UCD LIBRARY CULTURAL HERITAGE COLLECTIONS
Welcome to the UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog. Discover and explore the historical treasures housed within our Archives, Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and Digital Library
Most books contain clues relating to the many hands that made them. A rise in the appreciation for the art of the book — that is as an object — has generated a desire both to admire and to study books for their individuality and charming features, such as printers’ devices, marbled endpapers, painted fore-edges, …
Continue reading "Tiny Tickets: the mark of past booksellers & bookbinders"
During my time in Special Collections, I worked on two main projects: tidying the new storeroom and searching for provenance within a particular collection. Both tasks required physically handling almost every book I encountered. The biggest revelation from this work was the sensory nature of special collections. I went into the tasks knowing I would …
Continue reading "Internship at UCD Special Collections: A Surprisingly Sensory Situation"
Provenance in relation to books refers to what is rather grandly called ‘custodial history’; this could be mistaken for the rap sheet of a frequent tenant of Mountjoy rather than a blameless book. At its simplest, provenance refers to the previous owners of the book, from the first purchaser who inscribed his or her name …
Librarians have a very mixed attitude to markings, underlining, or scribbling on books. In most cases it is frowned upon. In one infamous case from the 1960s, the British playwright Joe Orton served six months in gaol for defacing books from Islington Public Library. However, in other cases, far from being viewed as vandalism, ‘markings’ …