Why:
- Unique materials
- Unique objects (even if the copy is not unique)
- New discoveries
- History of collecting, readership
- Pleasure
What:
- Manuscripts (unique)
- Books (rare)
- Fragile print material
- Periodicals, newspapers (ephemera)
- Literary archives (papers, letters, drafts, manuscripts)
- Electronic literary archives (emails, files, eLiterature)
- Letters
- Documents
- Institutional records (e.g., theatre company records)
- Artists’ archives
Where:
- University libraries
- National archives (e.g., Library and Archives Canada)
- Regional archives (e.g., City of Vancouver Archives)
- National libraries, which are usually also deposit libraries (e.g., The British Library, Library of Congress, National Library of Scotland)
- In public libraries (e.g., Vancouver Library)
- In restricted-access collections (e.g., the Legislative Library of British Columbia)
- Galleries and museums (e.g., The Maritime Museum of British Columbia, National Art Library at the Victoria and Alberta Museum)
- In private collections that you can access (e.g., Longleat House, National Trust houses, Jefferson Library at Monticello, church and diocesan collections, monasteries)
- In private collections that you can’t access. (Pro-Tip: Set up an eBay alert. Shout-out to a classmate: See Lauren Elle Degaine’s “The ‘eBay Archive’: Recovering Early Women Type Designers.”)
Access:
- In person
- Digital surrogates
- Print surrogates
- Microfilm
- Vicariously through descriptions
How to Find:
- Finding aids, catalogues, and handlists for specific collections
- Bruce and Dorothy Brown Collection (note the downloadable handlist in PDF form)
- Rough Register of Acquisitions in the Department of Manuscripts, British Library, 1976-1980. CD 1042 A2 L56 v.15 (compact shelving)
- A Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in the Digby Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Z6621 B663 M55 (stacks)
- Library/Archive catalogues (on line or in print)
- UVic SCUA catalogue is integrated into UVic Libraries catalogue. Search “Books & media” and set the “Limits” to “Special Collections.” You can also try a Special Collections Search here: http://webapp.library.uvic.ca/scbrowse/index.php but the output format is not ideal.
- Large aggregate sites
- Digital collections at holding libraries
- Indices and union lists (there are many!)
- Union List of Manuscripts in Canadian Repositories. Z6620 C3L3 1975 (compact shelving)
- Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Z6611 L7B42 (compact shelving)
- A Bibliography of the Manuscripts of Patrick Branwell Brontë. PR4174 B23 Z55 (stacks)
- Digital collections of materials gathered together from various places (frequently subscription-only)
- Early English Books Online
- Eighteenth-Century Collections Online
- The Modernist Journals Project (open-access)
- Scholarly projects online (often open-access; often federated through ARC)
- Federated sites within the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC)
- 18thConnect (aggregates 842,000+ digital objects from 59+ federated sites)
- Nines (aggregates 897,000+ digital objects from 145 federated sites)
- Themed collections and online exhibitions
- Occasional collections
- Douglas Treaties (for the Songhees Conference)
Field trip to the Compact Shelving (my favourite part of the Library).
Additional Considerations:
- Collections mandate (see UVic’s Archives Collections Policy)
- Book collectors
- Donors
- Local commitments (to community, to researchers)
Terms for Today:
- metadata
- provenance
- historical bibliography
- deposit library
- GLAM organizations (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums)
Skills
Critical Verbs:
Use my list of verbs to describe what we do as critics and scholars.
Writing Annotations:
See “How to Write an Annotation” for tips.
Examples from the World Shakespeare Bibliography.
Assignments
Questions about Enumerative Bibliography Assignment
Master the Field (introduced last week)
Janelle Jenstad 