In medieval manuscripts, a gathering (called a quire) consisted of one or more parchment or vellum bifolia (usually four) nested inside each other, hair side facing hair side and flesh side facing flesh side, sewn through the back fold to leather or hemp cords that attached the book block to the boards. The unit of work in medieval scriptoria was usually the gathering--a change of scribe can sometimes be detected from one quire to the next. In modern binding, a gathering consists of a single sheet, or several sheets, of paper folded to form a single group of leaves in a book or other printed publication. Used synonymously with signature in bibliography.

Also refers to person who writes or publishes a news sheet called a gazette.

Also refers to an enumeration of ancestors and their descendants in natural order of succession, usually in the form of a family tree. See this 16th-century manuscript Genealogy of Queen Elizabeth I (British Library, King's 396) and also The Fa(u)lkner Family Tree courtesy of John B. Padgett. In works of history and biography, genealogical tables are sometimes printed on the endpapers or at the beginning of the text.

In the thesaurus Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), genre refers to categories of works characterized by similar plots, themes, settings, situations, and characters (examples: thriller and western). See also: genre/form term.

Also refers to a category of representational art in which the subject is a person (as in a portrait), an object (still-life), or a scene from daily life, rather than a theme derived from history, mythology, imagination, etc. By extension, a genre piece is a work that has as its subject people and incidents from everyday life (domestic interiors, rural or village scenes, etc.).

In MARC 21 authority records, genre/form terms are coded as follows:

008/11: z ("Other")
040: $a DLC $b eng $c DLC $f lcgft

In bibliographic records, genre/form terms are contained in the 655 field as follows:

655 #7 $a [Term}. $2 lcgft

As of June 2011, the Library of Congress had announced no plans to discontinue use of form subdivisions in LC subject headings. Form subdivisions (tags 600, 610, 630, 650, and 651) are to be applied even if a genre/form term (tag 655) appears in the same record. LCCN format for genre/form terms is the same as for subject headings, except that the two-character prefix used is "gf" instead of "sh."

Genre/form terms differ from subject headings in describing what an item is, rather than its content. For example, a cataloger would assign the subject heading Horror films, with appropriate subdivisions, to a work about horror films (example: A History of Horror by Wheeler Dixon) but a cataloger assigning headings to the motion picture Bride of Frankenstein would use the same heading (Horror films) as a genre/form term since the movie is a horror film. In LCGFT, form is defined as a characteristic of works with a particular format and/or purpose (examples: animation and short). Genre in LCGFT refers to categories of works characterized by similar plots, themes, settings, situations, and characters (examples: thriller and western).

Within the context of the four entities defined in Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (work, expression, manifestation, and item), the goal of LCGFT is to describe the intellectual or artistic expression, not the physical carrier (manifestation or item). Click here to learn more about LCGFT.

A GIS differs from a map in being a digital, rather than an analog, representation. Each spatial feature is stored as a separate layer of data that can be easily altered using techniques of quantitative analysis. Any category of information that has a geographic component can be mapped in a GIS, allowing thematic maps to be constructed from layers of data representing traditional cartographic information and from data sets supplied from other sources (census data, health statistics, economic data, law enforcement statistics, etc.). Also, a map can be either input or output in a GIS, but the output may also be one or more data sets. In the plural, the term refers to the field within the earth sciences devoted to the study of computer-based systems for the analysis of spatial data. GIS technology is used in scientific research, resource management, development planning, and military defense. The Public Library Geographic Database (PLGDB) is an example of a geographic information system. Click here to learn more about geographic information systems, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. Compare with spatial information system. See also: computer-generated map.

In modern usage, a book purchased as a gift for another person (or persons). Coffee table books are often purchased for this purpose. Also spelled giftbook.

Gilding was used in illuminated manuscripts as a background (Getty, MS Ludwig I 8); to depict crowns and other metallic objects (Getty, MS 1); to show light not visible to normal sight, such as halos (Getty, MS 1) and other forms of radiance (Leaves of Gold); on drapery to give the impression of opulence (Getty, MS 6); and as highlighting on decorative elements (Burnet Psalter, University of Aberdeen, AUL MS 25). Click here to see gilding used in a variety of ways in the Gotha Missal and here to see a rare example of text stamped on a gilt background in a 13th-century German manuscript (Morgan Library, MS M.711). To learn more about gilding in medieval manuscript production, see the Medieval Manuscript Manual. Metallic leaf was also used in tooling and blocking to decorate leather and vellum book covers. Gilding is also used in Islamic manuscripts (see this Ottoman example, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). See also: gilt edges.

aeg or ae - all edges gilt

ge - gilt edges

gt - gilt top

teg - top edge gilt

Today, globes are made of heavy paper, papier-mâché, cardboard, plastic, metal, or glass, mounted on a full- or half-meridian axel, in a free cradle, or with gyroscopic support (see these examples). Expensive models may be illuminated and/or animated for special effect. In the United States, the most common sizes are 12 inches and 16 inches in diameter. In libraries, globes are cataloged as cartographic materials.

