A long weekend with Gaskell and Bowers
Amazingly, I spent a long weekend without spending much time on my blog or reading other blogs. Over the weekend the temperature in the apartment that I share reached the point that objects in my room–including pieces of my computer!–began to melt so I had to opt for technology-free ways to spend the long holiday weekend.
This is not as bad as it may seem. I repotted some of my plants and started planning a window box garden. I did a whole lot of cleaning and organizing. And, best of all, I spent a lot of time reading.
On Saturday, in an attempt to escape the heat, I spent the morning at Widener Library in one of my favorite parts of the stacks: C-East, home of WID-LC Z books and Old Widener B books (ie. books on library science, bibliography, typography, etc.). I really like browsing the Old Widener B’s, especially the early 20th c. books on book collecting and library science. Simply from reading the spine titles, one senses that at that time bibliophiles were a different intellectual class with an entirely different way of perceiving the world (and a strange sense of humor).
Once I returned home from my adventures in the stacks, I tried to keep cool by fanning myself with a paper fan and drinking lots of water. And I entertained myself with the classics of descriptive bibliography: Gaskell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography, Bowers’ Principles of Bibliographical Description, and McKerrow’s An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. I had purchased these books months ago when I was still planning to attend Rare Book School this summer, but I had put them aside after cancelling my RBS plans for financial and other reasons.
Without other distractions, I really became absorbed in these books. Suddenly, collational formulas began to make sense. And I now know more about title page transcription than I probably need to know.
I only hope that I can retain this information–ideally, forever, but at least, until I take descriptive bibliography at RBS (fingers crossed) next year.
1 comment July 7th, 2003