With new course Beginning Cataloguing Rare Books launching on Monday, I thought it would be useful to highlight some free resources for cataloguing rare books.
1. Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B)). The main standard for rare books cataloguing is maintained by the Rare Books and Materials Section (RBMS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries and is available to download in pdf form for free.
We were really happy to welcome participants to Beginning Bibliography, whose first unit materials went live yesterday.
With books stranded in my old office, my London Library membership really came into its own in preparing the course – first time using postal delivery. As usual, their service was superb.
I’ve also acquired some new old books, ordering online from various booksellers, who have similarly been quick and efficient in posting out. You can’t teach material culture without the materials, that’s for sure!
Beginning Bibliography begins on Monday. We don’t set any reading that can’t be accessed for free, so this month’s Beginnings article highlights my top five book purchases in the field.
1. Bowers for the Detail. Love it or loathe it, you cannot ignore Bowers’s tome, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1949). You would imagine bibliographers to be obsessed with detail, and Bowers was certainly that. I first read this book in 1990 and in thirty years, I’ve not found a single challenge in bibliographic description for which I have not been able to find an answer within it. If only he had been able to write in an engaging, encouraging style, I’d go so far as to say we would need no other book on how to describe a printed book. Alas! He conveys all of the detail but none of the love, and I have met some very distinguished bibliographers who have confided to me they have never been able to read his Principles from cover to cover, only dip in and out of it as and when required. Copies are available from Betterworld Books and second-hand from Abe and Abe UK.
The Independent Libraries Association has accepted our offer of a free place for one of their members on Beginning Bibliography, and we’re very grateful to their committee for administering the award.
Want to learn the core techniques of bibliographic research? Getting into book collecting and keen to know exactly which impression of which edition of a book you’ve just purchased? Moving from modern cataloguing to working with early materials and need to get on top of format and collational formulae?
We’ve got a course for you. Beginning Bibliography has just opened for booking. 20-25 hours of learning at your own pace, with presentations, readings and activities including creating quasi-facsimiles (title page transcriptions), collation (working out the format of the book and how its pages were ordered and bound), and some paper-folding excises.
Really happy to start the week by welcoming Yvonne Lewis as a Beginning Cataloguing Associate.
Yvonne is well-known in the special collections community, having held committee posts for CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group, the Historic Libraries Forum, CILIP Library History Group, the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association and CILIP Preservation, Conservation & Heritage Sub-committee.
As well as having taught hundreds of people to catalogue in the workplace, she has supervised many work placement students in historic collections, and has, therefore, been the person who has introduced lots of people to life in heritage libraries.
Yvonne holds a degree in History from Warwick University and is a recent graduate of the Institute of English Studies (University of London)’s MRes in Book History. She has worked in special collections since graduating with her MA LIS from University College London in 1992. Her research interests and publications are centred on 17th and 18th century private libraries, book ownership, the reading experience, and maps and globes.
We are really delighted that Yvonne is joining us to co-teach Beginning Bibliography, which opens for registration this week, and whose first unit will go live in August. You can find out more about her on her profile page.
