Pagination is the system by which the information on a newspaper, bookpage, manuscript, or otherwise handwritten, printed or displayed document is laid out.
In a strict sense of the word, it can mean the consecutive numbering to indicate the proper order of the pages, which was rarely found in documents pre-dating 1500, and only became common practice circa 1550, when it replaced foliation, which numbered only the front sides of folios.
Pagination can also refer to the process of organizing information on web pages. For instance, threads on a bulletin board might be paginated such that 50 appear on each page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagination