Living legend Smiraglia has written the first book devoted exclusively to exploring the concept that is commonly referred to as a bibliographic "Work." In bringing together material from both inside and outside the discipline of information studies, he traces the continuing development of catalogs, search engines, and other kinds of information retrieval tools, the better to understand the maze of editions and revisions and translations that make up the evolution of a Work.

Two appendixes contain charts demonstrating the evolution of concepts and definitions of a Work; a third contains a summary of the sampling technique employed to generate the data in chapter 5 "Defining the Work in Quantatative Terms" and chapter 6 "The Constitution of Bibliographic Families."