Yale Law Library - Rare Books Blog : Web sightings, Legal bibliography

Capturing dealer descriptions in our online catalog

Mike Widener — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:55:00 GMT

One of my most pleasurable duties as a rare book librarian is reading the catalogues sent by rare book dealers. Each book's listing is typcally accompanied by a narrative description that describes the book's context and significance. The best book descriptions do more than merely tout a book or manuscript to potential buyers. They are nuggets of bibliographical and historical scholarship, and models of lively, concise writing. Much of my early training consisted of reading rare book dealer catalogues, and I still learn from them.

Thanks to the Law Library's online catalog, MORRIS, and to the cooperation of book dealers, I have been attaching dealers' descriptions to our catalog records for the books.

When you look at the record of an individual title in MORRIS, you will see a button on the left side of the screen, labeled "Add a review". Those with a Yale ID and password can add a review of the title. If a review has been added, you will see a headline under the "Add a review" button that is a link to the review. Click the headline link and the review pops up in a window. (Note that the display works better in Firefox than in Internet Explorer.)

Since January 2008, I have been adding rare book dealers' descriptions as "reviews" in MORRIS. For example, look at the record for Iustinianae constitutiones civiles (Bologna, 1608). Click the link, "The judicial system in Bologna,1608" and you will see the following description:

"Attractive and rare set of decrees concerning the functioning of the judiciary in the papal city of Bologna. These city statutes were promulgated by the Pope's legate, Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (1554-1621). Despite the issuing authority, the constitutions (a word indicating legislation of the highest level) are entirely non-religious in content, relating to civil law justice in the city. They shed considerable light into how courts worked in Bologna. Included are instructions on cases involving poor people; rules for notaries; the keeping of registers; seizures of property; taking of suspects; payment of officers; expert witnesses; and the governing of appeals. Pages 192-198 comprise papal edicts on the salaries of Bolognese judges and notaries." -- Leo Cadogan Rare Books (Dec. 2011)

The description adds value to our catalog. It records a wealth of information about the book that would be impossible to include in the online catalog record.

I follow these guidelines:

I must first obtain the dealer's permission to use the descriptions for all books and manuscripts the dealer sells to me. The descriptions are the dealer's intellectual property and dealers are sensitive (rightly so) about whether and how their descriptions are re-used. I assure the dealer that I will understand if he or she prefers to refuse permission.
I enter a dealer's descriptions only for the books and manuscripts I buy from that dealer.
I copy the description verbatim, editing only for length, punctuation, and spelling.
I enclose the description in quotations, and I attribute the description to the dealer, including the catalogue (or if not in a catalogue, by the date it was quoted to me).
I never include the price.

To date I have added over 500 descriptions by over forty dealers from across the U.S. and Europe. I hope you find them as useful and educational as I do.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

A Tribute to Morris L. Cohen (1927-2010)

Mike Widener — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:05:00 GMT

The latest issue of Law Library Journal is a special issue, "A Tribute to Morris L. Cohen (1927-2010)." Our own Fred Shapiro organized this fitting tribute to our mentor and friend. All of the articles can be downloaded from the LLJ website. -- MIKE WIDENER, Rare Book Librarian

Law Library Journal
Volume 104, no. 1 (Winter 2012): A Tribute to Morris L. Cohen (1927-2010).

"Introduction." Fred R. Shapiro.

"Morris L. Cohen, 1927-2010: A Remembrance and Celebration." Vincent DiMarco, Kent C. Olson, Balfour Halévy, Lika Miyake, Mary Jane Kelsey, Sharon Hamby O'Connor, & Robert C. Berring.

"In Praise of Morris L. Cohen's Bibliography of Early American Law." Daniel A. Cohen.

"Morris L. Cohen: A Reminiscence." Morris S. Arnold.

"Memories of Morris--and How I Use His BEAL." Jordan D. Luttrell.

"Morris Cohen and Rare Book School." David Warrington.

"Morris Cohen and the Art of Book Collecting." Michael Widener.

"Cornerstones for Enduring Law Libraries: Morris Cohen's Influence at Yale." S. Blair Kauffman.

"Birth of a Nutshell: Morris Cohen in the 1960s." Kent C. Olson.

"The End of Scholarly Bibliography: Reconceptualizing Law Librarianship." Robert C. Berring.

"Appeals to the Privy Council Before American Independence: An Annotated Digital Catalogue." Sharon Hamby O'Connor & Mary Sarah Bilder.

"Blackstone and Bibliography: In Memoriam Morris Cohen." Wilfrid Prest.

"Booksellers in Court: Approaches to the Legal History of Copyright in England Before 1842." James Raven.

"Practicing Reference . . . 'That Most Congenial Lawyer/Bibliographer'." Mary Whisner.

"Reflections: An Interview with Morris L. Cohen." Morris L. Cohen & Bonnie Collier.

"Morris L. Cohen: A Bibliography of His Works." Ryan Harrington & Camilla Tubbs.

