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The Collation

Sizing books up

A couple of weeks back I posted some images with the aim of destabilizing some of our assumptions about what early modern texts look like. In the mix was an image of a “big” book followed by a “tiny” one.

It was, I think, obvious even on the computer screen that the big book was big and the tiny one was tiny. It was not, I don’t think, obvious how big and how tiny those books were. The big book is Holinshed’s Chronicles (STC 13569 copy 2), coming in at a massive 38 cm. tall; the tiny book is John Taylor’s thumb bible, Verbum sempiternum (STC 23811.2), rising to a minimal 4.5 cm. tall. But even knowing those numbers, it can be hard to translate that into something understandable without placing them side-by-side:

a size comparison

a size comparison

The thumb bible is 12% the size of the Holinshed. That’s a big difference. And yet on a computer screen, when you’re looking at the original images, there’s no difference in their size at all: both fit neatly into the space provided, contracting or expanding as needed. So what does it mean to talk about the size of books when we’re looking at digitized images of them? 

  1. I suspect trimming has more to do with it.
  2. To be precise: I took the second image, of a 22 cm.-tall book, as my baseline, and enlarged or shrank the other books accordingly, so that if 22 cm. = 8.5 in. on my slide, then a 12 cm. book was reduced to 4.64 in.

Comments

Excellent post, and the pictures really bring the point home. Size is important.

I have the same difficulties you articulated in envisioning scale, even when written measurements and/or a shot with a ruler are provided (what’s that in inches? OK, how does that compare to a sheet of typing paper?). And even when I’ve done that, I usually don’t feel the sense of size in any visceral way.

The times I have felt the immediate impact of a book’s size are when I’ve come across an image that includes the thumb of someone holding the book. That really registers directly, no mental translation needed at all: “OMG, that Book of Hours is tiny!!!!”

A thumb in every shot is probably not the ideal way to digitize books. But maybe a cardboard cutout of a life size photo of a thumb next to the first or last image of a volume would be the way to go. I’m only half kidding.

In the meantime, I’ll save the bookmark for my online centimeters to inches calculator and keep a piece of typing paper handy.

Cynthia Guggemos (aka bxknits) — July 11, 2013

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I think this is an excellent point—hands are a more intuitive sign of scale than rulers for me, too. Yes, we all have different sized hands, but I grasp it much more quickly. Other things that I’ve seen used for scale—quarters, a pack of cards (or cigarettes!)—also work better for me than a more abstract concept of inches or centimeters.

Sarah Werner — July 12, 2013

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I could swear I came across an image database where you can select two or more thumbnails, then double-click to re-display them in relative size to each other. But maybe that was a dream?

Erin Blake — July 11, 2013

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Caveat about book height in online catalogs: rare cataloging rules round UP to the nearest centimeter (e.g., if it measures 21.1 cm it’s recorded as 22 cm), and they measure the binding, not the text block, unless they differ by 3 cm or more (in which case both are provided).

Erin Blake — July 11, 2013

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I should note that some of the measurements I use for the items in this piece were gathered not from their catalog records but from the information provided in the bindings database records. That information was usually given in millimeters, which explains in part why I describe the thumb bible as being 4.5 cm.

And, if your vision of that image database wasn’t a dream, I’d love to know more and to check it out!

Sarah Werner — July 12, 2013

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We used to record height as well in the catalog, rounding it up to the nearest centimeter. The problem was that you didn’t know what was being measured: height of the book block, height of the binding, or height of the set text. Only the last measurement is not (entirely) copy-specific, but it is also problematic: are page numbers or headlines included or not? How do you measure an oblong book? Where is the measurement taken? In the end we decided no longer to record height, except for manuscripts. The STCV only records measurements for broadsheets, but it clearly indicates that it is the type area, gives both height and width, and uses millimeters.

Steven Van Impe — July 17, 2013

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[…] The problem that we’re facing, in my world, is that the digital objects we’re producing sometimes lead to wonky discoveries. Here’s one thing that has been bothering me recently: the size of books. […]

disembodying the past to preserve it | Wynken de Worde — July 26, 2013

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