Relatively few of us observed Martin Davies call up the ISTC and manipulate it, in more sophisticated ways than RLIN allows, through Blaise on the British Library mainframe. We heard Jan Paris evaluate the conservatorial role as providing an intelligent analysis of the need to preserve the historical veracity of an item versus the need to conserve it in usable form, illustrating the dilemma with an exceptional manuscript item preserving the record of a Jewish community in Lithuania over three centuries. I wanted to get this one, on the very last presentation at RBMS, out in order to fill in the Belanger statement and place it in its immediate context. Prof. Dept. of English University of Texas at Austin MW stated that during the past fifteen years when he has been involved in completing the BAL, he has examined and prepared descriptions for some 100,000 books. In order for a title to be listed in BAL, he insists on access to the original edition.
Articles appear only if later published in book form.
BAL describes the title page exactly and records volume size, binding, leaf size, and location. Microfilm evidence was accepted from the Center for Research Libraries for one item of which the original location was unknown, but thought to be Duke University. Although Suzy Taraba of Duke sent a photocopy of the title page, for MW the book still was not real until he had seen it himself. Now in North Carolina himself, he had still not gone to see it. The 1845 date appeared on the title page, as usual for first publication and was removed from later impressions, again as usual.