Serious: is this real? Of what use could such giant books be? Why is their writing so huge? They must have been very impractical to even produce, and then use.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's probably real. Big books like that might be land information or birth/death records. Detailed history of some locally relevant things, combined into one binding.

[–] BertramDitore@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

It’s absolutely real, which is kinda the point of the post. My uni had a whole lot of these books for tons of different subjects. The ones I walked around the most were history-focused, with huge maps and elaborate details. I say walked around, because it felt like you were in a small forest since the books are the size of little trees. Maybe that’s why most of the were at the end of sections or in the back corners of the stacks, because they’re so hilariously unwieldy compared to modern books.

Without more research I can only speculate as to why they were made so large, but I’d bet many of them were written prior to the widespread adoption of the printing press, and before paper sizes were standard. And if a book is only going to be used by a few select people, and always in the same building, there’s not much utility in making it portable.

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

It reminds me of music manuscripts, but there's not enough detail to know for sure.

And I have no idea why they would be bound like that.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Click the link and read

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

Link says book’s real…

“The archives are preparing a large spring exhibition of the Czechoslovak state idea at Prague Castle.” … [So, an] archivist at the National Library of the Czech Library in the Clementinum complex was preparing the manuscripts for the exhibition at the Prague Castle.

Made giant to flex at the exhibition?