Not sure what you mean by “mere” but yeah, they're bound books of records sleeves. The fancy stuff might be slip cased just like fancy books, DVDs &c.

Auto-coupled “Sets”

The 78rpm records could usually be had as singles, but if you wanted the whole set the store bought album was the only way to go.

The simplest record player is all manual, record side and tone arm. Next comes automatic which does the tone arm bits but not the record sides. At three (3) minutes/side, you don't get too comfortable.

Lastly there's the record changer which automatically drops a record from the bottom of a stack on the spindle. You flip over the whole stack, just the once, same interval as playing a 10”-LP. Auto-coupled sets and record changers were the only way to stitch together an “album” length theme or composition on 78s. Like 8-track tape torture... only slower.