[DCRB-L] WG5: Problems draft

[Richard Noble]

This aspect of DCRB description has always been incoherent, though I doubt 
whether it will ever be possible to reconcile the essential difference 
between an "extent" statement (which boils down to "the book is about this 
big", unless of course its pagination is "various" or it's more than 1 v. 
or ... or ...) and a correct formal account of the structure of a book.

It is a basic principle of analytical description that there is no such 
thing as a "non-letterpress leaf [that] is clearly an integral part of a 
gathering". Plates may indeed be necessary components, in definite 
positions, of ideal copy; but, irrespective of their contents, they are not 
integral with the letterpress, and ought not to be confounded with it 
either in the account of printed gatherings or in the account of the 
enumeration of the printed leaves/pages. That is, you cannot treat as 
printed pagination anything that lies outside the scope of the collation of 
the letterpress.

The "disconnect" between extent and collation is plain in the inclusion, 
under DCRB, of engraved title pages in pagination. Granted, Bowers himself 
was inclined to accord special treatment to engraved titles, e.g. "[engr. 
ti.] + pi2 A-H4" or the like (it's not clear whether he recommended this or 
not, though he did take this approach in the Sandys bibliography that was 
his test run of the Principles). Lately, in working with pre-1801 dance 
books, I've seen many examples of gaps left in the pagination to be filled 
with correspondingly numbered plates (printed on one or both sides, or a 
mix--even varying in this respect from copy to copy). The only way to deal 
with such phenomena is something like the following (superscripts and 
italics not formatted for the sake of e-communication; thus "[8 unn.]" 
means the same as bracketed italic 8):

4to: a4(+-a1) A-G4 H2 chi 2 [$3(-a1,3, F2, G3, H2 signed; missigning F1 as 
E1]; 34 leaves, pp. [8 unn.] 1-26 31-38 41-46 87-106 [=60] [misprinting 104 
as 92] + Plates, pp. 27-30 39-40 47-86 [=26] [4 unn.]

Thus the printed leaf count is properly one half the pagination ([60] + [8] 
= 34 x 2), and the printer's strategy for enforcing the proper placement of 
26 of the 30 pages of non-letterpress is quite clear. Treat this as 106 + 8 
pages and you have an incoherent mess to describe, from the analytical 
point of view. Of course one can explain the situation in a 500 note:

300  [8], 106 p., [4] p. of plates : ill., music ...

500  Pages 27-30, 39-40, 47-86 consist of engraved music, printed on both 
sides of the leaf, in addition to the 4 unnumbered pages of engraved dance 
notation.

But this will have to be reconciled with the signing statement, if it's 
given. Take your choice. (Then there's the challenge of recognizing 
integral engravings, more common than one might think in some locales--e.g. 
southern Germany, to judge from the numerous examples of integral 
frontispieces found among Rare Book School's books in sheets.)

Really, the DCRB 300 field is an uncomfortable compromise between a 
thoroughly non-analytical and often consciously inexact "extent" statement 
and a proper account of the physical components of the book. That is why I 
have finally taken to providing full collational formulae with proper 
signing and pagination + plate statements in almost all cases. I check this 
stuff anyway, I have some idea how to analyze the thing, and I feel I ought 
to put it down in cold pixels, with the unwritten understanding that the 
information thus given trumps anything in the 300 field.

At any rate, says this here Old Fussbudget, do try to be aware of (perhaps 
unavoidable) departures from real description in the rules--maybe even 
footnote them, for the sake of those who can perceive them as such and are 
grateful for the assurance that you know what you're doing in such cases. 
But remember that we should try to minimize the number of records in which 
a non-cataloguer may be owed an explanation of the way in which the rules 
have messed up the description.

At 1/17/03 03:29 PM -0800, you wrote:
>5B9
>
>As an addendum, may we also consider cases in which engraved plates
>(frontispieces mostly, but sometimes distributed elsewhere in the
>publication) are clearly intended by the printer as part of the pagination
>sequence?
>
>A similar problem can arise when a non-letterpress leaf is clearly an
>integral part of a gathering. A printer may or may not choose to include
>this in the pagination.  Do we deal with it as a "plate" (because its not
>letterpress) or not?  The instructions on engraved title pages have already
>been noted as problematic.


RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOK CATALOGUER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU