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The Collation

The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

An unfinished gold-tooled binding
Collation

An unfinished gold-tooled binding

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Author
Erin Blake

July’s Crocodile mystery asked: why is this binding interesting? There are any number of answers, but the one I had in mind was: it’s unfinished. Last week’s picture shows the front cover of Folger call number STC 13051.3, the 1630 edition of A helpe…

"What manner o'thing is your crocodile?" July 2016
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"What manner o'thing is your crocodile?" July 2016

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Author
The Collation

This month’s mystery could have many different answers, but there’s one in particular we’re looking for. The question is simple: why is this binding interesting? Any ideas? Please share your answers in the comments, and check back next week to find out if any…

Music Manuscripts
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Music Manuscripts

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Author
Abbie Weinberg

Recently, I have found myself answering a number of reference questions concerning our musical holdings (a reference librarian manifestation of the frequency illusion perhaps?). Whatever the reason, it has been a nice reminder that some of our manuscript holdings contain…

Investigating a Bull's Head Watermark
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Investigating a Bull's Head Watermark

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Author
Caroline Duroselle-Melish

What would draw an eighteenth-century reader to an early sixteenth-century book, written in Latin, on venereal disease? The Folger Shakespeare Library’s copy of Ulrich von Hutten’s book De Guaici medicina et morbo gallico liber unus printed in 1531 by Johann…

A Pictorial Table of Contents
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A Pictorial Table of Contents

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Author
Heather Wolfe

Last week’s Crocodile was a jumble of household instruments with numbers next to them. As our first commenter, Katie Will, correctly guessed, the detail was from the table of contents of a type of heraldic manuscript known as an Ordinary.…

“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: June 2016
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“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: June 2016

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Author
The Collation

It’s the last day of the month, and our intrepid readers know what that means: mystery time! So for this month, we ask: why on earth would someone make a jumble of pictures of everyday items like this? And why…

What’s in a genre? Metadata, Controlled Vocabularies, and the Folger’s Digital Anthology
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What’s in a genre? Metadata, Controlled Vocabularies, and the Folger’s Digital Anthology

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Author
Meaghan J. Brown

  Shakespeare’s plays are organized in the First Folio into three now familiar genre categories: Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories. Later scholars added a fourth, describing certain late plays like The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale that contain elements of both…

Early Modern Edit-a-Thon
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Early Modern Edit-a-Thon

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Author
Sarah Hovde

Have you noticed any new articles on Wikipedia lately? An average of 700-800 are added to the English-language Wikipedia each day. This is a rough average based on Wikipedia’s own calculations; you can read more about them on their Size…

Signature statements in book cataloging
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Signature statements in book cataloging

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Author
Erin Blake

Today’s post returns to the cliffhanger at the end of Tuesday’s Physical description in book cataloging overview: if , CXXII leaves : ill. ; 31 cm (fol.) forms a complete physical description in a library catalog, then what’s up with a4 A-O8 P10 and where does it fit…

Physical description in book cataloging
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Physical description in book cataloging

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Author
Erin Blake

Does a4 A-O8 P10 make perfect sense to you? If so, please read on anyway. This isn’t a post on how to decode a collational formula. It’s a post about what to expect (and what not to expect) in the “physical description”…

Unlocking An Early Modern Account Book
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Unlocking An Early Modern Account Book

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Author
Paul Dingman

The answer to last week’s Crocodile mystery is, as some of you guessed, £135 15s 0d (or 135 pounds, 15 shillings). This amount is a snippet of one entry made on a page in Folger MS V.b.308, the account book of…

Building a Replica of the John Wilkes Booth Diary
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Building a Replica of the John Wilkes Booth Diary

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Author
Austin Plann Curley

Guest Post by Folger conservator Austin Plann Curley “You can’t always get what you want.” So said the Rolling Stones in 1969. Such was the case for the Folger Shakespeare Library in our recent request to borrow the Diary of…

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