{"id":8435,"date":"2014-07-17T11:13:28","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T15:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/collation.folger.edu\/?p=8435"},"modified":"2016-02-19T18:55:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T23:55:44","slug":"so-how-do-you-find-symbols-in-signature-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/2014\/07\/so-how-do-you-find-symbols-in-signature-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"So how do you find symbols in signature marks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Co-written by Sarah Werner and Erin Blake<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Sarah:<\/h3>\n<p>In <a title=\"The symbols of signature marks\" href=\"http:\/\/collation.folger.edu\/2014\/07\/the-symbols-of-signature-marks\/\">my last post<\/a>, I showed some examples of books that use symbols in signature marks. But how did I find these books and how might you find more examples? It&#8217;s one thing to search for books printed in the year 1542, since &#8220;publication year&#8221; is a standard search box and &#8220;1542&#8221; is written in standard typography. But you can&#8217;t really type &#8220;\u00b6&#8221; into a search box and get useful results. (Okay, you might be able to\u00a0type &#8220;\u00b6&#8221; into your search box\u00a0but you&#8217;ll get something like what Hamnet spits out: &#8220;The system could not interpret your search statement.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>I got started on this path I saw this tweet\u00a0from the digitization folks at University of Oklahoma:\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FolgerResearch\">@FolgerResearch<\/a> We ref signature mark in file names; this stymied us. Euclid&#8217;s Elementes 1570 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OUHOSCollection\">@OUHOSCollection<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/7V8dwSGmic\">pic.twitter.com\/7V8dwSGmic<\/a> \u2014 OU Lib Digitization (@OULibDigitize) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OULibDigitize\/statuses\/464536394795606017\">May 8, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>Although I had my hunch as to what the answer to OU&#8217;s question, I had to look up the book&#8217;s <a title=\"ESTC record\" href=\"http:\/\/estc.bl.uk\/S106699\">ESTC record<\/a> to see how this signature mark was indicated. There in one of the general notes is this:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Signatures: [fist]\u2074 *\u2074 a-d\u2074 A-X\u2074 Aa-Yy\u2076 AA-YY\u2076 AAa-FFf\u2076 GGg-YYy\u2074 AAA-EEE\u2074.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That gives us a way for finding other examples of books that use fists to indicate gatherings. ((See the comments on my last post for a conversation\u00a0about <a title=\"blog comments\" href=\"http:\/\/collation.folger.edu\/2014\/07\/the-symbols-of-signature-marks\/#comment-101615\">using &#8220;fist&#8221; as opposed to &#8220;manicule&#8221;<\/a> in this context.)) Because I wanted to look at these books, not simply know that they exist, my first instinct was to search in Hamnet. But I knew immediately one of the problems that would crop up. Searching for &#8220;fist&#8221; in record notes would bring up any instance of &#8220;fist&#8221; in the Folger&#8217;s detailed copy-specific descriptions, including <a title=\"catalog record\" href=\"http:\/\/shakespeare.folger.edu\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=90752\">notes like this<\/a>: &#8220;Manuscript finding note on leaf f1r,\u00a0fist\u00a0in red ink on leaf b2r.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, I knew that the ESTC allowed you to search by library holding and I knew that the ESTC&#8217;s note field included collation formulas but not copy-specific notes. So I did an advanced search in the ESTC records that looked for &#8220;fist&#8221; in the &#8220;notes&#8221; field and &#8220;Folger&#8221; in &#8220;library name&#8221; and got 15 results. Not all of those 15 results were what I was looking for, of course&#8212;one was for <a title=\"ESTC record\" href=\"http:\/\/estc.bl.uk\/R228780\">a book with the note<\/a> &#8220;This edition has woodcut of a fist holding a dagger on the recto of title page and portrait on the verso; another edition has woodcut portrait on title page.&#8221; But this method gave me a way to quickly find examples of books held at the Folger that used fists in signature marks.<\/p>\n<p>My plan had two shortcomings, however. First, it only allowed me to search through books that fell within ESTC parameters: those printed in English or in English-speaking countries before 1801. ((That&#8217;s a rough approximation of what&#8217;s included in the ESTC; full details can be found <a title=\"about the ESTC\" href=\"http:\/\/estc.bl.uk\/F\/8JALIUMP147962HLKB7RTH5E2XNHFQKB9N9R1UM499MXFB1J29-06888?func=file&amp;file_name=catalogue-options\">here<\/a>.)) What about books printed on the Continent? I was sure, based on my devotion to Sayce&#8217;s work, that there would be plenty of interesting examples outside of the British book industry. But while the Folger has a large collection of Continental books, I still wasn&#8217;t sure how to effectively search them for collation statements.