One of the great things you experience upon returning home from rare books school, is the ability, after a an intensive week of study, to look at a collection or a project with a fresh eye and a renewed sense of vigor for the work. It is no different for me.
One of the first things I did upon my return was wander down to the RBR and take a long look at some of our oldest books: a set of the Decretales (in canon law, these are letters from the pope)from 1588 and a set of the Pandectarum, from 1590. All of these books are bound in a very rugged vellum. It may be these bindings have suffered over time, or perhaps, as materials were scarce, the vellum is a product of reuse and recycling. Thick raised bands cross the spine, and titles are hand lettered, but there are other details that these books share in common. They've been vandalized.
When I first arrived on the job here, back in February, I took a gander at these books. I wasn't expecting to find anything of this age and it was quite a surprise to see these thick books in their vellum bindings on the shelf. But more surprising still, were unmistakable marks of ownership that lead me to believe these books were all donated by the same person.
I've been researching the provenance of these volumes whenever I've had a spare minute ever since. They're uncatalogued and so, they're on my list of things to do. However, in order to move past the "do" into the "done" list I need to know a bit more about them. Finally, after checking accession and donor records I discovered the donor's name - and it turns out to be someone I've met along life's journey.
How would I know these books had come from a single donor, you might ask? What was the tip off and how were they vandalized? It was right in front of my face. The first place a librarian turns to in a book is the title page. If the title page is missing a whole realm of detective work must commence. Indeed, some title pages were missing, and others had the printer's device cut from the title page. It does make things not only unattractive, with threads loose and torn page fragments hanging in shreds, but this kind of missing and crucial information is not always easy to track down.
When I was at RBS I made sure to inquire about tracking down this information. I learned that many book history scholars, when confronted with this kind of damage, rely on Google Books as a tool. Simply deciding on a key phrase and "googling" it can often lead to the answer. I'm still working on that one. Since I don't speak or read Latin, knowing just exactly which phrase to use, and I've tried many at this point, has proven a bit difficult. Needless to say, I'm still on the case.
So, why would someone take the trouble to rip out the title page and/or cut out the printer's device, an engraved illustration that denotes which printing house printed the text? The simple answer is because they're beautiful. Title pages or printer's devices from this period are woodcuts and often quite beautiful. Many times collectors cut these attractive plates from the books, including any illustrations that may have been inside, and hung them on the walls of their personal library.
And here's something else I learned about title pages from Rare Book School - extra title pages were often printed and used as advertisements or fliers posted around town to alert potential buyers to the availability of a new work and where to purchase it. Many of us have seen, under the printer's name on old English books, a phrase similar to "under the Sign of the Unicorn." That's the printer's address. You could find the book there and purchase it from the very shop where it was printed.
Now that I have one of the mysteries about these books solved, I'll be able to add a bookplate denoting the donor and I'm one step closer to cataloging them. And by the way, I'm not blaming the donor. With a history of over 400 years behind these books there's been plenty of time for title pages and printer's devices to have been cut and ravaged along the way.
And tomorrow? I think we'll pick up a magnifying glass and take a look at all the ideas I generated for the rare book room and it's collections from my week at Rare Book School. Until then, dear readers, adieu!
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Looking back, looking forward
When I last posted to this blog, a month ago today, I closed with the words, "until tomorrow!" Well, it's not that tomorrow never came - it's just that tomorrow was cram packed with activities and blogging didn't make the list.
So, here I am, picking up the quill again, so to speak, and looking back over my last two days at RBS, while looking forward to the changes and enhancements I hope to bring to the Colborn Rare Book Room here at the Law School.
The end of the week at RBS always brings something fun to look forward to, and something sad too. Thursday nights are devoted to a very enjoyable evening activity for bibliophiles called Bookseller Night. Charlottesville is full of booksellers, many are located on the historic downtown pedestrian mall. They're nestled cheek by jowl with an interesting array of restaurants offering nearly any cuisine you have a hankering for. All in all it makes for a good night - you can browse through bookstore after bookstore, and then stop for a delightful dinner in one of the restaurants on the mall. Our entire class met for dinner Thursday with our instructor, Mike Widener, and his wife Emma. We had a lovely evening, dining outside in the pleasant evening air, discussing the week's activities and books we'd found in the stalls.
Thank goodness for my trusty notebook! Luckily it does a better job of remembering my activities that I do. I'm counting on my notebook to remind me of all the things we did in class Thursday and Friday. These days were devoted to the connoisseurship aspect of the course. Thursday morning we discussed buying books abroad and the regulations involved in that kind of purchase, as well as deaccessioning books that no longer fit the collecting scope.
We also worked on an exercise for a Collection Development Policy. I had already begun work on a collection develop policy at WVU and as luck would have it, I had a copy with me on a flashdrive. I used it as the basis for my collection policy but I changed it significantly, drawing on the materials I'd learned over the course of the week. I have a copy of it and it's on the desk beside the laptop as I type this.
