Rare books 10: How to define ‘Rare’

“Anything written on rare-book cataloguing is bound to be controversial,” is the opening line of ‘How to catalog a rare book’ (Chicago, 1973), written by Paul Shaner Dunkin. Anyone who finds this other than amusing has not yet entered the Rare Books Cataloguing Room of a Library. A commentary on the epistles of Saint Paul by the Jesuit Geminiano Mislei (1803-1867) (Roma, 1859). Notes: Suspicions are first raised when Mislei’s name does not materialise on the Library of Congress Name Authorities online. Did LC mislay Mislei, we think. Unlikely. Trove lists two titles by this author, only one copy each in Sydney libraries. The Jesuit library in Melbourne has only one work by him, in e-book, and a German translation at that, of the original Italian. Gradually what looked like a standard print-run job, quite nicely done, turns into a very rare item indeed. It is the only copy in Australia, possibly one of the few anywhere. Unique means rare. ‘Occasional addresses delivered in New South Wales’ by Archbishop Vaughan (Sydney, 1881) Notes: It is No. 17683 in Ferguson, library-speak for the seven volume ‘The Bibliography of Australia’ (1941-1969) compiled by John Alexander Ferguson, yet only eight copies of Vaughan’s talks on education are held in Australian libraries. This is the archbishop’s hand-signed presentation copy to the Carmelite Prior Joseph Butler, making it a rare book at the very moment it was presented in September 1882. As Dunkin writes: “It is not the cataloguer’s job to decide if a book is rare; that has been decided before the book reaches his desk. For his purposes any book which has value primarily as a physical object is a rare book.” The dialogues of Amador Arrais, bishop of Portalegre (1530-1600). (Coimbra, 1604) Notes: Arrais, or Arraiz, was chaplain to King Sebastian of Portugal and this superb production contains his collected Dialogos, published soon after his death, then over two centuries later beautifully bound by Parceria A.M. Pereira Lda. Simply by cataloguing Arrais’ book I have fulfilled an essential service. As Dunkin puts it: “Books can be shared adequately only if they are catalogued adequately. The library which sticks rare books into a showcase and refuses to put useful entries for them into both its own catalog and a union catalog is no better than the wealthy collector who hides his books away in a vault where he and a few friends can gloat over them.”