It can be a dicey thing, throwing around big claims when it comes to miniature books.
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A bookshop in Bathurst had a book on display last week that was purportedly The Smallest Book in the World.
But at 3.5mm by 3.5mm, it is positively gargantuan when measured alongside a specimen in the National Library’s extensive collection of teeny-tiny books.
Also titled The Smallest Book in the World and hailing from Germany, this colourful alphabet book clocks in at just 2.4mm by 2.9mm, about the size of the head of the kangaroo on the dollar coin.
The leather-bound volume, which was acquired by the library in 2002, was produced by renowned German typographer Joshua Reichert, and comes in its own wooden box complete with a magnifying glass.
Reference librarian Andrew Sergeant said the book was a very limited edition, retailed at about €100 ($144), and was only held in 10 or so libraries around the world.
“We’ve got a good collection of miniature books anyway, so this was just going to add to it,” he said.
“We’ve got things like Richard Nixon’s inaugural speech in miniature and Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, so being billed as the world’s smallest, we thought we’ve got to get that.”
Miniature books have been around almost as long as reading and writing, with many examples of tiny bibles and prayer books dating back to the Middle Ages.
But the fashion for creating miniature books as an art form in itself is almost as long.
Mr Sergeant said that although this book had been published in the usual way – but with miniature publishing tools – this particular publication was really more of an "exercise in miniaturisation", being virtually unreadable.
“The [Guinness] Book of Records says there’s one that’s supposedly 70 micrometres by 100 micrometres, but you need an electron microscope to read it. It’s etched on silicon, so it’s not really a book for me,” he said.
The official record-holder is a version of Anton Chekhov's story Chameleon, by Siberian craftsman Anatoly Konenko, less than a square millimeter in size, and includes three hand-coloured illustrations.
But the library's alphabet book still lays claim to being the smallest published book in the world - a big claim for something so small.