Chapter 707 Lots of Links

From time to time, on the various bookseller and librarian chat lists, people share links to resources they’ve found handy for research. Thinking that these might also be handy for me (and maybe you, dear reader?), I want to save these links, so I’m posting them here. Following are a list of a few of the most recent sites that have come to my attention:

A Chronology of Office Copying Processes, derived from Luis Nadeau’s Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes (1993). It lists 64 processes and describes them and the papers and inks used.

From the blog Bibliofile: “Photo+Design (a division of Yale University ITS / Academic Technologies), has produced a free introductory guide to handling rare books and other works on paper in libraries’ special collections … which was vetted by Yale conservators and curators. “Rare Book Photography: An Introduction” explains handling and photographic practices that support libraries’ preservation aims and the needs of researchers in clear language accompanied by many illustrations.”

From the University of Barcelona, “The database Printers’ Devices of the Ancient Book Section of the Library of the University of Barcelona, was launched in October of 1998.

The working methodology used is directly tied to the cataloguing process of ancient books, approaching the printers in parallel to the elaboration of the bibliographic records. In this way, the printers’ authority records incorporated to the catalogue, are made available to the public thorough the database Printers’ Devices, together with the corresponding image or images.

Given this approach to the input process, the criteria of inclusion of the different entries are neither chronological nor geographical. And so, the database covers from the XVI to the XVIII century, and geographically from all around Europe but mostly from Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Low Countries, reflecting the collection’s own personality.

The Database offers a link from the printers’ entries to the corresponding bibliographical records in the Catalogue of the Library of the University of Barcelona that includes them as a secondary entry, as well as a link to the bibliographical record of the book from which we have obtained the image of the device.”

For booksellers and collectors who use BookHound software to keep track of their book purchases and sales comes the welcome announcement that Bibliopolis is releasing an updated version of the software, BookHound 8.

Also, over the past couple of months I’ve added three new (to me) blogs to my sidebar, all written by booksellers, all instructive and entertaining, and all blogs you should consider taking a look at. The first is Greg Gibson’s (Ten Pound Island Book Company) Bookman’s Log. The second is Bibliodeviancy . . . Book Lust Unbound, the blog of Adrian Harrington Rare Books.

I’d also like to introduce you to the blog of a bookseller who recently joined our ranks, Triolet Rare Books. Jesse Rossa was recently featured as one of Fine Books & Collections’ “Bright Young Things” and recently exhibited at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print, and Paper Fair.

Well, that’s a lot of links! Hope you’ll find them useful. I’m off to two basketball games (Tom) and one flag football game (Huck). I haven’t posted about the boys in quite a while, but they’ve been busy growing up anyway.

Here’s Tom, now age 13 and caught mid-air at a recent basketball game, He’s a little over six feet (2 meters) tall and is in the white uniform, #3):

Here’s Huck, age 11, and ready to give an oral report in History on John Paul Jones, father of the American Navy. He’s dressed in costume for the report.