[DCRM-L] Barton, Vegetable materia medica

[Noble, Richard]

[DRCM: Follow-up to a previous posting, by way of correspondence with
Philip Weimerskirch. Another blessed learning experience ...]

Shortly after I sent my message to you, a fellow cataloguer told me, via
the DCRM list, that I should look at Stafleu & Cowan, and behold, this
wasn't such a radical discovery as all that, though I did figure out how
the 1825 2nd ed. came about. I re-revised the records to tell that story
properly (and a bit more succinctly).

That's the problem with my kind of work--I find that the OCLC WorldCat is
full of confusion, and instead of undertaking a reference search I jump
directly into revision of records, close inspection of copies actual and
digital, etc., and reinvent a wheel or two in the process. Stafleu didn't
have it *exactly *right about the 2nd ed., but it does state simply that
only v.1 was involved--which could only be inferred from patterns dug out
of the chaos in OCLC--and suggests something about it that would have
focused my own work much more efficiently, especially as regards the
obvious bibliographical evidence that, as he himself said at the outset of
v.2, Barton had greatly underestimated his market. Stafleu also gives us
the schedule of part issues (from NYBG copy in parts), which establishes
the perfect framework for the whole story.

The *real* problem is that none of that information had found its way into
any easily accessible library record--the OCLC master records were simply
misleading, though I did get good clues from local records of a kind that
will soon not be available in the WorldCat (so much for the "World"
part)--which means building systematic searching of individual catalogs
into one's process.

Ah, 'tis always thus--"By indirections, find directions out."

Cheers - Richard

RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
<Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 10:15 PM, Philip Weimerskirch <
pweimerskirch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Richard,
>
>      Thanks for sending me your splendid description of Barton's Vegetable
> Materia Medica.  I'm afraid I can't shed any light on this, but I have
> forwarded your message to two friends of mine who probably can.  One is
> Judy Warnement, librarian of Harvard's botany library, and the other is
> Charlotte Tancin, librarian at the Hunt Institute for Botanical
> Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.  Judy and I were
> both born in Tiffin, Ohio, a small town in the northwestern part of the
> state.  Tiffin was also the birthplace of John Quinn, the great collector
> of modern art and modern literature.
>
>       One of these days I would like to take a look at your copies of
> Barton's VMM.  At the moment I'm working on a talk I will be giving at the
> next APHA conference.  The theme is printing on a hand press, and my talk
> will be about some little-known sources of information about early American
> hand presses.  Lately I have been making heavy use of Rollo Silver's
> notes.  What a great source of information they are.
>
>      All the best ---
>
>           Phil
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 23, 2015, at 2:04 PM, Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu>
> wrote:
>
> I just finished cataloging the Lownes copy of Barton's *Vegetable materia
> medica*, which has a 2nd edition v.1 paired with the 1818 first (only, as
> it turns out) edition of v.2. I don't know whether you or somebody else has
> already figured this one out, but anyway I spent some time researching it
> online, in the way that one can these days, and came up with a rather
> interesting result.
>
> The contrast in coloring between our old copy of v.1 and the Lownes is
> striking. The two copies will provide a really good demonstration of what
> can happen with scientific illustration in this period, especially in a
> place where the facilities for producing it were still pretty limited. And
> of course it makes the relationship between Barton and Bigelow that much
> more interesting. (Barton refers to Bigelow, not by name but as "my fellow
> traveller in the same path", in his very interesting "Preliminary
> observations" in v.2.)
>
> http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b1650154
>
> http://josiah.brown.edu/record=b7116520
>
> If you know of related bibliographical work on Barton I'd be grateful for
> a reference.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Richard
>
> RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
> BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
> <Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>
>
>
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