I need to know the dates and brief situation leading to the
development of information structures in books as we know them today.
These innovations did not happen all at once, but gradually.

When was the first time a book contained:
- numbered pages?
- a reference to another book?
- a citation from another book?
- a bibliography i.e further reading list?

I need answers relating to european printing history, although
additional info about other countries and eras are welcome.
A link to a time-line for information development of books is also
welcome.
I need these questions as background to a talk on 3D user-interfaces.

Hello agno,

The term "bibliography" has a wider use than that given by you. A
bibliography is often a stand-alone publication, which consists simply
of details of the published literature relating to a specific topic or
by a given author. In that respect, I've found the following
information:
"the first bibliographies of which any record is known were drawn up
by the Roman physician Galen in the second century A.D. They are his
De libris propriis liber, followed by a second version, the De ordine
librorum suorum liber (which survives only in a fragment), both of
which were intended to authenticate his own works and distinguish them
from the many spurious writings attributed to him. Later
bibliographies in antiquity and the early medieval period, like those
of St. Jerome and the Venerable Bede, fall into the tradition of
compiling lists of ecclesiastical authors and their works.
The first bibliography encompassing printed works rather than
manuscript material was compiled in the 15th century by Johann Tri
theim, whose Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (1494) continued in
the tradition of Jerome and Bede."
http://poncelet.math.nthu.edu.tw/chuan/history/hmap-intro.html 

Since you do not include it in your question, I assume that you
already have information pertaining to one of the most important
information structures to be found in a book, namely the index.

I have found information on the first use of page numbering in a
printed book.  However, I have had no luck with the other elements of
your question.  I will wait to see if another researcher can answer
your question fully. If not, I will give you the information in a
further comment.

Thanks tehuti,

I did indeed not refer to bibliographies in their stand-alone meaning,
but only as indexes to other books that were used in the writing of a
particular book, and typically found at the end of that book.
My interest lies in answering the questions above regarding the
development of books. My hunch is that it took an awfully long time
from printing press to the spread of books to the actual development
of novel "user interfaces" specific to books (page numbering,
references, citations, ...)
cheers, 
agno

The Natural History of Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, d.
A.D. 79) contains most of the features that you mention, including
quotations, citations, index, and bibliography. It didn't have page
numbers, since there was no standard pagination.

See:
 
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/1*.html

There were examples earlier than Pliny of authors doing much the same
thing.

hlabadie-ga

Thanks hlabadie-ga,

I have to focus on the time starting at the invention of the printing
press, an dhow the printed book adopted the features (that seem to
have been practised long before the printing press...)

The first printed version of such a Classical work would probably be
the first use for your purposes.

See:

http://www.nd.edu/~dharley/HistIdeas/monsters.html

Pliny was printed by Aldus Manutius in Venice, 1499. I wouldn't be
surprised if some of the Church Fathers (Augustine, Tertullian,
Jerome, etc.) who made citations to other works did not precede Pliny
into print, however.

hlabadie-ga

Here are a couple of more links. The first shows a Venetian edition of
Pliny in 1469.

http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/overview/printing.shtml

"Chronologically, the collection begins with the New Testament of the
Gutenberg Bible (Mainz, 1455) and sample leaves from the Mainz
Psalters of 1457 and 1459. Other major 15th century books in the
Library include Cicero's De officiis, Paradoxa (Mainz, 1466), St.
Augustine's De civitate dei (Subiaco, 1467), Pliny's Historia
naturalis (Venice, 1469)"

http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/holland/masc/masctour/earlyprinting/

hlabadie-ga