<\/p>\n<p>The second shortcoming was that while I was aware of the standard cataloging term referring to fists, I was less sure of the vocabulary used to describe other symbols that appear in signature marks. It was clear to me from looking at the statement for <a title=\"catalog record\" href=\"http:\/\/shakespeare.folger.edu\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=164293\">Jewel&#8217;s <em>Works<\/em><\/a> (one of the books I discussed in my last post) that what I would describe as pilcrows are identified as &#8220;[par.]&#8221;, as seen in its record: &#8220;[par.]-2[par.]\u2076 <em>a-<\/em>i\u2076 A-3G\u2076 3H\u2078; \u00b2[par.]-2[par.]\u2076 3[par.]\u2078 A-2R\u2076, [fist]A-[fist]Z\u2076 [fist]2A\u2078.&#8221; I might have figured that out, but I don&#8217;t think it would have occurred to me to search for the triangle of asterisks I saw in Calvin&#8217;s sermons the way that they appear in <a title=\"catalog record\" href=\"http:\/\/shakespeare.folger.edu\/cgi-bin\/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=162071\">the record<\/a>: &#8220;[fist]\u2074 3*\u00b2 A-G\u2078 H\u2074.&#8221; (Nor, frankly, would it have occurred to me, on seeing that statement to imagine three asterisks in a triangle rather than in a straight line.) ((Actually, after another reading of Sayce, I was able to work out a vocabulary for some of these symbols, including an asterism.))<\/p>\n<p>Clearly this is where we need some help from our friendly neighborhood Head of Collection Information Services!<\/p>\n<h3>Erin:<\/h3>\n<p>Although there isn&#8217;t a controlled vocabulary\u00a0for\u00a0the symbols used in signature marks, <em>Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books)<\/em> has<em>\u00a0<\/em>a list of seven examples, and the introductory wording\u00a0strongly implies that these are the &#8220;standard&#8221; terms that should be used:<\/p>\n<p class=\"Normalparagraph\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong><span class=\"normalbold\">7B9.2. Unavailable characters. \u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>If the gatherings are signed with\u2026\u00a0unavailable characters, substitute a descriptive term or an abbreviation for that term if a standard one exists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[dagger] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u2020)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[double dagger] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u2021)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[fist] <span class=\"10ptitalic\">(<\/span><em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u261e)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[fleuron] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u2767)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[maltese cross] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u2720)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[par.] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u00b6)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\" style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">[sec.] (<em><span class=\"ExamplecommentprefaceChar\">Comment<\/span>:<\/em> Gathering is signed with \u00a7)<\/p>\n<p class=\"Example\">Seven examples is an unusually large number for a DCRM rule, but it still doesn&#8217;t go far enough. Those three asterisks forming a triangle?\u00a0Rare materials catalogers disagree. It has come up twice on DCRM-L, the &#8220;DCRM Users&#8217; Group&#8221; list, that I know of: in October 2011 and March 2014. Both times, the discussion thread went something like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asterism_(typography)\">Asterism<\/a>&#8221; is the correct typographical term, so we should use it.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, but almost every catalog user will be baffled by the term &#8220;asterism&#8221; so we shouldn&#8217;t use it.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, but &#8220;asterism&#8221; is in the dictionary, so users who don&#8217;t know can jolly well look it up.<\/li>\n<li>Yes, but &#8220;asterism&#8221; has more than one dictionary meaning, so how are they supposed to know?<\/li>\n<li>Why\u00a0privilege &#8220;asterism&#8221; anyway? &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pilcrow\">Pilcrow<\/a>&#8221; is the correct typographical terms for &#8220;\u00b6&#8221;\u00a0but we write &#8220;[par.]&#8221;\u00a0not\u00a0&#8220;[pilcrow]&#8221; in catalog records.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If I had to place a bet, I&#8217;d say that &#8220;[par.]&#8221; and &#8220;[sec.]