Monographs

A monograph is a specialist work of writing on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, usually by a single author.

The term dates from the 19th century and is taken from the Latin monographia, meaning 'writing on a single subject'. Unlike a textbook, which surveys the state of knowledge in a field, the main purpose of a monograph is to present primary research and original scholarship. This research is presented at length, distinguishing a monograph from an article. For these reasons, publication of a monograph is commonly regarded as vital for career progression in many academic disciplines. Intended for other researchers and bought primarily by libraries, monographs are generally published as individual volumes in a short print run.

Librarians consider a monograph to be a nonserial publication complete in one volume (book) or a finite number of volumes. Thus it differs from a serial publication such as a magazine, journal, or newspaper.

Book publishers use the term "artist monograph" to indicate books consisting of reproductions of works of art by a single artist, as opposed to surveys of art from multiple artists.

Famous quotes containing the word monographs:

    Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.
    Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)