Bibliophilia is the love of books; a bibliophile is a lover of books.
Bibliophilia comes in various shapes and sizes. Note that by definition a bibliophile does not necessarily want to possess the books they love; an alternative would be to admire them in old libraries. Roughly categorized, at least three different types of bibliophiles emerge:
- book collectors who, putting form above content, specialise in old, rare, and expensive books, first editions, books with special or unusual bindings, autographed copies, etc.;
- hoarders, identifiable by the fact that the number of unread books in their possession is continually increasing relative to the total number of books they possess; and
- technosceptics -- "the heretics, the mean-spirited killjoys of the information age" [1] -- who prefer the printed word, whether bound in leather or not bound at all, to hypertext or, more generally, digital and thus, as they see it, elusive and unreliable information.