&#8221; will be replaced by &#8220;[pilcrow]&#8221; and &#8220;[section sign]&#8221; in DCRM\u00a0cataloging before too long. Avoiding abbreviations is an important new principle, \u00a0and the ubiquity of Unicode terminology\u00a0and Wikipedia mean\u00a0asterism, pilcrow, and section sign\u00a0are perfectly reasonable terms to use in English. (By the way, if you want the inside scoop on\u00a0rare materials descriptive\u00a0cataloging rules, you can now get\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rbms.info\/dcrm\/dcrmb\/\">DCRM(Books)<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/rbms.info\/dcrm\/dcrmg\/\">DCRM(Graphics)<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/rbms.info\/dcrm\/dcrms\/\">DCRM(Serials)<\/a>\u00a0as free PDFs. The manuals for manuscripts, maps, and music will join them once they&#8217;re completed.)<\/p>\n<p>As for how to <em>find<\/em>\u00a0books with symbols\u00a0in signature marks, congratulations on figuring out the ESTC \u00a0work-around, though as you said, that doesn&#8217;t\u00a0get you to any Continental publications at the Folger, unless they were English-language texts. The good news is that you didn&#8217;t miss anything obvious. There really is no satisfying\u00a0way to search Hamnet for examples you can get your hands on. Here&#8217;s the not-so-satisfying way I&#8217;d go about it.<\/p>\n<p>First, assess the clues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Not all rare book catalog records include signatures (it&#8217;s not a required note, just a note to include &#8220;if considered important&#8221;) but when they do, the rules say &#8220;preface this note with the word &#8216;Signatures&#8217; and a colon.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The term &#8220;fist&#8221; will always be in the singular in a signature note, but usually in the plural in copy-specific notes. ((A search in &#8220;Folger Copy Notes&#8221; for &#8220;fists&#8221; [not] &#8220;fist&#8221;\u00a0brings up 381 entries; a search for &#8220;fist&#8221; [not] &#8220;fists&#8221; brings up 28 entries.))<\/li>\n<li>Hamnet searches (like pretty much all online library catalog searches) ignore case and punctuation, so the square brackets around &#8220;fist&#8221; and the capital &#8220;S&#8221; and colon in &#8220;Signatures:&#8221; won&#8217;t be any help.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Second, build the search:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>On the &#8220;Advanced search&#8221; tab, click the &#8220;Set limits&#8221; link at lower right and limit the location to &#8220;Deck B-STC Vault&#8221; and &#8220;Deck C-Vault&#8221; (there are probably examples in &#8220;Deck B-Art Vault&#8221; too, but there are too many pictures with descriptive notes like &#8220;he stands with raised fist&#8221; to make that worthwhile).<\/li>\n<li>Do an &#8220;all of these&#8221; search for &#8220;Signature&#8221; and &#8220;fist&#8221; in &#8220;All Notes&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You&#8217;ll get a few false hits, but not so many that you can&#8217;t browse the results.<\/p>\n<p>What your ESTC search also revealed is a gap\u00a0in the Hamnet searches we provide. You can search &#8220;All Notes&#8221; and you can search just the sub-set of those that are &#8220;Folger Copy Notes&#8221; but you can&#8217;t do the inverse: there&#8217;s no way to search <em>only<\/em> the general notes. At least, there&#8217;s no way right <em>now<\/em> to search only the general notes. <em>Collation<\/em> readers, is it worth adding that search? Or is the drop-down &#8220;Search in&#8221; list on the Advanced search tab already way too long and confusing? ((Note that although we can add just about any search imaginable, and name it anything we want, we can&#8217;t change the <em>order<\/em> of the list. It automatically sorts\u00a0by popularity, so ISBN\u00a0comes first thanks to automated searching that links on ISBN.))<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Co-written by Sarah Werner and Erin Blake Sarah: In my last post, I showed some examples of books that use symbols in signature marks. But how did I find these books and how might you find more examples? It&#8217;s one thing to search for books printed in the year 1542, since &#8220;publication year&#8221; is a standard search box and &#8220;1542&#8221; is written in standard typography. But you can&#8217;t really type &#8220;\u00b6&#8221; into a search box and get useful results. (Okay, you might be able to\u00a0type &#8220;\u00b6&#8221; into your search box\u00a0but you&#8217;ll get something like what Hamnet spits out: &#8220;The system could not interpret your search statement.&#8221;) I got started on this path I saw this tweet\u00a0from the digitization folks at University of Oklahoma:\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[22,90],"class_list":["post-8435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collation","tag-cataloging","tag-signature-marks","post-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}