• Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas
  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - August - 2019 Issue

A Deep-dive Database of Local History, Attitudes, and Ideas

Ulster County documents

Recently I purchased a small group of mid-Hudson Valley material that I found useful as examples of what would logically be included in a deep-dive experimental database for the New York State counties mid-way between New York City and Albany.  A what?  A deep-dive-database is a full text searchable database, something like what Google does in its Books section.  Whether it is a d3 or a FTSD or something else remains to be seen, but it is the future.

 

Databases of the printed word have generally been confined to brief descriptions and details of books and printed documents.  To see an actual copy, for example if you are using the OCLC, you are provided locations where such copies, physical and electronic, are found.   On RBH we focus on auction records and dealer descriptions to illuminate the emerging understanding of an example’s importance and value.  Such databases are potentially very large as ours is, more than 9 million full text records. 

 

But what is now emerging are full text databases.  That is, they capture the complete contents of a document in word searchable form, not only as a scan but as a word document.  Some efforts currently look for references in text but they have generally been dull instruments, in some cases because the references need to be dug out and in others because they are behind paywalls.    This will change and with this change there will be full text readable versions searchable online – and in many cases, searchable for free.

 

This experimental free database for the mid-Hudson Valley will include the standard reference materials, town and county histories, maps that convey changes, appropriate books by local authors, broadsides, pamphlets and ephemera – all in full searchable text.

 

The search will be different because the most common form posted will be ephemera that will outnumber books and pamphlets somewhere between a thousand and ten thousand to one.

 

Books usually include the title, author, publisher/printer, place and date printed.  When even one of these facts is missing it can complicate searches.  For ephemera you might be lucky to have three of these factors.  The others will require associated factors such as “they are among a group of letters in the same hand”.  Here’s an example.  A collection of letters from A.M. to B. R.  dated by day and month but not by year.  However, one envelope is dated 1863 and the events mentioned suggest the Battle at Chancellorsville.  Can this be figured out?  Probably.  As this example suggests, judgments will be made.

 

Here are some of the fields needed to identify and contextualize such letters.

 

Date or date range stated or implied

Names implied or known

Subject[s] such as events and places

Regimental references and information including cross-references

 

In addition, other fields will sometimes play a part:

 

Watermarks

Context of the document [among a group of similar items or with other related materials]

 

References gleaned from genealogical sites

 

References from online searches on Google and others

 

Altogether it will often, but not always, be possible to contextualize material, thus creating a deeper perspective – a perspective I believe that will change our understanding of the past.

 

Here are some other examples:  Ulster Mine at Ellenville, Ulster County, New York, a series of 5 printed documents, many with illustrations, that relate to this mine from 1852 to 1855 that include:

 

A 16 page report dated July 1st, 1852

 

An abbreviated broadside version dated July 1st, 1852

 

A 12 page report dated December 10th, 1852

 

A broadside, brief financial statement dated 15th December, 1852

 

A 16 page report dated January 3, 1854 titled Official Reports of the Ulster Company for the year 1853

 

This mine was located a short distance from the Delaware & Hudson Canal and was opened in 1852 during a period when Americans were looking everywhere for gold because of the stories emerging about the gold strikes in California.  In Ellenville they found lead while in Kingston some 20 miles away they believed they found gold that, when assayed, turned out to be pyrite or fool’s gold.  Such documents are so much more interesting than a title, date, author and print date.

 

Among the other documents I purchased is a stock receipt for the Hobart Branch Railroad Company signed by Thomas Cornell, who was a man of wealth whose steam boats coursed the Hudson River in the latter half of the 19th century.  He was based in Rondout but his influence reached in every direction.

 

Another is a menu for the Hotel Kaaterskill at Catskill for Thursday August 24, 1899.  Tastes have changed!

 

A small one is an 1857 7.625” x 5” broadside circular calling on teachers in Orange County to participate in a quarterly meeting to be instructed on new teaching approaches.  The teachers were expected to pay their own way but a handwritten note suggests the costs may be shared.

 

These are a few of the many documents that will contribute to an understanding of what life was like and altogether convey the changing assumptions and understanding people generally had.  Life has never been a paved highway and in the mid-Hudson Valley it seems more like a gravel path; every spec of gravel evidence of unique personal history.

 

An intensely focused, full text searchable database will bring these details to light.

 

Images of some of the examples are included with this article. 


Posted On: 2019-08-09 17:16
User Name: certainbooks

Hello Bruce: How would this proposed database differ from the current OCLC search fields, for instance? These search fields allow for choices in access method, accession number, author, author phrase, corporate or conference name, corporate and conference name phrase, personal name, personal name phrase, language type, material type, material type phrase and 18 more choices, per each search line - including a half-dozen under 'subject' alone. The search fields in OCLC offer these options, in three separate possible boxes, multiplying the search-ability by all those permutations. Additionally, there are year date, language and number of libraries searches as separate boxes. Limitation fields below go even further and allow for type of material: books, visual materials, computer files, internet resources, serial publications, sound recordings, archival materials, continually updated resources, articles, musical scores, maps allow for a narrowing of the field of search even further. There are additional limitations for availability possibilities too. Sincerely, George Krzyminski at Certain Books


Posted On: 2019-08-10 18:17
User Name: adminb

The OCLC, which I use but may not fully understand, shows how many copies are held among the more than 30,000 members of OCLC. So, for example I looked up “Art Work of Ulster County” recently and found 5 locations: LOC, NYPL, SUNY New Paltz, UCCC and Penn State. None of these copies are searchable online. Neither did I find it in Google Books.

To see the entire volume all pages including text and images will to be scanned and then converted into one or more word documents that random keywords searches can find. That’s the approach I’ll take to all material uploaded to this database.

In addition to books, all printed forms as well as manuscript material will be included.

This full text will be wide open to Google so that random terms and phrases found in this local database will create matches.

At a guess, and it’s strictly a guess, about 15% of the U. S. population has some connection to the mid-Hudson Valley.


Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
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    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
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    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD

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