Internet resources for collecting law books

Mike Widener — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:23:00 GMT

I prepared the following set of links for the class I'm teaching at the Rare Book School next week, "Law Books: History and Connoisseurship." Colleagues and readers of this blog might find some of them useful or interesting. If you want to know where I spend my time online, here are a few hints...

Online library catalogues

WorldCat: Public-access version of the largest union catalogue of library holdings world-wide.
KVK - Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog: Meta catalog of over 50 national library catalogs, regional library catalogs, and union catalogs.
ESTC - English Short Title Catalogue (British Library): 460,000 items published between 1473 and 1800 mainly, but not exclusively, in English, published
mainly in the British Isles and North America, from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.
Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (British Library): "The international database of 15th-century European printing created by the British Library with contributions from institutions worldwide."
Virgo: Online catalog for the University of Virginia Library.
MORRIS: Online catalog for the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.
Yale University Library

Resources on Book Terminology

ILAB Glossaries: A multi-lingual collection of glossaries, including a PDF of John Carter & Nicholas Barker, ABC for Book Collectors (8th ed. 2006).
Matt D. Roberts & Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books (1982).
Publishers’ Bindings Online: PBO Glossary of Terms
Antiquarian Book Terminology and Abbreviations (D.J. McAdam’s Website for Book Collectors
Book Sizes (Books & Book Collecting website): An exhaustive list and description of formats & sizes.

Cataloging Resources

Internet Databases for Rare & Used Books

AddALL: Searches 24 online databases of used and rare books in North America and Europe (including ILAB and ABE), with the option of restricting searches to selected databases.
ViaLibri: Designed especially for rare & collectible books. It allows you to permanently filter out print-on-demand books from your search results (yay!). Another great feature is the ability to search 72 library catalogs, including WorldCat (public version), KVK, ISTC, ESTC, and dozens of other union catalogs, national library catalogs, and individual library catalogs.
BookFinder.com: Searches almost 100 listing services (like ABE), online bookstores, and even "rental services" (!) for new, used, and rare books.
International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB): Restricted to listings from member booksellers. Offers an automated "wants" notification to registered users (registration is free), a searchable directory of member booksellers, multilingual glossaries of bookseller terms, Carter's ABC for Book Collectors in PDF format, a calendar of book fairs, and a large "Library" of articles on the book trade, collecting, and related topics. ILAB's U.S. affiliate, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) offers most of the same features, but is limited to U.S. dealers.
AbeBooks.com: Registered users can create automated "wants" lists, and are notified by e-mail of matching books.

Book Collecting Resources

The Biblio Book School
Checking Book Values on the Web (Bookride blog)
Ian J. Kahn, "An alternative list of the Top 20 Sites for Book Collectors", in The Fine Books Blog, 12 May 2010
Nigel Borwood, "10 Web Book Searching Tips", in the Bookride blog, 14 May 2010
Americana Exchange: In addition to subscription databases of auction and sales records, it offers a free monthly newsletter and book auction calendar.
Fine Books & Collections Magazine: Their website offers a free e-newsletter, plus calendars of upcoming auctions and book fairs.

Preservation

Northeast Document Conservation Center
Collections Care (Library of Congress)
Conservation Online (CoOL)
Preservation FAQ (U. of Illinois Library)

Legal History Resources

American Society for Legal History
English Legal History: Duke Law research guide
Famous Trials: By Professor Douglas Linder, U. of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.
H-Law: The listserv of the American Society for Legal History
Legal History Blog: Mainly U.S. legal history.
Rechtshistorie: By Otto Vervaart, a Dutch legal historian. This site has a thorough and wide-ranging set of annotated bibliographies and links to legal history resources, in English and Dutch. See also Vervaart's excellent Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog.
Tarlton Guides: Legal History: A well-organized and comprehensive guide to both print and online resources.

Early Italian Statutes: Links

Mike Widener — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:54:00 GMT

The Flowering of Civil Law: Early Italian City Statutes in the Yale Law Library

One of the main reasons for organizing this exhibit is to encourage students and scholars to use the Yale Law Library's outstanding collection of early Italian statutes. All of the volumes in the collection are represented in our online catalog, MORRIS. Feel free to contact Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian; see the Rare Books homepage for contact information.

Below is a selective list of online resources, bibliographies, and publications on early Italian statutes.

Online resources

The Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica "Giovanni Spadolini" (the library of the Italian Senate) houses the world's most extensive collection of early Italian statutes. The introduction to the site is also provided in French and English. See especially the description of the catalogues, which contain a wealth of information on Italian legal history and local history, The entire Catalogo della raccolta di statuti (8 volumes so far) is available online, as well as updates to the earlier volumes.
Kenneth Pennington, professor of ecclesiastical and legal history at Catholic University, provides an concise overview of Italian legal history from the Middle Ages to the present, including a critical guide to the literature. See also his Roman and Secular Law in the Middle Ages.
De Statutis is the website of the Comitato Italiano per gli Studi e le Edizioni delle Fonti Normative (CISEFN). The site is in Italian. See the Bibliografia Statutaria Italiana for an extensive bibliography of scholarship, mainly in Italian, on early Italian statutes, divided into a general section and sections on regions.
Statuti della Liguria is a project of the Società Ligure di Storia Patria, with support from the Faculty of Jurisprudence, University of Genoa, to catalog and digitize statutes from the Liguria region, 12th-18th centuries. The site is in Italian and includes an extensive bibliography and a searchable database.

