The term collation refers to several separate processes involved in publishing, both in preparing printed material for binding and in the critical comparison of texts after binding is complete.

Assembly of folded material for binding involves three separate techniques. Gathering entails the assembly of book sections in sequence. Inserting refers to the assembly of the individual sections within themselves. The final technique is that of collation. In its traditional meaning, collation refers to the inspection of assembled materials before actual binding, but in recent years the term has come to have a much broader definition.

In modern usage, two other processes are also called collation. First, collation refers to the assembly of individual leaves in loose-leaf, mechanical, or manifold binding. Second, the term collation can be used for the description of the physical makeup of a book, using a standardized formula. This description gives a bibliographer an exact picture of how the book was assembled.