#libday8 – last two student posts

Saturday #libday8 blog by @_cine on a week of work and studyblogs.ucl.ac.uk/dis-studentblo…

— UCLDIS Students (@UCLDISStudents) February 5, 2012

A contemplative blog from Karina de la Garza Gil to end our #libday8 week. Thanks to all the students who have blogged. blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dis-studentblo…

— UCLDIS Students (@UCLDISStudents) February 5, 2012

#libday8 – Reading the readers

Today I spent the morning trying to finish Facet’s marketing questionnaire. It’s something I find really difficult – I think mainly because it has the word “marketing” in it!

There are sections that are straightforward information – like which listservs might want to know about the book, and which journals’ book reviews editors would be appropriate – and then there are sections where you have to stop thinking like a librarian and think like a salesperson  - fortunately we’ve already sorted the back-cover blurb and the Facet catalogue entry, and, to be honest, the production team took the lead on that.

One question, though is terrifying: “Please describe in detail who the potential readers of your book are?”

#libday8 – Plantin-Moretus Museum

Answering proof queries at the hotel

The conference visits were today. I had reason to be doubly glad that I went to the Miraeus Lecture on Tuesday, as I had to miss the visit to the Hendrik Conscience Library in favour of answering proof queries.

I did make the visit to the wonderful Plantin-Moretus Museum, which was magical. It began to snow while we were inside, and the views of the garden were rendered even prettier as a result. Of course, our real interest was in the books and printing presses.

Click through for a slideshow of images, as well as links to what the students have been up to back home:

#libday8 – Ambassadors of the Book

I’m privileged to be spending the end of the week at the beautiful City campus Hof Van Liere of the University of Antwerp (main gate pictured) at the IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Mid-term, entitled Ambassadors of the Book.

As conference chair Pierre Delsaedt expressed it in his introduction to the conference theme, the idea behind the meeting was to share best practice in the education of heritage librarians, drawing on the experience of twenty speakers from 8 countries. The papers were split across two days, the first considering competences and the second education, and then on Friday there are visits to heritage libraries in Antwerp – Plantin-Moretus and the Hendrik Conscience Library (at which Michael Suarez gave the Miraeus Lecture on Tuesday evening).

#libday8 – bindings information

Today’s photo was not taken today, but last term, during my colleague Fred Bearman’s bindings practical in INSTG012.

It came to mind today, during Nicholas Pickwoad’s presentation at the IFLA RBMS Mid-term. Speaking on his Ligatus project to develop a thesaurus for bindings terms and, beyond that, his career-long advocacy of the significance of plain (untooled, non-decorative) bindings, Pickwoad highlighted the paucity of information in catalogues about bindings.

This is the second time this week that a prominent scholar has called for rare books cataloguers to record more detail in their records, and while it might be predictable that research scholars in a particular aspect of the book as physical object should hope for more from the catalogue as a finding aid (particularly with regard to books in closed stacks), there is an important bibliographical point here. Bowers and Tanselle both argue for the bibliographer to give the level of detail in their descriptions that is appropriate for their object of study. That’s a bit tricky to establish for a library catalogue, which, of course, aims to be of use to as many scholars as possible – all of them with different interests.

Pickwoad himself acknowledged the difference between the catalogue as finding aid and the catalogue as research tool. He also empathised with the difficulty cataloguers perceive in forming detailed judgements about bindings.