Bibliographies

Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica (Italy). Catalogo della raccolta di statuti, consuetudini, leggi, decreti, ordini e privilegi del comuni, delle associazioni e degli enti locali italiani, dal medioevo alla fine del secolo XVIII (Roma: Tipografia del Senato, 1943- ). Eight of the nine volumes have been published so far, and when it is complete it will be the most comprehensive bibliography of early Italian statutes. The entire set is available online at the website of the Biblioteca del Senato, along with updates to the earlier volumes. The Yale Law Library has a copy, which is currently shelved in the Rare Book Librarian's office.
Leone Fontana, Bibliografia degli statuti dei comuni dell' Italia superiore (3 vols.; Torino: Fratelli Bocca, 1907). The Yale Law Library has a copy.
Luigi Manzoni, comp., Bibliografia statutaria e storica italiana (2 vols. in 3; Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 1876-1892). Volume 1 covers statutes; volume 2 (which our library lacks) covers local histories. The Yale Law Library's copy is currently shelved in the Rare Book Librarian's office.
Statuti italiani: riuniti ed indicati dal conte Antonio Cavagna Sangiuliani (2 vols.; Pavia: Prem. Tipografia successori fratelli Fusi, 1907). This entire collection is now in the library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it is probably the only early Italian statute collection in the U.S. that rivals the Yale Law Library's collection. The catalogue is available online, but stops with entries for the letter M.

Books and articles

Mario Ascheri, "Beyond the Comune: The Italian City-State and Its Inheritance," in The Medieval World (Peter Linehan & Janet L. Nelson eds.; London: Routledge, 2001), 451-468. "[T]he sections of statutes relating to public law have every right to be treated as constitutional history, even if their wide dispersion, mutability and multiplicity make them difficult to study. Paradoxically, it is their very richness that is responsible for the comparative neglect they have suffered. ... The city-states were the precursors of the majoritarian principle. In order to delimit the activities of different governmental agencies they introduced systems of checks and balances. They pioneered measures designed to depoliticise judges and the administration of justice and to moderate the excesses of their officials."
George Bowyer, A Dissertation on the Statutes of the Cities of Italy (London: Richards and Co., 1838). Although 170 years old, it is so far the only full-length book in English on early Italian municipal statutes. The Yale Law Library has a copy in its collection, and it is also online in Google Books.
Carlo Calisse, A History of Italian Law (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1928). Translated by Layton B. Register, with introductions by Frederick Parker Walton and Hessel E. Yntema. Volume 8 in the Continental Legal History Series. The book is a translation of parts of Calisse's Storia del diritto italiano, and was described in a contemporary review as "a long and complicated book." The Yale Law Library has a copy.
Kenneth Pennington, "Law Codes: 1000-1500," in Dictionary of the Middle Ages 7 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1986), 425-431.

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian

Illustration: Perugia (Italy), Statuta augustae Perusiae (Perugia, 1523-1528).

The most creative books in American law

Mike Widener — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:26:00 GMT

Robert F. Blomquist surveyed 426 law professors who have taught legal history for his paper, Thinking About Law and Creativity: On the 100 Most Creative Moments in American Law (Valparaiso University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-04, May 2008). Below I've extracted the books and articles that appear in Blomquist's top 100. I provide links for those books that are in the Yale Law Library's online catalog, MORRIS. Legislation and court cases make up the majority of the list, and I did not include these, although arguably The Federalist (1788) is a component of the #1 creative moment, "The Constitution of the United States (1787) and the ratification debates (1787-1788)."

You can find a brief critique of Blomquist's paper on Mary Dudziak's Legal History Blog.

Most Creative Books in American Law...

15. James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (1826-30).
16. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833).
17. Christopher Columbus Langdell’s initiation of the case method of study at Harvard Law School initiated by his casebook, A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts (1871).
18. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881).
27. Benjamin Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921).
43. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962).
44. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1949).
46. Charles Reich, The Greening of America (1970).
54. Richard Posner, Economic Analysis of Law (1973).
55. Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process (1958).
68. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (1992) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006).
79. The Politics of Law (1982).

Most Creative Law Review Articles in American Law...

45. Justice Douglas’ dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton (1972) (citing Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?--Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, 45 Southern California Law Review 450 (1972).
75. Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, Right to Privacy, 4 Harvard Law Review 193 (1890).

MIKE WIDENER
Rare Book Librarian