<font><font face="georgia,serif">The specification "early printed resources" is an historical legacy, unrelated to the fundamental principles of bibliographical description, which have to do with accurately recording evidence that printed materials present in their structures and details of manufacture, the latter including more exact description and, where appropriate, transcription of the marks that the printing surfaces left on the paper.</font></font><div>
<font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">This evidence is especially applicable to the correct identification and comparison of manifestations, especially as regards details that support identification of distinct manifestations, which may involve an explicit accounting for variances among items that do not distinguish any group of them as constituting a different manifestation. (In classic bibliographical terms "issue" is largely equivalent to "manifestation"; in abstract terms, it involves establishment of criteria by which to establishment the membership of any one copy in a set that conforms to a certain level of description rather unfortunately known as an "ideal copy" description.)</font></font></div>
<div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">"Special collections cataloging" is an appropriate way to characterize and distinguish our work from "regular" cataloging, given the curatorial perspective by which special collections are assembled and interpreted. </font></font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">The default cataloging approach to general collections materials involves matching items to citations, making use of physical details only to the extent necessary to ensure the likelihood that a cited source corresponds to a document in hand. This is a key aspect of ordinary scholarly communication, for which "regular" cataloging generally suffices, as it does for the general run of ILL transactions. The whole business of copy cataloging is based on the establishment of equivalence, on the search for things that are the same as each other.</span></div>
<div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">The special collections perspective is quite different. The membership of a copy in the set of copies that belong to the same manifestation is always in question. We look for differences--and that is the fundamental bibliographical mindset, the basis of bibliographical description, which is reflected in the descriptive cataloging of special collections materials. It must be emphasized that this has <i>nothing whatever</i> to do with the era in which printing took place.</font></font></div>
<div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">Yes, bibliographical method was originally an element of the historiography of early books, especially incunabula, and in the case of English books, in the textual study of 16th and 17th century vernacular literature. And yes, the kind of evidence that is accounted for by way of bibliographical analysis and description is less elusive in "hand-press" books, given the machine-based uniformity that is more and more characteristic of the paper, type, binding, etc. of later books. Nevertheless, the application of bibliographical methods in establishing evidential criteria for identifying entities (bibliography) and evidence-based matching of items to entities (cataloging) is valid across the whole chronology of printing, and important to the curation of collections of books of any period .</font></font></div>
<div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">Examples:</font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><a href="http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b4761238">http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b4761238</a></font></font></div>
<div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><a href="http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b5395722">http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b5395722</a></font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif"><br>
</font></font></div><div><font><font face="georgia,serif">I am grateful to </font></font><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:13px"><font face="georgia, serif">Lori Dekydtspotter </font></span><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">for the work she has done in isolating the few references to "early printed resources", which are inadequate to full appreciation and treatment of such resources as the evidence for their own history.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">This is all very much off the top of my head, a lot of undeveloped hints and Advanced Des Bib lecture themes, but I'd be glad to cooperate in articulating it more clearly.</span></div>
<div><br></div><div><div><font face="'courier new', monospace">RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY</font><div><font face="'courier new', monospace">BROWN UNIVERSITY :: PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912 :: 401-863-1187</font></div>
<div><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><</span><a href="mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU" style="font-family:'courier new',monospace" target="_blank">Richard_Noble@Br</a><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><a href="http://own.edu" target="_blank">own.edu</a></span><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace">></span></div>
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