Table Of ContentInternational Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Fédération Internationale des Associations de Bibliothécaires et des Bibliothèques
Internationaler Verband der bibliothekarischen Vereine und Institutionen
Международная Федерация Библиотечных Ассоциаций и Учреждений
Federación Internacional de Asociaciones de Bibliotecarios y Bibliotecas
About IFLA www.ifla.org
IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) is the
leading international body representing the interests of library and information ser-
vices and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession.
IFLA provides information specialists throughout the world with a forum for ex-
changing ideas and promoting international cooperation, research, and develop-
ment in all fields of library activity and information service. IFLA is one of the
means through which libraries, information centres, and information professionals
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interests, and find solutions to global problems.
IFLA’s aims, objectives, and professional programme can only be fulfilled with the
cooperation and active involvement of its members and affiliates. Currently, ap-
proximately 1,600 associations, institutions and individuals, from widely divergent
cultural back-grounds, are working together to further the goals of the Federation
and to promote librarianship on a global level. Through its formal membership,
IFLA directly or indirectly represents some 500,000 library and information profes-
sionals worldwide.
IFLA pursues its aims through a variety of channels, including the publication of a
major journal, as well as guidelines, reports and monographs on a wide range of
topics. IFLA organizes workshops and seminars around the world to enhance pro-
fessional practice and increase awareness of the growing importance of libraries
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governmental organizations, funding bodies and international agencies such as
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formation about IFLA, its policies and activities: www.ifla.org
Library and information professionals gather annually at the IFLA World Library
and Information Congress, held in August each year in cities around the world.
IFLA was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1927 at an international conference
of national library directors. IFLA was registered in the Netherlands in 1971. The
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library), the national library of the Netherlands, in
The Hague, generously provides the facilities for our headquarters. Regional of-
f ices are located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pretoria, South Africa; and Singapore.
IFLA Publications 149
Early Printed Books
as Material Objects
Proceedings of the Conference
Organized by the
IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section
Munich, 19–21 August 2009
Edited by
Bettina Wagner and Marcia Reed
De Gruyter Saur
IFLA Publications
edited by Sjoerd Koopman
Social science libraries : interdisciplinary collections, services, networks /
edited by Steven W. Witt and Lynne M. Rudasill.
p. cm. -- (IFLA publications, ISSN 0344-6891 ; 144)
“Each chapter is a direct result of the IFLA Social Science Libraries Sec-
tion’s 2008 conference titled Disappearing disciplinary borders in the social
science library : global studies or sea change?, which took place August
6th- 7th, 2008 at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (FI)”--
Foreword.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-11-023214-1 (alk. paper)
1. Social science libraries. 2. Interdisciplinary research. I. Witt, Steve W.
II. Rudasill, Lynne M. III. International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions. Social Science Libraries Section.
Z675.S6S63 2010
026.3--dc22
2010019674
ISBN 978-3-11-025324-5
e-ISBN 978-3-11-025530-0
ISSN 0344-6891
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Data conversion and typesetting by Dr. Rainer Ostermann, München
Printing and binding by Strauss GmbH, Mörlenbach
© 2010 by International Federation and Library Associations
and Institutions, The Hague, The Netherlands
∞ Printed on permanent paper
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard – Permanence of Paper for Productions and Documents in
Libraries and Archives
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997)
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
V
PREFACE
For many years, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München has been an active
contributor to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA), in recognition of its role as the leading international body representing
the interests of library and information services and their users and as the global
voice of the library and information profession. Since IFLA’s foundation in
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1927, many members of the staff working at the Baye-
rische Staatsbibliothek have been involved in various standing committees of
IFLA sections and participated in the annual congresses. In 1956, the first
IFLA World Congress on German soil was organized by Gustav Hofmann
(IFLA president from 1958 to 1963) in Munich, and the city hosted the con-
gress again in 1983, with a record number of more than 1500 participants. In
2003, when the congress was held in Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
organized a pre-conference on the theme ‘Is digital different? New trends and
challenges in acquisition and collection development’.
In August 2009, we were proud to welcome more than 150 colleagues from
all over the world in Munich to the pre-conference on ‘Early printed books as
material objects – Principles, problems, perspectives’, which was held as a satel-
lite meeting to the annual congress of the International Federation of Library
Associations (IFLA) in Milan, Italy. The pre-conference was organized by the
IFLA Section for Rare Books and Manuscripts, chaired from 2007 to 2009 by
Dr. Bettina Wagner, head of manuscript cataloguing and curator of incunabula
at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. In order to show the richness of our collections
of early printed books, the conference was accompanied by the exhibition ‘Als
die Lettern laufen lernten’, whose bilingual catalogue was prepared by Dr. Wag-
ner with the support of many colleagues, especially from the Department of
Manuscripts and Early Printed Books and from Public Relations. The theme of
the exhibition, which focused on the transition from handwritten to mechanical
book production in the second half of the fifteenth century, is reflected in many
of the conference papers published in this volume. Complementing each other in
this manner, the conference and the exhibition opened wider perspectives both on
the items on display and the questions raised in the papers, and it was a great pleas-
ure to experience the intensive and constructive exchange among the participants.
