[DCRM-L] Glossary Terms

[Noble, Richard]

Whoa! "Free of printing errors! In that case, there's hardly a perfect book to be found!
 
Elizabeth is, of course, dead right: a "perfect copy" (if indeed the term is a desirable one) should be understood to mean a copy that conforms to the standard for the issue--what the bibliographers call "ideal copy". This may comprise a range of variant states that may well represent errors in printing (corrected and uncorrected states are quite common--e.g. in the Shakespeare First Folio). Beyond this a book in hand may exhibit anomalies that constitute imperfections, but in the main these will be copy-specific, though one might posit failures of quality control--mutlitple "bad" copies.
 
So, it should be defined as something like "A copy free of imperfections by which it would fail to conform to the standard for ideal copy"--an imperfection being anything that would require a copy-specific note to explain how the book doesn't conform to the ideal copy description that underlies a "descriptive" record in a catalogue or bibliography.
 
The terms "perfect" and "ideal" unfortunately mislead some people into the mistaken notion that we are measuring the book against a putative "perfect book", free of the faults of manufacture that are par for the course in printed books, especially older ones--what the printer ought to have printed but mostly didn't. It's a descriptive standard that we're concerned with, not a prescriptive one. It's not always easy to get this idea across.
 
Richard

________________________________

From: dcrm-l-admin at lib.byu.edu on behalf of elizabeth l. johnson
Sent: Tue 1/11/2005 10:49 AM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] Glossary Terms




I think the definition of "Perfect copy" goes too far in stating that a
perfect copy is free of errors in printing.  The definition should be
limited to the physical structure of the book and to the completeness of
its contents as the third sentene of the definition states.  Many perfect
copies have printing errors.

Elizabeth Johnson



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