by Over the past ten years, the international special collections community has made a concerted effort to provide access to rare books and manuscripts in their holdings that were previously uncataloged or lacking online description — effectively, hidden collections.
The Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections has been contributing to this effort by successfully uncovering its own hidden collections through its Rare Book Inventory Project (RBIP), which provides brief online catalog records for the department’s pre-1820 printed book collection. These bibliographic records contain basic information — such as author, title, and imprint — necessary to discover and identify a book. Under the supervision of Rare Book Catalog Librarian, Kate Moriarty, SLU students with strong Latin and other language skills create the brief records, which are later given fuller description and subject access by the professional cataloger. This innovative and economical means of making SLU’s rare book collections more readily accessible has achieved great results. The student assistants receive hands-on training in working with rare books and learn essential research skills in information organization and retrieval. In turn, SLU students, faculty, and the broader research community gain valuable access to the university’s rich collection of rare books. This position is competitive, and students have come from the English, History, Philosophy, and Theological Studies departments.
The RBIP has recently completed an initiative to provide catalog records for the roughly 275 titles in the Cotton Pamphlets collection, which is part of the Moore Carpenter Recusant History Collection acquired in the 1970s through the generosity of the Saint Louis University Library Associates. The Cotton Pamphlets consist of thirty-five bound volumes of polemical pamphlets assembled by the English Catholic school, Cotton College, that document the public debate and struggle between English Catholics and Protestants during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. In the example here (fig. 1), the prolific Jesuit provincial and Stonyhurst College rector, Charles Plowden, asserts the infallibility of the Pope in his 1790 Considerations on the Modern Opinion of the Fallibility of the Holy See in the Decision of Dogmatical Questions and refers to the many oaths English Catholics were required to take after 1534, arguing that papal infallibility in theological issues does not preclude allegiance to one’s country.
Another milestone reached by student assistants participating in the RBIP is the completion of bibliographic records for all books in the collection printed between 1454 and 1700 (fig. 2). They have now created inventory records for almost 8,000 rare book titles, or over 70% of our pre-1820 printed book collection! And they have already begun work on the 18th-century books. While the RBIP is an excellent way to get a snapshot of work-in-progress, records for fully cataloged books carry a wealth of enhanced description and access points — such as controlled author/title entries, collation and binding statements, and provenance, subject, and genre/form access — that aid researchers in identifying precisely the texts or type of books they are seeking. Note: books that have been fully cataloged are no longer part of the RBIP and can be found through a variety of searches on author, title, publisher, call number, subject, genre/form, etc. And all searches can be limited to the location, Pius Special Collections, if desired.
For additional information on the Rare Book Inventory Project, contact Rare Book Catalog Librarian, Kate Moriarty. For queries regarding research use of the pre-1820 printed book collection, contact Rare Books Librarian, Jennifer Lowe.
