[DCRM-L] Glossary

[Deborah J. Leslie]

I love talking about this stuff. Thanks, David, for providing the
opportunity. (Shame on you for being an enabler.)
__________________________________________
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.
Chair, RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee
http://www.folger.edu/bsc/index.html
Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003
djleslie at folger.edu || 202.675-0369 || http://www.folger.edu 
	-----Original Message-----
	From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu
[mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of David Woodruff
	Sent: 07 October 2006 19:52
	To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
	Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Glossary

	It's my turn to say "Ah, now I see." The glossary definition of
plate it
	just the way you want it. Nevertheless I am concerned about
relying on
	whether a disjunct woodcut illustration is folded or not to
determine
	whether it is a plate. Folding is post-production; is it
	bibliographically relevant? 
[DJL] I would say yes. Leaves are folded by the binder only if they are
not the same size as the other leaves. If a letterpress leaf is folded,
in nearly all cases it's because it was printed in a different format
and counts as a plate. It is conceivable that, as you've described
below, a woodcut that started out simply as a leaf of text ends up
slightly larger than the rest of the textblock; I can imagine a scenario
in which a book, after being rebound several times, has lost enough of
its margins that to cut the woodcut leaf to the same size as the rest of
the text block would involve cutting into the image, and so it would be
folded to prevent that loss. On the other hand, I don't recall ever
seeing it, or if I have, it was obvious to me what was going on. My
experience tells me it was a universal practice, or near enough as to
make no difference, to trim the woodcut leaves along with the rest of
the letterpress leaves. 

	Some plates are so big they have to be
	folded, but others are close to the size of a text leaf, and can
be
	folded, or trimmed more closely, at the whim of the binder. Thus
the
	number of folded plates can differ from copy to copy. They can
also
	differ within a single copy over the course of its existence, if
the
	edges are trimmed in rebinding, requiring some plates to be
folded that
	in the original binding were flat. Or an owner (or a subversive
	cataloger for that matter) could convert a disjunct illustrative
woodcut
	text leaf to a plate simply by folding over the fore edge. In
all these
	cases the books could be bibligraphically identical but would
receive
	different descriptions.

	[DJL]  I just don't see it. It's possible, but why? Why would
anyone fold a leaf that didn't need folding? That would degrade its
condition and therefore reduce both its utility and its value. And
although it probably happened, I am also not aware of a printer printing
a woodcut leaf entirely separately from the rest of the textblock when
it was only slightly larger than the other leaves. It's economically
unfeasible; if I'd seen exemplars of this practice, I would think
differently, but I haven't. 

	My inclination would be to treat books that are engraved
throughout
	under 5B1.4, as all text, but not to try to assimilate
letterpress books
	to what is after all an exception. The definition of plate could
then be
	a version of the DCRB definition, something like "any leaf, not
part of
	a text gathering, that bears a title page printed in a different
medium
	from the text, an illustration, or a table."

	But a letterpress table, by this definition, doesn't qualify as
a plate because it was printed in the same medium (on a letterpress) as
the text.

	We need to rely on catalogers' common sense and general
knowledge to some extent, and to figure out what's going on with what
they're cataloging. If it can't be figured out definitively, then the
cataloger makes her best guess and indicates her uncertainty in
conventional forms. But if in copy cataloging, a cataloger sees that in
the master copy there is no plate, where her copy has a woodcut leaf
folded slightly at foredge and head and tail, but is missing a leaf that
the other copy has (and in the same spot), only a very dull or
impossibly confused cataloger would conclude that her copy has a unique
plate.  I don't see this as enough of a problem to backpedal on the
definition we finally came up with. I personally am very happy with our
definition of plate. 

	Other opinions, as always, welcome. 

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