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Marissa K. Mason

M.S.I.S./M.A. Candidate, Law Library Assistant

FEB 05 2012
2 COMMENTS
BY MARISSA K. MASON BOOKS, LIBRARY SCHOOL

Books as Artifacts, or Another Reason Why Printed

Books Matter

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Books as History by David Pearson, Image from Oak Knoll Press- h p://www.oakknoll.com
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It’s finally time to brush the dust off this neglected blog and put it back to work. Blogging fell by the
wayside last semester when, in the midst of the careful balancing act of taking three grad classes while
working full time, Rare Books u erly stole my heart.

IST 655: Rare Books

Rare Books was a fairly intensive course. We covered a lot of technical information: the history of
paper-making by hand and by machine, type-se ing and printing processes from the hand-press
period through the machine-press period, and how book printing and binding changed along with the
publishing industry. We became familiar with descriptive bibliography (link
(h p://marmason.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/marissa_mason_ist_655_bibliographic_description.pdf)
to my descriptive bibliography), including how to determine a book’s format and collation formula and
transcribe a title page. We acquired an enormous new vocabulary to describe all parts of printed books
and gained practice using resources for bibliographical research. We were introduced to the concept of

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analytical and textual bibliography. We also covered the history of book collecting and considerations
for rare books and special collections librarians, such as cataloging and preservation concerns. Whew!
Luckily, I found every bit of it fascinating.

(h p://marmason.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/photo-

on-2011-11-08-at-11-121.jpg)
At the UAlbany M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives Marcia Brown
Research Room, examining my book for the bibliographic description assignment

Books as Artifacts

Inherent to the Rare Books course is the assumption that printed books are important, that they are
valuable as historical and cultural artifacts and are therefore worthy of scholarly study and careful
preservation. Admi edly, I was not a hard-won convert to this notion (see my earlier post: I Want to
Take a Real Book to Bed With Me, Not an Electronic Device (h p://marissakmason.com/2011/07
/23/future-books/)). But while I always appreciated books, I now have a much deeper understanding of
the artifactual value of books, and how the evidence bibliographers find in the physical details of
antiquarian books–textual variances, cancels, marginalia, etc–can be as valuable for academics as the
content itself. If you pick up a contemporary paperback of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first printed in
1818, you don’t have the whole story.

G. Thomas Tanselle

G. Thomas Tanselle would argue that even if you have every edition of Frankenstein on Google Books
(h p://books.google.com/books/about
/Frankenstein_or_The_Modern_Prometheus.html?id=2Zc3AAAAYAAJ), you still don’t have the whole
story. In “Bibliographers and the Library” he argues that even when books are scanned and preserved
digitally, it’s still necessary to preserve the physical book because details of the paper, printing process,
and binding are lost in a PDF. Tanselle writes: “Librarians are not usually enemies of works, for they
are generally efficient in classifying and disseminating knowledge; but they are often enemies of books,
for they are frequently careless of the physical forms in which those works are presented” (749). From
a bibliographic standpoint, Tanselle takes issue with generally accepted practices of librarianship, such
as weeding duplicate copies or books with low circulation statistics, disposing of dust jackets, or
rebinding books in library bindings. His justification lies in the fact that “no single manuscript or book
contains the text of a work, but only one embodiment of that text” (749).

While I can’t help but appreciate Tanselle’s vehement defense of the book, his idea that every library
should act like a special library is clearly unrealistic. How is the average public library supposed to even
come close to meeting Tanselle’s expectations for the ideal collection, containing multiple copies of

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every printing of every edition of a book, and all preserved in their original state (up against issues of
staffing, tight budgets, and limited space)? For that ma er, how is any public library supposed to
preserve every book in their collection as if it were a rare book, when members of the public are free to
take them home, where they are subject to endless possible abuses: willfully chewed by unruly pets,
scrawled in by unruly children, splashed with coffee by unruly readers, and so forth? The mission of a
public library is to supply books to the public, which I submit would not be possible if librarians were to
guard their collection as if it were a special collection. Taken in moderation, however, Tanselle’s points
are valid, and I think all librarians could benefit from an understanding of the value of the books as
artifacts.

