What is "bookland"

Bookland \Book"land`\, Bockland \Bock"land`\, n. [AS. b[=o]cland; b[=o]c book + land land.] (O. Eng. Law) Charter land held by deed under certain rents and free services, which differed in nothing from free socage lands. This species of tenure has given rise to the modern freeholds.

n. (context Anglo-Saxon English) In Anglo-Saxon society, land held by charter or written title, free from all fief, fee, service, and/or fines. Such was formerly held chiefly by the nobility, and denominated freeholder.

Bookland was a type of land tenure under Anglo-Saxon law and referred to land that was vested by a charter. Land held without a charter was known as folkland .

The meanings of these terms have more depth when their Anglo-Saxon origins are considered. The concept of bookland arose in the seventh century and referred to land that could be 'alienated' (i.e., disposed of) at will. It evolved to resemble ownership in the modern sense. Folkland was land held under ancient, unwritten folk-law or custom and by that custom it could not be alienated (i.e., removed) from the kin of the holder, except under special circumstances. No such claim by the kin could be made on bookland. The definition of those ancient folk-laws and customs, and the definition of the word folkland, has long been the subject of controversy. The model suggested by the historian Patrick Wormald, given in the definition above, allows for the graceful sidestepping of that controversy.

A related concept was loanland , which was land granted temporarily, without any loss of ownership. Such land might be granted for a term of years, or for the life of a person, or it might be granted to an official for the term of his office (e.g., as royal patronage). Both folkland and bookland might become loanland at one time or another.

Bookland can refer to:

• Bookland, a fictitious location corresponding to a 978 prefix that converts a 10 digit ISBN into EAN-13 barcode (with checksum changes).
• Bookland (law), a category of land in Anglo-Saxon law
• "Bookland", a chain of small-format book stores owned by American retailer Books-A-Million

"Bookland" is the potentially humorous name for the Unique Country Code (UCC) prefix allocated in the 1980s for European Article Number (EAN) identifiers of published books, regardless of country of origin, so that the EAN namespace can catalogue books by ISBN rather than maintaining a redundant parallel numbering system. In other words, Bookland is a fictitious country that exists solely in EAN for the purposes of non-geographically cataloguing books in the otherwise geographically keyed EAN coding system.