bookmarks

They were attached to a string, along which a marker could be slid up and down to mark a precise level on the page. Attached to the marker was a rotating disk that could indicate the column (usually numbered one to four, indicating the two columns on the left-hand page, and the two columns on the right-hand page).

Considerations for safe bookmark usage

Bookmarks that do not damage the books that they are used in should be acid-free, thin, so they will not indent the pages they rest between, and include no dyes or decorative materials that might bleed into the book's paper, with flat, thin, gentle edges.

The first detached, and therefore collectible, bookmarkers began to appear in the 1850s. One of the first references to these is found in Mary Russell Mitford's Recollections of a Literary Life (1852): "I had no marker and the richly bound volume closed as if instinctively." Note the abbreviation of 'bookmarker' to 'marker'. The modern abbreviation... See more

The earliest existing bookmark dates from the 6th century AD and it is made of ornamented leather lined with vellum on the back and was attached with a leather strap to the cover of a Coptic codex (Codex A, MS 813 Chester Beatty Library, Dublin).[2] It was found near Sakkara, Egypt, under the ruins of the monastery Apa Jeremiah. Further earliest... See more