[DCRM-L] Signature marks that include parentheses

[Deborah J. Leslie]

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Dear colleagues,

Jason LeMay, an alumnus of this year's RBS Rare Book Cataloging course, sent me a query about recording the signature mark ):(  With his permission, I'm reposting it and a version of my response below for discussion.

I am finally trying to put my Rare Book Cataloging into action. I've come across an odd little pamphlet I had previously dealt with, and now I'm preparing to review and enhance my previous cataloging. The entire item is a single gathering of four leaves, and they are signed "):(", "):(2", and "):(3" (fourth leaf unsigned).

For the signature, would I actually record ):(4?

DJL:

Jason, yes, you've got it right. Since our character set has parentheses and a colon, you can use them to represent the signature mark.

The difficulty comes when you need to qualify signatures. Parentheses are used to introduce the qualifications, but when the signature mark also has parentheses, the resulting statement can be almost impossible to parse. Let's imagine that the gathering in your book wasn't regular and needed to be qualified. Say, that the gathering only has three leaves, you've ascertained that the fourth leaf isn't present, and that your 3-leaf gathering represents a perfect copy.

Signatures: ):(4(-):(4) A-Z8.

I've resorted to a couple of different ways to ameliorate the situation. One is to use square brackets and an extra space instead of parentheses for qualification. So:

Signatures: ):(4 [-):(4] A-Z8.

Which is still enough to make one's eyes cross.

What do you, the community, think about this use of a descriptive phrase in the following signature statement for an actual book.

Signatures: [inverted parentheses]-3[inverted parentheses]4 4[inverted parentheses]4 (-[inverted parentheses]4) A-C4 D4 (±D1) E4 F4 (±F1) G-3H4 3I4 (-3I4).

This book is signed with )( instead of ):(, so "inverted parentheses" is accurate. For the latter, one possible remedy I just thought of was to pick a single character to represent the ):( and explain it. Something like

Signatures: %-3%4 4%4(-%4) A-C4 D4 (±D1) E4 F4 (±F1) G-3H4 3I4(-3I4); preliminaries are actually signed ):(.

Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu | 202.675-0369 | 201 East Capitol St., SE, Washington, DC 20003 | www. folger.edu

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