AZ ORSZÁGOS SZÉCHÉNYI KÖNYVTÁR ÉVKÖNYVE 1980. Budapest (1982)

II. A könyvtári munka elvi és gyakorlati kérdései - Borsa Gedeon: A 16. századi nyomtatványok átfogó regisztrálásának terve - A comprehensive scheme of registering 16th century printed books

seems in fact almost hopeless, however, up-to-date techniques (computers and reprography) combined with good organization and world-wide cooperation may offer the way out of this deadlock. It is not conscious in everyone what the first task to achieve this work ought to be, namely, to explore the copies of 16th century printed books in every collection. The work invested in this is —according to the author's personal experience—not particularly large or troublesome. It is a more varied but far more difficult task to determine in the case of incomplete printed books or those without date whether they were in fact printed in the 16th century or not. It is necessary that the world catalogue of 16th century printed books preserved in public collections all over the world (Corpus librorum XVI saeculi impressorum) should record the contents of the book on the one hand and, on the other hand, it should also provide an infallible basis to identify the individual copies with the bibliographically registered edition or else mark them off from it. The first task can be practically solved with the means of standard bibliographical respectively library cataloguing while as to the second a reliable basis can only be provided by a reprographic copy of the original. Consequently, the above duality determines how the individual printed books should be recorded in the "Corpus". Thematical approach should be rather moderate since a more detailed analysis of it is far more a task that retrospective national bibliographies have to shoulder. For a short description (author, title, time and place of publication, printer or publisher) the general instructions of ISBD seem appropriate. To mark off the bibliographically different editions of a textually identical work needs a complex method ranging from the reproduction of the title page through collation reflecting the order of fascicles to the so-called "fingerprint" consisting of characters taken from the end of lines exactly allocated beforehand. Since the publication of the above complex description serving for both thematical and formal identification should be determined by merely practical aspects (as frequency, items presenting no special difficulty), therefore, its launching can be realized almost at once. The concept that its publication is not bound or slackened by theoretical aspects (e.g. alphabetical or chronological order) ensures an extremely flexible system. The items of the above description should be provided with running numbers only. At the same time it is indispensable to apply a manifold index system in order to make the retrieval of the great number of data offered by the items of "Corpus" possible. It is also necessary that these auxiliary indexes should be published simultaneously, and should refer back to the identification number of the item in "Corpus". On the other hand, the production and publication of these indexes is today considerably facilitated by computers, respectively by the COM-system (computer output microfiche). At the same time this flexible system makes decentralized procession i.e. a division of labour based on world wide cooperation also possible. Its finding list for instance can be constantly completed as the libraxies will be able to identify their copies reliably on the basis of the descriptions in "Corpus". When next time cumulating the indexes the computer will take the data of these newly identified copies also into consideration and includes them in the indexes. The running mimber given to an item in the "Corpus" is suitable at the same time for an ISBN number serving for identification. It is also feasible that a reprographic copy of not only the title page but also of the whole printed work (in microfiche) will be applied. It would not only ensure the possibility of perfect identification but, in due time, it could also be realized that the complete printed book material of the 16th century be accessible at several sites of the world — the catalogue of which would represent the "Corpus" itself. In this case modern technology would in fact produce a basis of enormous scientific value for almost all historical disciplines. This world catalogue, respectively its indexes could be efficiently supported by compiling appropriate reference tools. Thus, a "Thesaurus scriptorum titulorumque" could provide a clear survey and unified terminology both as to the names of literary contributors and the textually identical publications bearing different titles. A similar task is performed by "Clavis typographorum librariorumque" covering the places of printing as well as the date, resp. field of activity and nominal form of printers and publishers; of which a part dealing with Italy preceding 1601 has already been published by author — so to say as an experiment. 150