cataloging snags

Jessy Randall

When I was hired as Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College, we had about thirty books and boxes on a shelf labeled "cataloging snags." I ignored these as long as I could, but finally one day I gave the shelf some attention.

As you might expect, I found mostly 20th century books in non-Roman writing systems -- books in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etcetera. There was also a box of old coins, including, gasp, a penny from the 1950s, worth perhaps as much as 15 cents to an expert collector. The shelf was full of junk, in other words. Nothing "special" for Special Collections at all.

And then there was this.

I opened it up.

Let me try to approximate the sound I made at this point. It was something like this:

aahhAAHHAAHHHHHH?! urghhghhrraahhhhrghhfhfhhhhghhh.

The book is the first published English translation of Aristotle's Politics, printed by Adam Islip in London in 1598. It has the bookplate of English scholar Sir Sidney Lee (b. 1859), editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. He wrote a little bit about Aristotle and a lot about Shakespeare.

We cataloged it right away. How it ended up on the cataloging snags shelf, I don't know. It wasn't terribly difficult to catalog -- it has its title page, and the Library of Congress owns a copy. It's in beautiful condition and is one of the more valuable books we have in the library. It's now in our temperature- and humidity-controlled high-security vault. I bring it out regularly to show to classes in Classics, Philosophy, Political Science, and Book Studies. And I'm thinking about making the kitty cat on the title page the mascot for Special Collections.

 

Comments

[Sarah]

Wow - that's amazing!

[Jessy Randall]

Sarah, come up and see it! It has beautiful diagrams, too.

[Dina Wood]

What a fantastic thrill that must have been for you! I vote for the kitty being the emblem- he is a miniature CC Tiger :)

[Jessy Randall]

I didn't even think of that! You're right! Next time we do a brochure I'm going to try to re-brand us (a term I despise) with the mini-tiger.

[Brenda]

I always worry about what is stored away unnoticed. Glad you found it & shared! Love the kitty too!

[Mimi]

What a wonderful find! Thanks for sharing this. It's one of the things I love, love, LOVE about working in the world of books: the discovery of real treasure among the memorbilia and marginalia. I also love that the kitten can be another incarnation of the CC Tiger. As old as the book is, the kitty represents a pre-CC mascot...