News 2005

CERL Seminar, 11 November 2005, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome
This year’s Seminar was on the theme ‘Many into one: problems and opportunities in creating shared catalogues of older books, such as access points, levels of completeness and uniformity of bibliographical information’. The speakers were

Professor Mauro Guerrini (University of Florence)
Professor Neil Harris (University of Udine)
Dr Marco Paoli (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico, Rome)
Dr Marina Venier (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome)
Professor Géza Bakonyi (University of Szeged)
Mme Valérie Tesnière (Catalogue collectif de France, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Mr Edwin Schroeder (Yale University Library)

Further details can be found here.

Provenance information
CERL has added a new section to its web site to reflect the interest in provenance which has grown in recent years, both on the part of its members and the wider scholarly public. We invite you to help us to enhance this section by sending links to provenance projects relating to European manuscript and older printed materials and also references to books and articles on European provenance topics. Send by email to secretariat@cerl.org.

Revision to CERL File Procedure 1 (FilProc 1)
The revised CERL File Procedure 1 (FilProc 1), ‘The CERL Hand-Press Book Database: guidelines’ concerning its date range and scope’, has now been posted on the CERL website here. This revision, while re-emphasising the centrality of books produced by hand from movable types during the period 1450-1830, (a) clarifies the provisions for files whose cut-off dates extend beyond 1830, (b) extends the geographical coverage to include items similarly printed outside Europe and © encourages the optional inclusion of records for items produced during the hand-press period which were printed from engraving and lithography and/or were cartographic materials, graphics or music. Microforms and other surrogates may also be included, provided that the records contain full bibliographic descriptions of the originals from which they were derived.

UNIMARC and Cataloguing Notes 3 (UNICAT 3) has also been revised; this contains a couple of corrections and an addition.

Other FilProcs and UNICATs are under revision. Suggestions for further revisions of or additions to the series which members would find useful will be welcomed by the Secretariat.

Consortium of European Research Libraries announces RLG as host for the Hand Press Book Database from 2006
The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) has just announced that RLG (originally the Research Libraries Group), California, will host its Hand Press Book (HPB) Database from September 2006.

The Hand Press Book (HPB) Database is a single integrated online resource for records of the hand press book from the inception of European printing c.1450 to c.1830. It was initiated in 1994 by a ‘consortium’ of leading European research libraries agreeing to offer and share their online records for their historical collections with the aim of unifying, preserving and promoting access to the early printed and scholarly heritage of Europe wherever it has been disseminated.

The Hand Press Book (HPB) Database at present contains the diverse holdings of pre-1830 printed books and other printed materials from more than twenty leading European and North American research libraries. It provides in a single location online descriptions that illustrate the scope of print production and the growth, and the development and movement of printed books and collections across the continent of Europe and beyond. It offers a unique resource for scholars and researchers who work in the field of interpreting European cultural heritage up to the middle of the 19th century, and for research librarians, the antiquarian book trade, museums of the book, and others involved with European printing during this period. Currently, the Hand Press Book (HPB) Database contains over 1.8 million records, and it is added to annually with new files and regular updates to existing files. The full press release can be found here.

Death of Justin Howes
CERL has learnt with great regret of the death of Justin Howes on 21 February 2005 at the age of 41. Justin made a considerable visual contribution to the Consortium, as he was responsible for CERL’s typography: ur letter heads, business cards and New Year’s cards using a version of his Galliard typeface. He also designed the layout and typography for CERL’s publications in book and pamphlet formats. Fuller details of Justin’s career as a historian and practitioner of typography can be found in the two obituaries which have appeared in The Independent and The Times.

CERL appoints new Project Manager
In March 2005, CERL appointed Drs Liesbeth Oskamp to take up the post of Project Manager for the Federated Searching facility for manuscripts and early printed books. Her appointment is for 18 hours per week and will run to 30 November 2005. She will be based in The Hague, The Netherlands and her e-mail address is liesbeth.oskamp@cerl.org. A short profile:

After her university degree in Dutch linguistics and literature and some short-term posts, Liesbeth Oskamp joined the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in 1994 in the Special Collections department to describe Dutch Alba Amicorum. Since then she held various posts within the KB: she worked at the STCN office, was project researcher for The European Library project and is currently staff member of the Expert Services and Collections department, concerned with application management and development. In this capacity she also is project manager to the Digital Bibliography for Dutch History, a new search engine in which bibliographic records from different databases are integrated into one bibliographic description and presented to the user as such.

CERL Seminar, 10 March 2005, National and University Library of Croatia, Zagreb
The Seminar on the theme of ‘The European printed heritage: the role of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL)’ is intended for rare books librarians and scholars in Croatia and neighbouring countries. It will present CERL and its services, especially the Hand Press Book database of European books printed before 1830 and the CERL Thesaurus of place names and personal names. Speakers are expected to include Marian Lefferts and David Shaw (CERL), Gunilla Jonsson (Kungeliga Biblioteket, Stockholm), Claudia Fabian (Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek, Munich), Tinka Katic (National and University Library, Zageb) and Dora Secic (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb). More details can be found here.

Le livre ancien en France: patrimoine français, patrimoine européen
A report of the meeting organised by CERL and ENSSIB at the musée Condé, Chantilly, France, on 15 May 2004, has appeared in Nouvelles du livre ancien (NLA), no. 114, hiver-printemps 2004, p. 9.

Books and their owners
A notice of the 2004 CERL Seminar held at the National Library of Scotland has appeared in IBC, the newsletter of the Istituto per i beni artistici, culturali e naturali, Bologna, entitled Le vite private dei libri.