Did you know why capital letters are called "upper case"? It's because in the early days of printing and book production, when the individual pieces of type were stored in their wooden trays or cases, the capital letters were conventionally set in the boxes that ran along the upper part of the case.
That's just one of the obscure and, to me, fascinating, things I learned in my preliminary reading for the rare book cataloging class I attended August 7-11 at the California Rare Book School, located on the UCLA campus. The class was taught by Deborah J. Leslie of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and I was lucky enough to be one of just nine students. The preliminary reading was at times a tough slog. For those of you conversant with the cataloging rules embodied in AACR2, let's just say reading Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) is a little better.... Having at last got through that, I was able to turn my attention to other, less sleep-inducing, reading, including some interesting articles and books on the history of book production. There is no way I could have kept up with the class without doing the preliminary reading, as we covered an amazing amount in just five days. (And I am bound to say that once I was actually in the class and working with the rules, DCRM(B) became quite interesting, even riveting!)
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my stay in Los Angeles, and I'm sure that's due in part to reservations made far in advance at the UCLA guest house. While some of my classmates endured an hour-long bus ride to and from the campus each day, I started my day with a five-minute stroll through the Murphy Sculpture Garden on my way to the Charles E. Young Research Library, where my class and the other class running concurrently (Books of the Far West) were held. Just downstairs from us was Special Collections. Mid-week we were lucky enough to have a class session in the gorgeous Bradford A. Booth Memorial Room, which houses the Michael Sadleir collection of 19th-century fiction and contains furniture once owned by Anthony Trollope. We also got a tour of some of the uncataloged backlog held in compact shelving (there is also a great deal in off-site storage). UCLA Special Collections has a collection of early children's books; we saw the uncataloged library of children's writer and educator Maria Edgeworth in storage (the books she read, not the books she wrote), as well as a number of early Italian titles.
During the week of the class we worked with books from the 1500s to the 1900s, but primarily with those published before 1800. We learned how paper was made; how early books were constructed and published; the differences between edition, impression, issue, and state; how to formulate collation statements; and how to apply DCRM(B) rules when cataloging, among other things. Deborah J. Leslie is on the ALA Rare Book and Manuscripts Section Bibliographic Standards Committee, and she knows the rules inside out, having helped write this newest edition of them. She was an excellent teacher who could make even a week's intensive study of cataloging rules seem fascinating. And of course the early books themselves are wonderful, just as artifacts. The California Rare Book School aims to be a sort of west-coast version of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and Leslie, who teaches at both, was able to use the Virginia teaching collection of books and other materials to enhance our experience. We had homework each night, and for our cataloging practicum even got to take home overnight the book we were to catalog.
Along with cataloging I got to have a little fun before doing the evening's homework. There was a reception four out of five nights, just to start with! And the UCLA campus is beautiful, with amazing Australian fig trees of different varieties, as well as eucalyptus, pine, bougainvillaea, and more. Since everything, including the shuttle busses, closed early in the summer, I was able to "justify" long evening walks to and from the Westwood area south of campus to find dinner. I discovered that the best sushi I've ever had is still at Aomatsu in Corvallis (I obviously just haven't eaten at enough sushi spots yet, but theirs is excellent), and on another night I ordered the worst Chinese food of my life using the PDA on my restaurant table (but it was still fun; tech-deprived as I am, just using a PDA at all was a first for me). Our class lunch was held at a lovely little Italian restaurant which had great food and too much of it! Fortunately by the time we walked to and from our bus stop we had digested some of it and no one actually fell asleep in class that afternoon.
Topping off the cultural experience, the morning I left I walked a bit on Sunset Boulevard and then hiked down Charing Cross Road. I guess LA might have almost everything one could ever want—but I won't be moving anytime soon. Idyllic evening strolls through the twilit campus were countered with the five a.m. news, which showed a mile of cars, stopped on the freeway. Every morning. At five in the morning! It was then that the ugly black sculptures I walked past each morning began to look really, really beautiful.
I am grateful to Carol Hixson and Corey Harper for supporting my
application to CALRBS, and to Mark Watson and the Library Staff Development
Committee (especially Laine and Jeanette) for helping with the financial and logistical
support.