[DCRM-L] Signature statement advice

Thu Nov 16 14:33:33 MST 2017

Glad to be of help, and to see the kind of deeply virtuous work you're
engaged in by way of the article that Deborah posted. For the last year and
a half I've been having at all of our incunabula in a very necessary
recataloging project (something approaching 30% of the books were not even
in our inline catalog, and most of the records were ... sketchy).

Can you believe that people pay us to have this much (exhausting) fun?

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 Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 4:00 PM, Jennifer Dunlap <jrdunlap7 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thank you Richard, this is helpful. I haven't found evidence that this was
> printed as part of a larger work, though the doubled letters do seem to
> point towards that. I have seen Clénard's 'Institutiones' and
> 'Meditationes' issued together by other printers around the same time, so
> perhaps Gryphius was working on a similar edition. It is odd that he
> abandons the irregular manner of signing for the 'Annotationes' and
> includes pagination. And Deborah thank you for sharing the article!
>
> Best,
> Jennifer
>
>
> Jennifer Dunlap
> Project Cataloger
> SCRC Rare Books
> University of Chicago
> dunlapj at uchicago.edu
> jrdunlap7 at gmail.com
>
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 2:19 PM, Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> I'd guess that this was not Gryphius' idea--possibly Clénard's. The
>> signatures are doing double duty as pagination, designed more for the
>> reader than for the binder. The result is a fully printed page-by-page
>> reference system--which wasn't really necessary for the matter printed in
>> A-C, with their standard signatures.
>>
>> Your note is accurately descriptive, even if it leads one to say, "You're
>> kidding!" Anyway, I wouldn't call these "direction numbers", since they're
>> actually page numbers. If I were doing, say, a contents statement, I'd
>> probably *not* follow the system because it's so eccentric; I'd refer to
>> 2c7v, not 2c14, partly because the latter *looks* like signature
>> reference to leaf 14--in a book in 8s.  I've never seen anything like it--I
>> guess it didn't catch on, for good reason. All it did was spare the
>> compositor a bit of arithmetic, as in "What page does 2d begin on?"
>>
>> There's nothing about it in Gaskell or Bowers because they never saw such
>> a thing, beyond which it's a system breaker. This is a case for using your
>> words, as they say, partly because the user of the catalog needs to be
>> assured that the thing really is that weird. Having to infer weirdness from
>> standard descriptive terms alone leaves too much residual doubt as to who's
>> taken the crazy pills. You might even include an 856 link in the record:
>> seeing is believing.
>>
>> The use of doubled letters implies that there's a related work signed
>> with single letters? Might that be the case?
>>
>> By the way, I'm delighted to have a record of this odd book. Thank you
>> for bringing it to our attention.
>>
>> By the way, the system *doesn't* seem to be used in the Annotationes,
>> which references by pagination. I haven't got time to puzzle this out, and
>> may be missing the full complexity of it all...
>>
>> RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
>> BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
>> <(401)%20863-1187>
>> <Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 2:19 PM, Deborah J. Leslie <DJLeslie at folger.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I hope someone can help Jennifer. In the meantime, I just ran across a
>>> post of interest to this group.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2017/06/06/uncovering-hist
>>> ory-through-rare-book-cataloging/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu |
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* DCRM-L [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] *On Behalf Of *Jennifer
>>> Dunlap
>>> *Sent:* Tuesday, 14 November, 2017 15:44
>>> *To:* DCRM Users' Group
>>> *Subject:* [DCRM-L] Signature statement advice
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Good afternoon,
>>>
>>> I am working on cataloging a copy of Nicolas Clénard's 'Meditationes
>>> Graecanicae in artem grammaticam' printed by Sebastianus Gryphius in 1552
>>> and would like some advice on the signature statement. The format is 8vo,
>>> but the first 8 gatherings are signed on both the recto and verso, with
>>> direction numbers 1-16 for signatures 2a-2g and 1-7 for gathering 2h (2h8
>>> verso unsigned). I have never encountered signing on both the recto and
>>> verso before and didn't see anything in Gaskell or Bowers on how best to
>>> construct a signature statement in this case.  I am hoping that someone
>>> else has encountered this before and can provide some guidance. The
>>> statement I have so far is:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2a-2g⁸ 2h⁴, A-C⁸; gatherings 2a-2g signed on recto and verso with
>>> direction numbers 1-16, gathering 2h with direction numbers 1-7.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I also checked a number of other titles printed by Gryphius in our
>>> collection to see if he often printed books with signatures on the recto
>>> and verso, but was not able to find another example. If anyone else has
>>> seen other titles printed by him where this occurs I would be interested in
>>> knowing! Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Link to GoogleBooks of digitized copy of text in question:
>>>
>>> https://books.google.com/books?id=drAD0lIhhYkC
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jennifer Dunlap
>>>
>>> Project Cataloger
>>>
>>> SCRC Rare Books
>>>
>>> University of Chicago
>>>
>>> dunlapj at uchicago.edu
>>>
>>> jrdunlap7 at gmail.com
>>>
>>
>>
>
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