Topic 6: Glossary: Fingerprint

[Melinda Hayes]

During my research leave in Vienna last year I had conversations with the
special collections librarian at the Universitat Wien on this very subject.
Not knowing what he meant by a "fingerprint", he showed me an example from
a printed catalog, and explained that the fingerprint is being used in
Europe as a unique identifier for early printed texts. His interest was to
determine which field in a Marc record a fingerprint would be found, and
whether one could search on OCLC to find a book by inputting the
fingerprint. Apparently the fingerprint has been used in lieu of a
signature because it is quicker to determine. There is a book he referred
me to (the name of which escapes me), which was printed in the US in the
'70's when this whole idea came about. Apparently there was a major push at
that time to "fingerprint" collections of early printed books, but I'm not
sure how far this went here.
Melinda Hayes
melindah at usc.edu



At 08:17 AM 1/12/99 -0700, you wrote:
>At 12:49 PM 1/11/99 -0800, you wrote:
>>
>>  Bob, in response to your comment: "does such a thing exist?"  I assume
that
>>  the Steele notations used to identify British royal proclamations are
>>  exactly what is meant by a 'fingerprint'.  That is, these notations
consist
>>  of three words taken from specific places in the text which identify an
>>  issue, state, or impression uniquely--along with the usual bibliographic
>>  suspects: imprint, date, etc.
>
>I read the Library Associations new Guidelines for the Cataloguing of Rare
>Books yesterday, and they do mention the fingerprint, too, to be entered in
>a new UKMARC field 756 (a field that has not been added to USMARC)(anyone
>know if there is a web address for UKMARC like the one for USMARC?). It
>still is not clear to me exactly what this is and I would like to see an
>example. I know I have never seen a fingerprint in a catalog record. If one
>wanted to record one, where would one do it in USMARC? And how would one
>figure out what the fingerprint was for a given book? Do you have to go to
>another reference source? If so, what is the difference between that and
>simply citing a bibliographic reference in a 510?
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>Robert L. Maxwell
>Special Collections and Ancient Languages Cataloger
>6428 Harold B. Lee Library
>Brigham Young University
>Provo, UT 84602
>(801) 378-5568
>robert_maxwell at byu.edu
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>