[DCRM-L] Sammelband, Omnibus, Nonce

Fri Jan 4 19:19:38 MST 2013

There are indeed three phenomena being discussed, but only two of them involve separately published works (that is, the actual sheets of those separately-published works, not a different edition or printing).

1)  The defining characteristic of an omnibus volume, as Richard has laid it out (correctly, I believe) is that it contains works by multiple authors that are published as a single unit, and were not separately published.  This also corresponds to the general-use German definition of Sammelband given by Richard.  (German bibliographers, though, do in fact use Sammelband the way the Anglo-Americans do - that’s why we use it in that meaning, I think - we took it over from German bibliographers, not from German common usage.)  In a way, I think bringing in this term is a bit of a red herring for this discussion, because it’s not bibliographically significant.  That is, an omnibus volume is just a form of anthology - its contents may be of interest for all sorts of reasons, but in bibliographical or cataloguing terms it’s straightforward and offers none of the complications of a nonce collection or composite volume.

2)  Nonce collections are groups of separately-published works gathered together for issue by a bookseller/publisher, usually with a collective title page.  They are not at all “one-off” phenomena, nor are they constructed in response to a purchaser’s requirements. Though relatively few copies of any one instance may survive (at least for early periods), there are enough examples of such publications that survive in multiple copies (sometimes with printed contents lists as well as collective title pages) to make clear that these were put together for sale.  Also, they are sometimes advertised as such, which would not be the case for collections put together just for a single purchaser.

A nonce collection need not contain books by only one author, or originally issued by only one bookseller/publisher, though both of those are the most common sorts.  The defining characteristic is that the separately-published works (the actual sheets of those separately-published works) are brought together in a single volume (or sometimes more than one volume) by a bookseller/publisher for issue as a unit.  (In the 19th-century examples I gave, there are both multi-author and multi-publisher examples.  The example of Synge’s works, 1740, is a multi-volume example.)

The term “nonce collection” in this meaning has a substantial bibliographical history (Greg, Bowers, Freeman as cited).

From a cataloguing point of view, I would create a record for the collection as a whole, with additional records for each of the separately-published pieces, each with an “In” note.  (This is more or less what is done in ESTC, though not terribly consistently.)

3)  Separately-published items bound up by an owner (whether personal or institutional) are what the RBMS Provenance Thesaurus terms “Sammelbands” (i.e. bibliographical usage - not really German vs. Anglo-American).  In various libraries I’ve worked in or with, they have been termed “pamphlet volumes” (because most often they do contain pamphlets) or “tract volumes”.  These are what Nicholas Pickwoad suggests should be called “composite volumes.”

For cataloguing, a separate record has to be created for each work, each with a note to the effect that they were bound together subsequent to publication - the exact wording I would use would depend on various factors, my aim being to be as concise as is consistent with clarity.

I’m not a cartographic cataloguer, but from what little I’ve seen regarding the term “atlas factice”, it seems to be a collection of separately published maps created as a one-off by an individual, not a collection that is issued in multiple copies (like a nonce collection, as defined above), but rather as a “composite volume” (aka “Sammelband” in bibliographical usage).  In fact, Yale’s manual for cataloguers defines the phrase exactly thus: "Atlas factice (also called "composite atlas"). A collection of previously issued maps, bound or loose-leaf, gathered by a client or collector usually without a printed title page, table of contents, printed pagination, or index. The maps are usually related only through common ownership."  I don’t know if that is generally accepted usage in the cartographic community.

Unfortunately, many (perhaps most) pamphlet/tract/composite volumes (aka “Sammelbands” in bibliographical usage) have been taken apart, either by librarians who wanted to be able to slot each work into its appropriate classification, or by booksellers who believed (perhaps rightly) that the sales value of the individual works would be significantly greater than the value of the volume as a single unit, or by collectors/scholars who wanted to be able to organize their libraries in ways that seemed to them most efficient for use.  A lot of very interesting historical evidence has thereby been destroyed.

John Lancaster

On Jan 4, 2013, at 6:47 PM, "Laurence S. Creider" <lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu> wrote:

