<html>
<font size=3>I'll send my reply to the list, because I think the
reference is useful, though Blayney, I hasten to say, has very high
expectations indeed of ESTC (or is perhaps riding a rather high horse
above it), and remarkably little sympathy or respect for those who must
compile it, or any other such resource, under real-world constraints of
time, money, cataloguer education, and institutional motivation. The same
is true of the somewhat less strident James E. May -- see his "Who
Will Edit the ESTC", in the now defunct (alas) <i>Analytical and
Enumerative Bibliography</i> 12 (2001): 288-304. From both of them one
might appreciate greater effort to help and less carping.<br><br>
Anyway, here's Blayney, excerpted from a letter to the editor of <i>The
Library</i>, VII, 1.1 (March 2000): 72-4:<br><br>
"Earlier this year I wanted some statistics
on the use of 'Cum priuilegio' and related claims in the period 1518-60.
I had never had to <i>use</i> ESTC before[!], but since nearly 3,500 of
the 4,700-plus books in question are represented in the database, I spent
a few days taking notes from all the relevant records. It proved
necessary to check the whole of each record -- because when recorded at
all, privilege statements are sometimes noted as part of a title,
sometimes as part of an imprint or colophon, and sometimes in various
places among the notes (sometimes signalled by quotation marks, sometimes
not).<br>
"By the time I had finished, it had become
obvious that privileges have been recorded only haphazardly; among the
numerous books which still have duplicate records are fourteen for which
one record notes a privilege while the other does not. To investigate
further, I narrowed my range to 1518-38, for which period ESTC records
privilege statements in 201 of 1,328 books. Virtually all the remaining
1,127 books are accessible on microfilm, and a rather more time-consuming
search yielded an additional 273 privileges. In other words, ESTC omits
substantially more privileges than it includes.<br>
"When I began reading the records I was
also interested in the changing ways in which successive Royal Printers
described themselves. That part of the study, however, ran aground when I
realized how often imprints and colophons are (inexcusably) truncated in
the ESTC records -- not to mention how many titles are also more severely
contracted than necessary in the database. In its present state, as a
resource for the close study of titlepages and colophons before 1641,
ESTC simply cannot be trusted."<br><br>
I have a very realistic sense, for all professed idealisms, about what we
can produce, and how wise a scholar would be to trust our productions as
a direct resource for "close study"; but this is the voice of
one of our more sophisticated users. It should be our ambition to meet
him part way, though the task of doing so at all systematically is a
daunting one.<br><br>
At 11/8/02 01:07 PM, Walt Nickeson wrote (to RN):<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>>>>
Richard_Noble@brown.edu 11/07/02 01:57PM >>><br>
Peter Blayney has recently remarked rather savagely on the omission
of<br>
privilege statements in imprints--it is not a trivial matter.<br><br>
As someone who only occasionally catalogs items which contain
these,<br>
could you explain why their presence or absence is not trivial?<br><br>
Thanks!<br><br>
*****************************************<br>
Walter F. Nickeson, Catalog Librarian<br>
Rush Rhees Library<br>
University of Rochester<br>
Rochester, NY 14627-0055<br>
wnickeson@library.rochester.edu <br>
(585) 273-2326 fax: (585) 273-1032<br>
***************************************** </blockquote>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<br>
RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN
UNIVERSITY<br>
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 :
RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU</font></html>