The exercise was to focus, not broadly, on special collections as a whole, but to develop a niche important to your institution. I chose to develop a West Virginia legal collection policy. We were to draw together resources, such as supporting documentation like bibliographic materials, specific items that would be important to the development of the collection, and thoughts about what would and would not be acceptable additions to the collection. It was a well chosen and very interesting exercise. I will apply these techniques to the policy as I develop it here.
Friday arrived, and with it, the last day of class. It's a short class day with a long lunch break. A reception follows the last class period where there is time to say goodbye to all the people we met over the course of the week, exchange business cards, and take our turns mulling over the souvenirs in the RBS gift shop. Nothing like an opportunity to do a little shopping before you go. I came away with an RBS t-shirt for myself and my husband, as well as one of their nifty little pocket measuring tapes. I have a couple of these and I keep one in my desk drawer. They're handy little devices that can be whipped out at a moment's notice to measure a book, a window, an archival box, or anything else. I highly recommended having one of these little babies on hand.
The final class period was spent on another assignment. We were to describe a book from the RBS collections as one would be described by a bookseller. This was a fascinating exercise, as it placed the curator/buyer in the role of the bookseller. When holding a book in your hands to describe, you look for all the same things as you would when examining a rare book, but you look at it from a different perspective.
As an old bookseller told me years ago, "there's a way to describe a book that makes it sound like a war casualty and a way to describe a book to make it sound good to potential buyers. This is what you have to keep in mind as a seller. Book flaws can be described in many ways, and some of them are better than others. When talking about a book that has been exposed to strong sunlight you could say it's faded, or you could say it's "sunned." I think one sounds better than the other, but I'll let you make that decision.
And so, we've shared knowledge and learned a great deal. We've been exposed to new ideas and new perspectives. The easy part, the education, is over. It's time to gather up all our thoughts, return home and apply them!
That will have to wait, dare I say it, until tomorrow!
So, here I am, picking up the quill again, so to speak, and looking back over my last two days at RBS, while looking forward to the changes and enhancements I hope to bring to the Colborn Rare Book Room here at the Law School.
The end of the week at RBS always brings something fun to look forward to, and something sad too. Thursday nights are devoted to a very enjoyable evening activity for bibliophiles called Bookseller Night. Charlottesville is full of booksellers, many are located on the historic downtown pedestrian mall. They're nestled cheek by jowl with an interesting array of restaurants offering nearly any cuisine you have a hankering for. All in all it makes for a good night - you can browse through bookstore after bookstore, and then stop for a delightful dinner in one of the restaurants on the mall. Our entire class met for dinner Thursday with our instructor, Mike Widener, and his wife Emma. We had a lovely evening, dining outside in the pleasant evening air, discussing the week's activities and books we'd found in the stalls.
Thank goodness for my trusty notebook! Luckily it does a better job of remembering my activities that I do. I'm counting on my notebook to remind me of all the things we did in class Thursday and Friday. These days were devoted to the connoisseurship aspect of the course. Thursday morning we discussed buying books abroad and the regulations involved in that kind of purchase, as well as deaccessioning books that no longer fit the collecting scope.
We also worked on an exercise for a Collection Development Policy. I had already begun work on a collection develop policy at WVU and as luck would have it, I had a copy with me on a flashdrive. I used it as the basis for my collection policy but I changed it significantly, drawing on the materials I'd learned over the course of the week. I have a copy of it and it's on the desk beside the laptop as I type this.
The exercise was to focus, not broadly, on special collections as a whole, but to develop a niche important to your institution. I chose to develop a West Virginia legal collection policy. We were to draw together resources, such as supporting documentation like bibliographic materials, specific items that would be important to the development of the collection, and thoughts about what would and would not be acceptable additions to the collection. It was a well chosen and very interesting exercise. I will apply these techniques to the policy as I develop it here.
Friday arrived, and with it, the last day of class. It's a short class day with a long lunch break. A reception follows the last class period where there is time to say goodbye to all the people we met over the course of the week, exchange business cards, and take our turns mulling over the souvenirs in the RBS gift shop. Nothing like an opportunity to do a little shopping before you go. I came away with an RBS t-shirt for myself and my husband, as well as one of their nifty little pocket measuring tapes. I have a couple of these and I keep one in my desk drawer. They're handy little devices that can be whipped out at a moment's notice to measure a book, a window, an archival box, or anything else. I highly recommended having one of these little babies on hand.
The final class period was spent on another assignment. We were to describe a book from the RBS collections as one would be described by a bookseller. This was a fascinating exercise, as it placed the curator/buyer in the role of the bookseller. When holding a book in your hands to describe, you look for all the same things as you would when examining a rare book, but you look at it from a different perspective.
As an old bookseller told me years ago, "there's a way to describe a book that makes it sound like a war casualty and a way to describe a book to make it sound good to potential buyers. This is what you have to keep in mind as a seller. Book flaws can be described in many ways, and some of them are better than others. When talking about a book that has been exposed to strong sunlight you could say it's faded, or you could say it's "sunned." I think one sounds better than the other, but I'll let you make that decision.
And so, we've shared knowledge and learned a great deal. We've been exposed to new ideas and new perspectives. The easy part, the education, is over. It's time to gather up all our thoughts, return home and apply them!
That will have to wait, dare I say it, until tomorrow!
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