[DCRM-L] Sammelband, Omnibus, Nonce

[Laurence S. Creider]

Thank you for clarifying my misunderstandings.  Yes, an atlas factice is a
composite volume.  For the reason I gave earlier, I think that composite
volume is a better term than pamphlet or tract volume.   When and where
did German bibliographers diverge from common usage (if it can be called
that) on the meaning of Sammelband?

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 7:19 pm, JOHN LANCASTER wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>