[DCRM-L] Non-Roman Signatures

[Joseph Ross]

Deborah and others,

I am sorry it has taken so long to give you examples of registers of 
non-Roman alphabet signatures.  I have had to rely on interlibrary loan for 
most of the material, and I was hoping to be able to get more microfilm and 
facsimiles, but I do not want to delay this any longer so I will give you 
what I have.

I have looked at some microfilm of seventeenth and eighteenth-century books 
with signatures using the Cyrillic alphabet as well as several 
facsimiles.  I have also examined some facsimiles of books with Hebrew 
numeric signatures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  For 
Greek signatures, I had material in the Notre Dame library that I could 
use.  After initially thinking that Hebrew language imprints used only 
numeric signatures or Latin alphabet signatures, I looked up some Hebrew 
titles in Adams and discovered a number of examples of signatures 
using  Hebrew alphabetic sequences.  I was unable to look at the books 
themselves, but I did not think there would be any surprises with the 
Hebrew alphabet in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  I checked my 
reconstruction of the registers by comparing leaf counts with my register 
and the leaf count recorded in other bibliographic descriptions of the title.

I have included numeric signatures in this list because Russian imprints 
use a lot of numeric signatures using the Church Slavic numerals and Hebrew 
language imprints also makes a great deal of use of Hebrew numerals for 
their signatures.  To my great surprise, I also came across a register 
of  Arabic numerals (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4 not as in numerals used in the Arabic 
language) in a book published by Antonio Blado in Rome in 1542.  I have 
never seen a signature using Arabic numerals, and I thought it might be 
good to include this as well.  The earlier volumes of Eustathius. 
Parekbolai eis ten Homerou Odysseian used Greek alphabet signatures, which 
is how I came upon it.

I have included some history of the Russian alphabet and its revisions in 
the eighteenth century as well as some scans of material I found in an 
alphabet book of the seventeenth century and an eighteenth century 
discussion of Russian orthography.  I hope this material will be 
understandable to others, but I do not feel I have really come to a firm 
understanding of the issues surrounding  Russian orthography from the 
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.  I am still waiting for some 
secondary materials in Russian that may give me some additional insights 
into the situation, but, as I said before, I do not want to delay sending 
this any longer.

I am sending the file as a Microsoft Word attachment.  Let me know if it 
does not come through ok.

I hope this will be sufficient for the needs of those who will be 
establishing rules for recording non-Roman alphabet signatures.  I look 
forward to participating in any further discussion of this issue, which I 
think needs to be addressed.

I welcome any comments or questions for clarification or correction.

Joe Ross
University of Notre Dame


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