valuation

This week I have been looking at policy & procedure for managing rare printed material in the Library.
The Dewey Decimal system was phased in by the Library in the early 1900s. Before Dewey a fixed location scheme was used to organise the collection into ten large subject fields.
A – Natural Philosophy, Science, Mathematics, Fine Arts, Industrial Arts and Trades
B – History, Chronology, Antiquities, and Mythology
C – Biography and Correspondence
D – Geography, Topography, Ethnography, Voyages, Travels and Atlases.
E – Periodical and Serial literature, Reports and Newspapers
F – Jurisprudence, Politics, Commerce, Political Economy and Social Economy
G – Theology, Ecclesiastical History, Moral and Mental Philosophy and Education
H – Drama and Poetry
J – General Literature, Philology, and Collected works
K – Works of reference – Cyclopaedias, Dictionaries and Lexicons

You can still see the remains of the old classification collection on Level 3.

"Australasian" books were organised into similar divisions with an 'M' prefix.
The Letter M had nothing to do with the Mitchell Library, since its use pre-dated any thought of David Scott Mitchell's bequest. It appears to have been an unused letter between K and P!
Some of the old classification volumes were recatalogued to a Dewey location. When the Special Collections Branch was established in 1963 some of the old classification volumes were identified as rare and valuable. They were transferred into special collections and given an SC /running number location. Many of the old classification titles can only be located in the printed version of Public Library catalogue.

A location of G12S14 meant the 14th book on Shelf S of Press 12 in Class G. A Press would have been a wooden shelving unit or shelving bay.
You thought re-shelving items according to a few digits after the decimal point was difficult!

What's new at Houghton Library diversion

At the Houghton Library at Harvard University they use a blog to promote new acquisitions. It would be a great idea while we ...wait...for rss notifications on new acquisitions to be implemented for our clients!

Book collectors diversion

Shaken, Tawing , Harleian Style, Fingerprint, China paper, Dentelle....ever wondered about those terms in the booksellers' catalogues or needed to describe an item for an exhibition? The online version of the latest edition of ABC FOR BOOK COLLECTORS by John Carter as revised by Nicolas Barker is what you need. It includes over 490 alphabetical entries, ranging in length from a single line to several pages, defining technical terms used in book collecting and bibliography.

Project Update 15 - Learning from others

It is interesting to see how other institutions provide online access to their rare special collections and how they highlight significant material through "online exhibitions"
Here are a few of my latest favourites...
Harry Ransom Center - The university of Texas at Austin has an information packed site which includes information on the history of printing based on their copy of the Gutenberg Bible. This is also useful for identifying significant material in our collections.
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has a wonderful interactive site which provides access to their extensive map collections.
A Heavenly Craft - The woodcut in Early Printed Books at the Library of Congress isn't a bells & whistles interactive site but it has a lot of information and has been useful for identifying unique & significant material in our collections.
The Cornell University Library - Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is always interesting. As we have lately been focussing on rare cookbook collections have a look at the Food, Wine & Culinary History section

Cook book diversion

Have you seen our latest media star? - Pat Turner discusses the rare cookbook collections with SMH's Good Living

Project update 14 - Council minutes and Mrs Krefft

In June 1860 Johann Ludwig Krefft was appointed Assistant Curator of the Australian Museum, then acting Curator and Secretary in 1861. Krefft was a well respected scientist and wrote over 150 papers. His major publications included The Snakes of Australia (1869) and Mammals of Australia (1871). After various disputes with the Museum Trustees, Krefft was dismissed and dramatically removed from the Museum premises on 21 September 1874. Krefft's wife had money problems after Krefft's death in 1881 and sold copies of Snakes of Australia and the Mammals of Australia to the Library.
The Library Council minutes for August 17, 1883 note that "the Librarian had caused one copy of the mammals, and one copy of the Snakes of Australia, purchased from Mrs Krefft, to be coloured as a specimen of work, to see if the trustees would sanction all of the copies obtained being coloured in the same style. ...the total cost for completing all of the volumes being about 30 pounds."
The Library holds multiple copies of Krefft's Snakes of Australia How many of our copies contain the original lithographs hand-coloured by the Scott sisters? Can we identify the copies hand-coloured by order of the Library trustees?

Another medieval Victorian diversion

In March I attended the Foxcroft lecture at the State Library of Victoria. The audio of the lecture is now available on the SLV website. They have also added a link to a video on making a medieval manuscript from the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University.