[DCRB-L] WG3: Publication area

[Richard Noble]

The catalogue rules are no fit place to instruct cataloguers in the history 
of books and printing, but the caveat cited pretty much stands. Bowers made 
a great to-do about changed conditions in the C18, but this has to be taken 
with many grains of salt--he was embroiled in a most unbecoming contest 
with historical bibliographers in the Gaskell mode, especially in his 
attempts to discredit D.F. McKenzie's Cambridge University Press 1696-1712; 
many of his categorical statements in that debate have been in turn 
discredited by Peter Blayney. Indeed, some texts were kept standing, 
especially in the late 18th c., partly in order to roll out adequate 
supplies of a hot seller on a week-by-week basis, as in the case of some 
Burke pamphlets I've seen; and also in the case of perennials, e.g. Bibles. 
But with Burke we have a complication, in that the successive printings are 
designated as editions: are cataloguers to put their copies on a 
comparator? (Actually, I have a Lindstrand in my office, and I've used it, 
but still...).

Anyway, standing type remains enough the exception in the hpp that the 
broad distinction between composite, temporary printing surfaces (type) and 
consolidated, permanent (though still very modifiable) ones (plates), can 
be adduced as the basis for varied approaches. As for the related matter of 
printers being treated at the same or a subordinate level to 
booksellers/publishers, the trade's own conventions may be our best guide. 
If printer and bookseller names occur as part of a single "imprint", treat 
them accordingly; if the printer statement is separate or clearly "less 
prominent" in books of the late C18 onwards, treat it accordingly. This why 
I'm greatly in favor of allowing subfields efg in DCRB, to be used ad lib. 
(and why these subfields ought to be made repeatable). Beware of locking 
any of this into chronological periods. At the point in the 1840s when a 
handpress London book is remarkable, some French and a good many German 
books printed on handmade laid paper using the hand press are still quite 
unremarkable. The nature of the object itself must be the basis for treatment.

Remember too that it is not the edition but the issue that constitutes the 
basic cataloguing unit, just as in "real" bibliography: it all comes down 
to the concept of "ideal copy", the set of criteria by which one 
establishes that a certain body of copies in an edition constitute an 
issue, i.e. that no variation in observable states of those copies 
distinguishes any of them as belonging to another issue (the simplest case 
being one invariant printing that constitutes the only issue from that 
setting of type). The DCRM rules ought to support (as best they can in the 
context of catalogues that combine DCRM and non-DCRM records) the 
presentation of the evidence by which these relationships are determined. 
(Pages of further explication... I wish I had time to make sense, darn it.)

At 1/18/03 03:43 PM -0500, you wrote:
>p. 10: "In early printed books, each new printing usually corresponded to 
>a new edition because it involved a different setting of type" is an 
>overstatement. That might be said to be usually true for very early books, 
>incunables & 16th books. But as time went on and type became relatively 
>less expensive and printers were able to keep larger stocks, they could 
>and did tie up and keep formes of hand-set type for additional 
>impressions. Can you reword this so that the inaccuracy about HP books 
>doesn't distract from the argument you are trying to make about printing 
>from plates?


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