is Senior Cataloger at the Folger Shakespeare Library with primary responsibility for early printed books. She is active in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association, and teaches introductory and advanced rare book cataloging at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and sometimes in the Antipodes. Deborah was chief editor of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) and generally can’t keep away from rule-writing projects. She is passionate about the letter W.
Telescopium Uranicum, 1666. Folger 269- 460q item 5 Chronograms—literally, “time writing”—are dates embedded within text. As such, they are a form of hidden writing called steganography: the encoded characters maintain their own value, but are hidden within a larger text.…
On occasion, interesting and unusual aspects of books, manuscripts, and prints catch the attention of the cataloger at work on them. One such item was written up by Sarah Werner last December in “‘Tis the season for almanacs.” The office of the…
When I meet people for the first time and they hear that I am a rare book cataloger, I can expect one or both of these questions: “What’s a rare book,” and “What is cataloging?” This crowd doesn’t need my…
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