Friday, January 29, 2010

As I'm making my way through some of Thomas Jefferson's books, I'm wishing a couple things: that Latin wasn't as long ago and far away as it was (ca. '97-'99), and that I'd taken that New Testament Greek class when I had the chance. I adored Intro to Biblical Hebrew, but so far TJ isn't reading anything right to left... Cataloging this stuff is interesting. It's sometimes hard to differentiate proper nouns in the Greek and Latin and also to know what punctuation marks were actually existing on the title pages in titles that might run on for several lines-- in other words, where titles end and subtitles begin. There are some resources I can use for double checking that information. There's WorldCat, but a resource I wasn't familiar with before starting my internship and have become fond of using is the English Short Title Catalogue, hosted by the British Library. It provides intuitive basic and advanced search interfaces and well-displayed results, and provides quick but ample insight into the 'chief sources of information' from yesteryear, showing publication data like 'Londini : impensis W. Innys ad Insignia Principis in CÅ“meterio Divi Pauli, MDCCXXIX. [1729]'. Some Latin is coming back to me (with the aid of ye olde internet), as I run across terms, especially in the pub data, like 'impensis' for 'at the expense of' and 'typis' meaning 'of the type', presuming the typesetter. I recently ran across this handy, albeit dated, document, in case you're wanting to catch up on some other esoteric printing terms.

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