[Scriptoris] rare books

[Diane Rudin]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]

I know I probably don't have to say this, but I will anyway, because I know too many librarians and museum collections managers with horror stories.

Please, please don't go to a special collection expecting to be able to browse.  Don't write a letter or make a phone call asking to look at anything other than a single specific item or two.  Take the time to find out what items they have in their collection before contacting them.  Most places have excellent websites now.  Also, use good sense.

For instance, Southern Methodist University's collection of rare books of interest to us (medieval/Renaissance) is all religious in nature.  The University of North Texas built its reputation as a music school; their rare books of interest are going to be music books.  I don't know if they have any missals or graduals there; I'll have to ask my brother-in-law.  The rare book room at UT-Southwest Medical Center Library contains rare medical texts.  UT has more money and rich alumni than anyone, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center there has a better selection of original manuscripts than you'll find anywhere else in the state.  HL Ari can attest from personal experience that their hours are erratic, at best, and certainly not what they claim their hours are.  On the other hand, when last I checked, which was admittedly several years ago, Rice University in Houston had no handcrafted original manuscripts from before 1600 A.D. at all.  None.  They did have a nice big single page framed and hanging on the wall; from what I can remember, it's Italian, late 14th century.  But that was it, and they were rather confused that I wanted to examine it up close.

Nothing drives museum collections managers crazier than getting letters saying, in these *exact* words, "I want to look at your medieval manuscripts".  I'm not making this up.  Janet Arnold, in her excellent *Handbook of Costume* (a primer on how to do costume research, not a "who wore what when" book), discussed what makes a good letter to a museum, and bad letters, using real examples.  (IMHO, this book should be required reading for the SCA.  Too bad it's *very* out of print.  Try Interlibrary Loan.  That's how I first read it.)  A good letter asks a very specific question.  For instance, in our scribal parlance, "I have been studying the techniques of the mid-fifteenth-century Florentine illuminators of books of hours, and would appreciate the opportunity to examine the V------- Hours in your collection."  "I have been studying the secretary hands used by thirteenth-century students in their production of Bibles, and would appreciate the opportunity to examine one of those thirteenth-century 'student Bibles' in your collection."

The bottom line?  Research your research sources before you go visiting them.  It will save them, and you, a lot of wasted, frustrated time.

--Serena, the voice of "been there, done that"



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