Over the last year, I have been taking inventory of the artists' books collection. It might seem like an inventory list should have already existed or that there should at least be an easy way to assemble one from the library's catalog. It is unfortunately a little more complicated than that for a number of reasons, perhaps most salient is that not all of the artists' books specimens are cataloged as such.
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| The LOC Genre/Form Term for Arists' Books was created in 2017 |
As mentioned previously, it is possible to search for artists' books in the library's catalog by using the Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings listed in each catalog entry. If you locate one artist's book, you can use the LC subject headings to link to other books of the same type or subject. That said, there are some glitches in trying to locate the books this way. See my previous post for an explanation of artists' books versus artists' books specimens. Another example is that the artists' books genre heading only came into being in 2017. Artists' books were being collected at UNCG for decades before the artists' books genre heading was created so many books did not receive the designation. And, since there is a great deal of debate about what defines an artist's book some may be listed under other subject headings, such as poetry, children's literature, etc. Our fantastic cataloging team have worked hard to update records as needed, but to retroactively ensure all entries have this genre heading could be very time consuming. The collection inventory I have created may be a great resource for updating those records eventually, perhaps it would be a great project for an intern.
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| A few rows of the collection inventory spreadsheet |
The collection inventory began with creating a spreadsheet. One goal was to capture relevant bibliographical information, such as the titles, book artists or authors, publication dates, etc. To increase the usefulness of the inventory, it was also important to capture a list of the physical characteristics and subjects of each book. Physical characteristics included the bookbinding and printing methods used, but I was also able to note any needed repairs or other unique characteristics. In many cases, the subjects of books were already collected as part of the description in the catalog entry. Yet, if the subject was not immediately clear to the cataloger through the book itself, such as in a colophon or associated descriptive materials, no subject is listed. Likewise, there is often the consideration that by including such details in a catalog entry, it may influence or preempt a reader's experience of the artist's book. As this collection is regularly used to support instructional sessions with classes, it was important for the inventory to include at least general references to the subject matter in the books. For example, if I were sharing books with a creative writing class, I might want to be able to pull titles related to their course content, such as poetry, or to pull examples of a specific format, such as chapbooks.
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| Discussing chapbooks with Creative Writing graduate students |
Once the inventory was created it was time to check the list and determine the collection's strengths and better define its focus. It is important to note that the collection inventory should be considered a living document as it will never really be finished. Additional discoveries may be made of artists' books already in the collection or, in the case of new acquisitions, the list will need to be updated regularly. The ultimate goal is to use the inventory analysis to inform a collection development policy for this collection. Kathelene McCarty Smith, Interim Head of SCUA, sometimes refers potential acquisitions of artists' books as "a box of puppies", meaning that there is often so much to love about them that it can be a challenge to make selections. For that reason, it is important to have a collection development policy to drive decision making around new acquisitions rather than buying every "adorable puppy" that comes along, which would be easy to do if funding sources were infinite.
Using the spreadsheet as a sorting tool, the list of artists' books specimens were sorted in several different ways to achieve a rough assessment of collection strengths. For instance, when sorting by publication date, it was easier to determine how many books were created in a certain decade. Or, when sorting by artist or author, it was clear which artists were more heavily represented in the collection. Using this method, the following strengths surfaced:
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| Sorting by publication date revealed which time periods are best represented in the collection |
When sorted by publication dates in decades, our two strongest are not surprisingly the 1990s and 2000s. We have a good number in the 1960s and 1970s and fall off a bit in the 1980s. The spread of publication dates overall definitely follows along with the history of making in the field of artists' books. The most represented artists or authors represented in the collection were Amos P. Kennedy (Jubalee/Jubilee/Kennedy & Sons Press), Ed Hutchins (Editions Press), Lois Morrison, and Morris Cox (Gogmagog Press). Janus Press (Claire Van Vliet) and Flying Fish Press (Julie Chen) are also fairly well represented. The split between male and female artists represented in the collection was nearly even. There were several collaborations between both male and females as well as a few artists whose gender is unknown/unidentified, so this category is obviously somewhat problematic, and possibly unnecessary, to define.
As for binding method or structure, accordions, miniatures, pamphlets, codices, sculptural book works, and toy/movable books are well represented. The most represented printing methods were letterpress and offset, though there are several hand printed methods used that were difficult to confidently identify when conducting the inventory. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of variety of the printing methods used in the collection.
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| Diaries by Dieter Roth (Image: Yale Books) Letters, correspondence, and diaries are common subjects of the artists' books collection |
And finally, there are many titles that overlap more than one subject area, but the following categories surfaced most commonly:
- proverbs/folk tales/folklore/mythology
- poetry
- women/gender issues
- social or political issues/war
- death
- animals/nature/seasons
- letters/correspondence/diaries
- maps/navigation/world
The next step in this process will be to draft the Artists' Books Collection Development Policy. If you would like to continue to read along, please subscribe to this blog by clicking the link in the sidebar.
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Bradley, F. (Ed.). (2012, September 25). Dieter Roth: Diaries. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300185492/dieter-roth.
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