> As far as I can tell, we are talking about 3 phenomena here.
> 
> 1) Separately published works bound together and issued in that format by
> a publisher.  These are called an omnibus volume or Sammelband (German
> usage).
> 
> 2) Separate works bound together, usually with a common t.p., by the
> printer/publisher as sort of a one-off arrangement.  That is, there is no
> "edition" of these collections because are constructed in response to a
> purchaser's requirements.  There seems to be some consensus that these are
> referred to as "nonce collections."
> 
> 3)  Separately published works bound together subsequent to publication by
> the bookseller, owner, library, whatever.  Such as volume has been called
> a Sammelband (US usage).  Richard suggests pamphlet volume, which suffers
> from the fact that on occasion the items cannot be characterized as
> pamphlets.
> 
> "Omnibus volume," seems to be clearly defined term though I find it
> interesting that contemporary publishers do not use the term (e.g.
> Ashgate's Variorum editions or Collected studies series).
> 
> "Nonce collection" likewise seems to be a fairly clear category, although
> I would be curious to know whether an atlas factice would be considered a
> nonce collection in the same way that a one-off volume of editions of
> Fielding's works would be.  Or would that fall in category 3?  The DCRMC
> editorial team is considering the term "composite atlas."  Questions: Do
> the works have to be issued by the same printer/publisher to be a nonce
> collection? Do they have to be by the same author?  A collection of
> separately published items with a new title leaf issued in multiple copies
> with the same contents would not be a nonce collection because it would
> not be "nonce?"
> 
> The third category is termless if we abandon Sammelband, which seems to be
> confusing if one is not bothered by an English adoption of a foreign term
> in a different sense than used in the original language.  Perhaps someone
> can up with a one-word term?  Until then, I'm stuck with "bound together
> subsequent to publication" as the best phrase.
> 
> Larry
> 
> -- 
> Laurence S. Creider
> Interim Head
> Archives and Special Collections Dept.
> University Library
> New Mexico State University
> Las Cruces, NM  88003
> Work: 575-646-4756
> Fax: 575-646-7477
> lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu
> 
> On Fri, January 4, 2013 9:08 am, JOHN LANCASTER wrote:
>> The usage goes back at least to Greg’s bibliography of drama up to the
> restoration.  Carter’s ABC doesn’t include it.
>> 
>> Fredson Bowers, in “The function of bibliography,”
>> (https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/5844/librarytrendsv7i4c_opt.pdf?sequence=4),
> writes (pp. 500-501):
>> It may come as something of a shock to the cataloger, trained to record
> only the characteristics of the copy before him, to be faced with the
> paradox that in some occasional instances the bibliographer's "ideal
> copy"
>> may very likely never have been issued in any concrete example by a
> publisher. On the one hand, therefore, the cataloger may be busy
> describing the single copy at hand, whereas the bibliographer may be
> concerned to analyze and describe, at the other end of the process, a
> copy
>> that does not exist. Most commonly this odd split in theory and
> procedure
>> occurs when parts of a book have been separately printed and are joined
> in
>> random combinations by the binder.  The simplest example ordinarily met
> with is the nonce collection - such as those made from any available
> Dryden quartos between 1691 and 1695-in which a group of independent
> books
>> designed for separate sale is formed for issue as a collection under a
> general title- page. Intermediate would be the 1611 to 1617 Spenser
> Folios
>> described by F. R. Johnson in his Spenser bibliography, in which
> reprinted
>> sheets complicate the changing combinations of editions collected.
>> 
>> I suggested the term for the RBMS thesauri back in September 2009; it
> doesn’t seem to have been acted on as yet.
>> 
>> The term “nonce collection” has occasionally been used in the same sense
> as “Sammelband” is widely used (at least by incunabulists), i.e. a group
> of separately published items bound together subsequent to publication,
> by
>> an owner rather than a bookseller-publisher, and without a printed title
> page or contents list (though they often have such in manuscript), but I
> don’t find this to be very common.  Nicholas Pickwoad urges using the
> phrase “composite volume” for such collections, which has the virtue of
> not using a German term in English, when the German usage may vary from
> what is intended in English.  (And would avoid the awkward English
> plural
>> “Sammelbands” found in the RBMS Provenance Thesaurus, with a reference
> from the German “Sammelbände”.
>> 
>> Aside from this occasional confusion (not unheard of in other
>> bibliographical terminologies), the phrase “nonce collection” seems to
> me
>> a very useful one to describe the collection of multiple
>> separately-published items (almost always short pamphlets) by a
>> bookseller-publisher, usually furnished with a collective title page,
> sometimes with a contents list.  Each instance of the collection may
> (and
>> often does) vary in content - at least in the edition of any given
> component, sometimes in the number of items included.
>> 
>> John Lancaster
>> 
>> P.S.  Thanks to Mac Mail’s search function, I find I wrote on this on
> ExLibris a couple of years ago; here’s what I said (apologies for
> repetition, like Mark Twain, I don’t have time to write a shorter
> version):
>> 
>> 
>> By a ‘nonce collection’, I mean a collection of separately published
> works
>> put together by a bookseller/publisher with a collective title page (and
> sometimes other preliminaries).  Different copies of such collections
> may
>> at times contain different editions of the individual works – it’s
> generally assumed that this was a way of trying to move stock.  It’s
> also
>> a way to put together a “collected works” or “collected sermons” without
> the expense of reprinting them.
>> 