Stimulating such discussions by facilitating access to our historical collec-
tions, both for scholars and a wider public, is a task high on our agenda. In recent
years, the methods employed to reach this goal have diversified. A steadily in-
creasing part of our holdings is now available in electronic form via the internet.
Over ten million items, comprising all printed books and already a large pro-
portion of our manuscripts, are recorded in the library OPAC, and for our spe-
cial collections, more detailed information is provided in databases for manu-
scripts or incunabula and the German national bibliographies in which the Baye-
VI Preface
rische Staatsbibliothek has been a leading contributor since their inception. As
these enterprises are far advanced, they can now serve as backbones for large-
scale digitization projects based on our collections. The Bayerische Staatsbiblio-
thek has been at the forefront of these developments, and in the late 1990s, a
centre for digitization was founded in Munich. With financial support from the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, thousands of our incunabula and sixteenth-
century books printed in Germany have already been digitized, and these projects
will be continuing for the years to come. In addition, more than one million
copyright-free titles, including a large number of early modern books printed
abroad, are being digitized in a public-private-partnership with Google following
an agreement signed in 2007. By developing innovative digitization technologies
and by providing access to our OPAC and digital collections also via mobile
applications for smartphones, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek is continuously
enhancing its digital and internet-based services.
In the digital world in which we live, it is sometimes important to remind
readers, but also some librarians and funding agencies, that a large part of our
documentary heritage is still available only as a handwritten or printed book.
Books are material objects, and libraries will continue to have to preserve them
and make them accessible in physical form. Most early printed books survive in
many copies, and it is hardly conceivable that every single item in our collections
will be transformed into electronic form. The papers in this volume demonstrate
impressively what insights can be gained by comparing different copies of an
early printed edition and by analyzing physical features that can be observed
only in a three-dimensional original object. Thus, they stress the importance of
creating precise and detailed descriptions of the ‘copy in hand’. Such time-
consuming and labour-intensive work requires experienced and knowledgeable
cataloguers and is possible only with funding from the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft, which also sponsored the IFLA pre-conference ‘Early printed
books as material objects – Principles, problems, perspectives’. We are very
grateful for the wide-ranging support we have received from the Deutsche For-
schungsgemeinschaft over many years. I would also like to express our thanks
to the Consortium of European Research Libraries and the IFLA Section for
Rare Books and Manuscripts for co-sponsoring the event in Munich and for as-
sisting in the publication of the conference proceedings, to the Bayerisches
Hauptstaatsarchiv for the use of its auditorium and for technical support, and to
all members of the staff at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek who ensured that the
participants in the conference and visitors to the exhibition had a profitable and
pleasant stay in Munich.
Dr. Rolf Griebel
Director General,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München
VII
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rolf Griebel
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V
Abbreviations and Short Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
Bettina Wagner
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Beginnings of Printing
Paul Needham
Copy-specifics in the Printing Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Eric Marshall White
The Gutenberg Bibles that Survive as Binder’s Waste. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Painted Decoration
Mayumi Ikeda
The First Experiments in Book Decoration at the Fust-Schöffer Press . . 39
Lilian Armstrong
Information from Illumination: Three Case Studies of Incunabula in the
1470s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Christine Beier
Producing, Buying and Decorating Books in the Age of Gutenberg.
The Role of Monasteries in Central Europe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Colour Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Manuscript Annotation
Patricia J. Osmond:
Pomponio Leto’s Unpublished Commentary on Sallust: Five Witnesses
(and more) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
VIII Table of Contents
Armin Schlechter
Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ in a Marginal Note in a
Cicero Incunable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Bookbindings
Claire Bolton
Links between a Fifteenth-century Printer and a Binder . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Ulrike Marburger
The German Database of Historical Bookbindings (EBDB):
Aims and Perspectives of a Cooperative Research Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Scott Husby
Bookbindings on Incunabula in American Library Collections:
a Working Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Distribution and Provenance
Cristina Dondi
The Venetian Booktrade: a Methodological Approach to and
First Results of Book-based Historical Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Angela Nuovo
Private Libraries in Sixteenth-century Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Raphaële Mouren
Quatre siècles d’histoire de la bibliothèque Vettori:
entre vénération et valorisation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Michaela Scheibe
The ‘Biography of Copies’: Provenance Description in
Online Catalogues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
The Later Use of Incunabula
Kristian Jensen
Creating a Better Past: Collectors of Incunabula in the
Late Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Table of Contents IX
Margaret Lane Ford
Deconstruction and Reconstruction: Detecting and Interpreting
Sophisticated Copies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Methodological Aspects
Wolfgang Undorf
The Idea(l) of the Ideal Copy: Some Thoughts on Books with
Multiple Identities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
David Pearson
The Importance of the Copy Census as a Methodology in Book History. . 321
Appendix
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Index of Names and Places. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Index of Manuscripts and Incunabula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Table of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
