>I must decide quickly whether or not to abandon it
Jennifer,
Don't give up! It is not an easy area of cataloging and it looks
like you have done some digging. It's an important area that needs you to
become involved and help develop it.
There was a session on this at the
ARLIS
ABC in LA. Download the
PDF of
the session summaries. In particular read pp 11-15 on
nomenclature (building common vocabularies) and cataloging. Get in
touch with the moderators, Heather Cleary and Daniel Starr and the
recorder, Joan Benedetti.
Look at the
Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus on artists' books. Dig
deeper in there.
In 1990 we had a paper presented at a Center for Book Arts conference by
Marvin Sackner on the cataloging of The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive
of Concrete and Visual Poetry. I suggest looking at the conference
proceedings (below is from the CBA website):
- Proceedings of The First National Conference on BOOK ARTS IN THE
USA
- This conference was held at the New York Penta Hotel on March 31 and
April 1, 1990. It brought together representatives of the major book arts
organizations in the United States for the first time. Introduction by
Richard Minsky, with addresses of participants, list of exhibitions, and
transcripts of lectures and poetry read during the conference. Spiral
bound with vinyl covers.
Do get a copy of The ART of Cataloging Artists' Books / Training
Manual, prepared by Sylvia Turchyn for her session at this year's
ARLIS Conference in Indianapolis. It was an excellent session. Your post
indicates you have not been able to establish contact with her, but try
again.
There are many unresolved issues surrounding the cataloging of artists'
books, and the lack of uniformity of description and vocabulary creates
the practical problem that curators/librarians have a hard time finding
books with certain criteria if the title/author are not known.
People use the same terms to describe different characteristics and
different terms for the same thing. People have been unable to find books
they know are in their own institutional collections, and recall seeing,
but without the title/author have been unable to locate the works based
on the descriptions.
I have the issue with my own works that they are mis-cataloged, and that
wrong entry information is copied from one library to another. Currently
I am preparing a PDF form for book artists to use online that will enable
therm to send the proper info with their works when shipping to a
library, and am planning to do this with my own works in the future (as
well as send out correct cataloging info for older works).
If you want to discuss this further do contact me off-list.
Richard