>> Search for instance in ESTC “fielding dramatic works 1755” – you get the
> collection under that title, plus records for all the separate works
> that
>> made up the collection, with a note “also issued in …” (or some such
> wording).  “Synge works 1740” will bring up a similar batch (many of
> which
>> were printed by William Bowyer, who also printed the collective titles).
>> 
>> See Arthur Freeman on the subject:
>> http://library.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/s5-XVIII/1/51.pdf  [But
> his
>> examples are sort of counter-examples, since they don’t for the most
> part
>> include a title page, and the evidence for collective issue is thus
> circumstantial rather than documentary.  Still, he makes clear how the
> term is used.]
>> 
>> The usage goes back at least to Greg’s bibliography of drama up to the
> restoration.  Carter’s ABC doesn’t include it.
>> 
>> In at least 1869 and 1871, Fields, Osgood, & Co. (1869) and then their
> successor James R. Osgood and Co. (1871) issued a collection with a
> general title page, Companion Poets, which included three works also
> separately published: Whittier’s National Lyrics, 1869, published by
> Field, Osgood, & Co.; Bryant’s Voices of Nature, published by Appleton
> (in
>> 1869, the 1868 printing was included; in 1871, it was the 1865 printing
> –
>> at least in the copies I’ve seen); and Holmes’s Humorous Poems, 1869,
> Field, Osgood, & Co.
>> 
>> These publishers also put out at least one other collection with the
> same
>> title, Companion Poets, but collecting three different works.  I’ve only
> seen the Google Books copy, with an 1871 title page, including an 1865
> Longfellow, an 1871 Tennyson, and an 1871 Browning.
>> 
>> There are OCLC records (indicating that the collections started with
> Ticknor & Fields, and that there was quite a bit of variation in the
> dates
>> of printing of the individual works included) at #19941975, #12429242,
> #21095102, #187311751, #58885510, #191281690, #9657799, #21095054,
> #37000939, #316951914, #27026578, #27046526.  Also several for
> electronic
>> versions: #262632885, #256744107, #68767711, #325823654.
>> 
>> That is, the phenomenon wasn’t limited to pre-1800 printing.  I suspect
> it
>> was less common later – but then, if we had the means to gather
>> information about such collections, maybe we’d find it’s more common
> than
>> I imagine now.
>> 
>> John Lancaster
>> 
>> 
>> On Jan 4, 2013, at 10:39 AM, "Noble, Richard" <richard_noble at brown.edu>
> wrote:
>> 
>>> The subject line is a formula for raising biblio-terminological imps.
> See the forwarded item of correspondence below. - Richard Noble
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu>
>>> Date: Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 10:32 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Terminology
>>> To: ...
>>> Dear ... ,
>>> There really is no single substitute word or phrase for the thing that
> we Anglo-American bibliographer types call a  sammelband (usually
> treated typographically--lower case, roman--as a loan word). In fact
> "omnibus volume" is by definition just what a sammelband isn't: per
> Webster 3, "a book containing reprints of a number of works (as of a
> single author or on a single subject or related subjects)". Since
> "reprints" is one of those slippery words that even too many librarians
> don't correctly understand, I rather like the definition given in
> http://www.thefreedictionary.com/omnibus
>>> "a printed anthology of the works of one author or of writings on
> related subjects".
>>> I suppose the lack of an unambiguous English-language term has to do
> with the fact that few people confront a sammelband in their daily
> lives.
>>> To add to the complexity of all this, it appears (from the same "Free
> Dictionary") that a Sammelband, to a German, is an omnibus volume: "ein
> Buch, das Texte eines oder verschiedener Autoren enthält Der Sammelband
> enthält Beiträge verschiedener, sehr namhafter Autoren". Indeed, my
> Cassell's German to English dictionary defines Sammelband as "an
> omnibus
>>> volume". Moreover, neither Webster nor OED has an entry for
>>> "sammelband", the upshot being that the meaning that we have assigned
> to
>>> the word has no lexical authority outside our little circle.
>>> Given that degree of linguistic conflict, and that the object in
> question is almost always a bound-up collection of pamphlets, and that
> "pamphlet" clearly denotes a discrete physical object, the better term
> might be "pamphlet volume". In other contexts one might prefer "bound
> collection of plays" or "bound volume of separately published poems".
> There's a related phenomenon that wants a designation: separate
> publications, often of multiple dates but usually with the imprint of
> the same publisher or printer, reissued as a single volume with a
> collective title page. I was taught to call this a "nonce collection",
> perhaps given the now rather archaic use of "for the nonce" to mean
> "for
>>> the purpose", i.e. for the purpose of selling the pieces together. (See
> also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammelband).
>>> We cataloguers have our "with" note, "bound together subsequent to
> publication", for a ... hmm ... sammelband; it's rather a mouthful. I'm
> not aware of any such fixed formula to describe a ... uhh ... nonce
> collection.
>>> I wish this were an entirely trivial question, but those of us who deal
> with these objects ought to be able to talk about them coherently. I'm
> going to forward this to DCRM-L, to see whether any fellow RB cats have
> come up with an elegant formulation. (Note: "Sammelband" is in the
> index
>>> of RAK, pointing to §107.4, but the available pdf
>>> ftp://ftp.ddb.de/pub/standardisierung/regelwerke/rak-wb/RAK_WB_ErgLfg4.pdf
> omits everything before §117.3)
>>> Does this help??
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Richard
>>> RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
>>> PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 :
>>> RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserver.lib.byu.edu/pipermail/dcrm-l/attachments/20130104/8f9289b1/attachment-0001.htm>