Books as History

David Pearson’s Books as History beautifully illustrates the idea of books as historical artifacts. He
writes: “Until the introduction of mechanisation in the printing and publishing industries in the
nineteenth century, all books were unique handcrafted objects . . . No two copies of a book of this
period, even before leaving the bookseller’s shop, can be truly identical” (Pearson 23). Then there are
the marks left in a book by readers: “Books, down the ages, have not been lifeless intermediaries in
between authors and readers . . . A book can be wri en in, defaced, altered, beautified or cherished, to
produce a preservable object with an individual history” (Pearson 22). He seems to suggest that the
physicality of the book increases its potential for value as an artifact, as compared to a cybertext or
ebook; I would be interested to see a more in-depth examination of the potential for altering and
sharing electronic text. Pearson notes Copernicus’s De revolutionibus as an example of historical
information gleaned from bibliographical research; by examining over 600 copies of the first two
editions of this book, noting “ownership, annotations and other physical features,” Owen Gingerich
was “able to show how quickly the book was acquired by sixteenth-century astronomers across
Europe, how that network of experts shared and communicated ideas, and how receptive (or
otherwise) those first generations of readers were to Copernicus’s heliocentric theories” (23-25). It’s
interesting to consider what medium, rather than printed books, historians of the future will rely on for
these sort of historical/cultural clues–people today seem to communicate more often in
blogs/comments, twi er feeds, and the like, than in the margins of books. But will this web 2.0 content
be preserved in a form accessible to historians 500 years from now?

Pearson discusses how the design of a book, including its typography, binding, book cover or dust
jacket design and illustrations can provide social/cultural clues and information about bookmaking
technology of the period in which the book was produced. He also presents a case study that examines
several copies of Francis Bacon’s Historie of the Raigne of King Henry VII. This got me thinking that for
someone conducting literary analysis based on close reading of a text, seemingly slight textual
variances between manuscripts and various printings of a text can be of paramount importance.

I intend to continue reading and learning more about bibliography, rare books, and special collections.
Next on my reading list:

A Companion to the History of the Book edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
on Amazon (//www.amazon.com/Companion-History-Blackwell-Companions-Literature
/dp/140519278X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328395434&sr=1-1)

An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies by Craig S. Abbo . Modern Language Association
of America, 2009. on Amazon (h p://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bibliographical-Textual-Studies
/dp/1603290400/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328395569&sr=1-1)

Rare Books Course Texts:

Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond Their Text by David Pearson. Oak Knoll Press, 2011. on

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Amazon (h p://www.amazon.com/Books-As-History-Importance-Beyond/dp/1584562900
/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328397434&sr=1-1)

A New Introduction to Bibliography by Philip Gaskell. Oak Knoll Press, 2000. on Amazon
(h p://www.amazon.com/New-Introduction-Bibliography-Philip-Gaskell/dp/1884718132
/ref=pd_vtp_b_1)

ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter and Nicolas Barker. Oak Knoll Press and the British Library,
2004. (9th edition) on Amazon (h p://www.amazon.com/ABC-Book-Collectors-John-Carter
/dp/1584561122/ref=pd_vtp_b_1)

A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas A. Basbanes.
Henry Holt & co, 1996. (out of print) on Amazon (h p://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Madness-
Bibliophiles-Bibliomanes-Eternal/dp/080504826X/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328397472&
sr=1-10)

Plus several articles, just a few listed here:

“Bibliographers and the Library” by G. Thomas Tanselle, 1977. link to full-text

(h p://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/6932/librarytrendsv25i4d_opt.pdf?sequence=1)

“Libraries, Museums and Reading” by G. Thomas Tanselle, 1990.

“Where Angels Fear to Tread: Descriptive Bibliography and Alexander Pope” by David L. Vander
Meulen, 1988.

Tagged antiquarian books, artifacts, artifactual value, bibliography, David Pearson, G. Thomas
Tanselle, history, IST 655, M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, M.S.I.S.,
printed books, rare books, special collections librarians, textual bibliography, University at Albany

2 thoughts on “Books as Artifacts, or Another Reason

Why Printed Books Matter”

Alice says:
February 6, 2012 at 11:31 am
Thanks for pu ing your thoughts on this together; I really enjoyed it. To me, it seems like the next
question is how we’re going to make sure that the book formats of today (ebooks and otherwise)

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convey the same valuable information for the bibliophiles of the future. I can see ebook metadata
playing a role in this, but only time will tell.

Marissa K. Mason says:

February 29, 2012 at 10:29 pm
Good point regarding the metadata. I wonder if users will be less likely to interact with ebooks the
way they might with printed books, though, even with the availability of features like highlighting,
annotating, etc. I suppose my main concern is how these files will be preserved so that researchers
might one day stumble across someone’s digital library and find it both accessible and informative.

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