book - if we consider it exclusively as an artifact, it loses the race with the development of humanity, but if we expand its known functions and definitions, not only is the future certain - the book itself is the future of human development , as well as his past at the same time, because it contains the germs of potential development.
Sciences such as bibliology (the study of the book as an artifact, as a physical and cultural object) and mediology and medialogy (the study of the book as a medium) give us enough arguments to define the book as "an authentic medium in communication evolution and as a media prototype that is constantly transforming and verifies".
In addition to reading about the origin, meaning and prevalence of the word knjiga, its various variants and first meanings, Cvetkova also deals with the rather rooted phenomenon of equating books with literature. Although at first glance it may seem to the reader that such a bold attitude - that education in our region is literature-centric - is harmful to reading, it is in fact a first-class and irrefutable argument in defense of the book, because the book only partly involves reading beautiful literature, and the whole is a series of its other forms and functions. Perhaps the reduction of reading exclusively to literature - continues the author - is the reason for the increasing decline in interest in reading at school.
The last chapter of the Volume 1 of the monograph "Наука о књизи", entitled "Book Feedback", is devoted to the reaction to what is read, because without this important dimension, the book is only a potential communication and an unfinished medium. Feedback can be classified into several stages or reactions - from initial, subjective, arising during reading itself, through reports, presentations, reviews, retellings, replications, reprints, professional and scientific criticisms to dramatizations, comics, theater performances, TV series, cinema movies, games, etc. Special forms of backlash also include negative phenomena - piracy, plagiarism, censorship, bibliocaust and bibliocide.