[HN Gopher] An Unstandardized, Decentralized Carnival Fire: How ...
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An Unstandardized, Decentralized Carnival Fire: How Rare Books Are
Cataloged
Author : apollinaire
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-03-29 20:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| ogurechny wrote:
| A good description how science works, though described as "not
| really a science" for some reason.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| I've had a growing collection of rare books for the last 30+
| years. I have no idea what I'm doing, but its been fun.
| https://www.tiktok.com/@worklibrary
|
| Eventually I want to make a sortable online catalog to archive /
| document the works for future use.
| Animats wrote:
| Similar overwrought language applies to wine, coins, antique
| furniture, and audiophile equipment.
| [deleted]
| akiselev wrote:
| Collecting books that go back to the start of the printing press
| era is wild (manuscripts even more so!). The only things even
| coming close to a standard were the punchcutters [1] used to make
| the casts for movable type. The printing press was a relatively
| simple device but the punchcutters were some of the highest
| precision tools available before the industrial revolution so
| they were produced by a small group of craftsmen and guilds.
| Pretty much the only way to visually verify any printing in the
| first few centuries is to have all of the distinct punchcutter
| styles memorized because the vast majority of "counterfeits" are
| reprints, not attempts at tricking a book collector. Even then
| you can only conclusively identify something as fake, you have to
| know a whole book of tricks in book binding, printing, and paper
| making to conclusively say something is genuine (often requiring
| destructive chemical testing!)
|
| The _worst_ part about collecting old and rare books is that all
| the databases _are themselves rare and old books._ Book
| collectors hoard bibliographies so while they 're not very
| expensive - since there isn't enough of a market for laymen to
| price discover - they're downright impossible to find because
| they get snatched up right away. Without those bibliographies,
| there are no contemporaneous sources of information on how many
| prints and editions a book went through or any identifying
| features. Libgen and Libz have been godsends because sooner or
| later many of them get archived by some library or collection and
| uploaded by a pirate/archiver (the vast majority are out of
| copyright but pirate sites are the most accessible central
| databases around).
|
| For anyone who wants to learn more, I recommend Philip Gaskell's
| _A New Introduction to Bibliography_ [2] which is a bit more
| academic and technical than Carter 's _ABC of Book Collecting_
| mentioned in the OP.
|
| _> If we call a book "sophisticated," we're saying that we know
| the book was tampered with, faked or "someone tried very hard to
| make this look like a first edition," but that we also feel this
| perhaps adds to its historical value rather than subtracts._
|
| If you trade in rare and old books, for fucks sake don't do this
| shit. "Buyer beware" doesn't work for any book of value unless
| you're Sotheby's and the book is famous for being suspect. If I
| see a book collector trying to pass off a book they know is
| possibly a fake with code words like "sophisticated," I
| immediately assume the provenance of all their books is suspect.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punchcutting
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/New-Introduction-Bibliography-
| Philip-...
|
| /braindump
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(page generated 2023-03-30 23:00 UTC)