[DCRM-L] Nonroman signatures

[Joseph Ross]

Deborah,

I just wanted to let you know that I am still working on this, but I will 
need more time to give you what you want.  This is what I have found so far:

I think I will be able to give you several examples of signatures in early 
Russian books.  I have had to request microfilm of about eight seventeenth 
to eighteenth century Russian and Ukrainian books to do this.  The Notre 
Dame library does not have an extensive collection of these books, and the 
ones we have use Church Slavic alphabetic numeration, which appears to be 
by far the most common form of signature in these books.   I thought I 
could  infer  the actual register from the bibliographic descriptions in 
printed catalogs I have been using, but as I researched this I discovered 
that would not work.  The number of letters in the alphabet of the 
bibliographic descriptions varies from 35 to 45, and it requires a lot of 
guesswork to try to figure out which letters are being omitted in any 
register.  In one case I found a book that used a 41-letter alphabet and 
the subsequent series in the same book used a 40-letter alphabet.  If I am 
able to get most of my requests for the microfilms on interlibrary loan, I 
think I can give examples of a variety of signature patterns for Cyrillic 
signatures, but I will need at least a couple of weeks to get these and 
record the information.

For Greek signatures, I have found a Froben 1560 imprint that uses the 
Greek alphabet.  It offers nothing surprising or unexpected  -- just  three 
sequences of lower case alphabet, then a single upper case alphabet.

I have been unable to find alphabetic signatures using the Hebrew 
alphabet.  I have used L. Fuks and R. G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography 
in the Northern Netherlands 1585-1815: Historical Evaluation and 
Descriptive Bibliography (Leiden, 1984), and have found that the signatures 
in Hebrew are numerical.  Where the signatures are alphabetical, the latin 
alphabet is used.  I went back to Encyclopedia Judaica and reread the 
article  on the history of Hebrew printing, which includes several 
paragraphs about pagination and signatures.  Soncino was the first printer 
to include signatures in the early 16th century.  Apparently these are 
numerical signatures, not alphabetic.  "Rarely" according to the article 
are the signatures in alphabetic form: only two examples are cited: Sefer 
Kol Bo (Rimini 1525 and Rome 1547  (?)  -- I'm doing the second from 
memory).  I took that at first to mean that the Hebrew alphabet was being 
used for the signatures of these imprints, but I found the bibliographic 
description of the Soncino 1525/26 in Adams (Catalogue of  Books printed on 
the continent of Europe 1501-1600 in Cambridge Libraries) K-89, and the 
signature is in the Latin alphabet with some Tironian signs.   If anyone 
knows of a signature using Hebrew alphabet as letters rather than 
numbers,  perhaps he/she could provide this.  I can give several examples 
of books with Hebrew numerical signatures.

I  hope that the delay in getting this file to you will not cause 
difficulties or slow up the editing process.   I'll let you know when I 
have some idea of when I will be able to get it to you.


Joe Ross
Rare Books Cataloger
University of Notre Dame


At 10:06 AM 4/5/2005, Deborah J. Leslie wrote:
>A PDF file isn't really useful for our purposes, I'm afraid.  And not
>necessary, either, since the non-Roman typefaces are available to us for
>word processing and can be included right in the text.
>
>What we do need to be fairly certain of is that the register represents
>a typical printer's register. What about giving us the actual signing
>register of several books in Russian and Church Slavic--since those seem
>to be your strength, Joe--in either romanized or original form? In the
>way I've given below; listing each letter separately, indicating upper
>and lower case as appropriate, leaving off the number of leaves per
>gathering since it's only the register we want.
>
>Except for Hebrew, we have the expertise on the editorial team to read
>the alphabets, but in most our cases it's hard for us to put our hands
>on these books to record the registers. That is where we need help:
>identifying the registers used in books signed in non-roman alphabets.
>
>What seems best to me right now is for volunteers to document non-roman
>printing registers by recording the MARC21 code for the library, the
>shelfmark, the year and place of publication, an identification of the
>alphabet used, and the register for that book. For as many books as
>possible. The DCRM editors will collate the evidence, with much
>gratitude.
>
>
>
>________________________
>Deborah J. Leslie
>Folger Library
>djleslie at folger.edu
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dcrm-l-admin at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-admin at lib.byu.edu] On
>Behalf Of Joseph Ross
>Sent: Tuesday, 05 April, 2005 10:09
>To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu; dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
>Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Nonroman signatures
>
>
>Deborah,
>
>I would be willing to do this.  I can create a PDF file with the
>original
>characters and their transliterations, but I will probably not get to
>this
>until tomorrow or Thursday.  I'll include Hebrew and Greek even though
>the
>alphabet in the case of  these two languages is not problematic in the
>way
>the Cyrillic alphabet is.
>
>Joe Ross
>Rare Books Cataloger
>University of Notre Dame
>
>
>At 10:07 AM 4/4/2005, Deborah J. Leslie wrote:
> >We do need a list of the typical signing register for Hebrew, Greek,
> >Church Slavic, and Russian, which could be included in footnotes. We
> >will need some help with these. Volunteers? They should be in the form
> >analogous to: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z.
> >
> >________________________________
> >Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.
> >Head of Cataloging
> >Folger Shakespeare Library
> >201 East Capitol St., SE
> >Washington, DC 20003
> >202.675-0369
> >djleslie at folger.edu
> >
> >