The term can also mean a deliberately misleading interpretation. Also refers to the degree to which paper reflects light, a function of the smoothness of its surface.

Also refers to a list of equivalent synonyms in more than one language.

In medieval manuscripts, gold leaf was used to decorate miniatures, initial letters, and ornamental borders in a process called gilding. Medieval illuminators applied it to layers of gesso to give it a three-dimensional appearance on the page. Gold leaf could be left antique but was usually burnished to a brilliant shine. Goldbeaters used gold coins (florins and ducats) as a convenient source of supply, producing as many as 145 leaves from a single coin. Click here to see gold leaf used to illuminate a small miniature, historiated initial, and foliate border 14th-century Italian missal (Getty Museum, MS 34) and here to see it used as a background in an author portrait of St. Luke (Getty, MS Ludwig II 4). Compare with gold foil.

Click here to see an example of 13th-century gothic minuscule (Cornell University Library) and here to see gothic script in its fully developed form (textura) in a 15th-century German psalter (Cary Collection, Rochester Institute). Click here to see a 15th-century example of cursive gothic script (Van Pelt Library, Univ. of Pennsylvania). Also refers to any modern typeface resembling gothic script. The first book printed in Europe from movable type, the Gutenberg Bible, was set in gothic type. Synonymous with black letter and lettre de forme. Compare with roman and white letter. See also: bastarda and rotunda.

The records of over 30 federal agencies have been mounted on the Government Information Locator Service Web site maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office, which also provides pointers to GILS sites maintained by other federal departments and agencies. The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is an example of an online government information service based on the GILS standard. Some state governments have established Internet sites based on the GILS model, enabling users to discover, identify, locate, and access publicly available state government information.

In 1995, the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States) commissioned several pilot projects to demonstrate the potential of a global information infrastructure. One of these, the Environment and Natural Resources Management Project, was an attempt to use the GILS format to establish an international distributed database of information about the earth, a first step toward a Global Information Locator Service.

The suffix -graph, derived from the Greek word graphos ("writing"), is used to form words that refer to something written, as in autograph or monograph, or to something capable of writing or recording, as in photograph or phonograph.

In printing, a typeface that appears to have been drawn, rather than derived from a calligraphic hand or lapidary precursor.

Also, a plan or design divided into squares or rectangles to facilitate its proportionate enlargement or reduction, and the style or pattern of such a division (OED).

In 1962, the Foundation introduced Junior Great Books to extend the benefits of its programs to elementary, middle, and high school students. The junior program is used in thousands of public and private schools in the United States. The Great Books Foundation publishes the quarterly magazine The Common Review. It is not the publisher of Great Books of the Western World, a set of hardbound books published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Click here to connect to the homepage of the Great Books Foundation.

Click here to view a miniature done in grisaille in the 15th-century Book of Hours of Philip the Good (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), and here to see examples of semi-grisaille in a 15th-century French translation of the anonymous Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Mirror of Man's Salvation), courtesy of Special Collections, Glasgow University Library (Hunter 60 T.2.18). Further examples of grisaille and semi-grisaille can be seen in the Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux (The Cloisters) and the Hours of Jacques de Brégilles (British Library, Yates Thompson 4). The technique was also used in border decoration, as in this example in the 15th-century Prayer Book of Charles the Bold (Getty Museum, MS 37).

In archives, a type of finding aid that (1) provides a summary or general description of the contents of an archival collection or (2) describes archival holdings related to a specific subject, geographic area, period in history, etc., or of a certain type of material (diaries, letters, photographs, etc.).

The Gutenberg Bible is a Latin Bible printed in black ink in gothic type set in two 42-line columns per page. Of approximately 180 copies printed, only 48 are known to have survived, which makes them very rare and valuable. Twelve are printed on vellum and 36 on paper. The British Library owns 2 copies, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France 1. In the United States, there are 13 copies, 1 each at the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Huntington Library in California, and at the libraries of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The Morgan Library in New York City owns 3 copies. Click here to see digital images of the two beautifully illuminated copies in the collections of the British Library. The Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has digitized its entire copy. See also Gutenberg Digital, courtesy of the Goettingen State and University Library. See also: incunabula.