10. It is recognized that the word book or volume has no definite technical meaning, and is usually an indeterminate expression useful for popular purposes.
It may therefore be useful to make the following definitions for the guidance of the Libraries:—
Volumes mean books as they stand on the shelves.
Pieces mean separate works or parts (each usually having a separate title-page to itself, as with pamphlets, parts of periodicals, and the like).
Papers mean lesser items, usually with less than 5 pages, as broadsides, cards, fly-sheets.
Items mean volumes, pieces and papers.
Works mean whole literary productions whether in several volumes or only one piece.
Thus: Ten pamphlets bound together, with five broadsides at end, are one volume, ten works or pieces, fifteen items. A dictionary in twenty volumes would count as twenty volumes, pieces and items, but one work, and in a sense one book.
Having regard to these definitions care should be taken, in recording the number of volumes in a library, to reckon ten pamphlets or parts as the equivalent of a single volume.