{"id":2341,"date":"2015-11-16T13:24:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/?p=2341"},"modified":"2015-11-16T13:24:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:24:18","slug":"look-theres-a-libretto-in-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/2015\/11\/16\/look-theres-a-libretto-in-the-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Look, there’s a libretto in the library!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Handel,<\/a>

Handel, George. Messiah : an Oratorio.
New College Library O.b.2\/1<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s not every day that you find a\u00a0rare edition of Handel’s Messiah<\/em> in your library but I’m delighted to say that we have\u00a0one at New College Library! This recently catalogued\u00a0pamphlet from\u00a0our Special Collections\u00a0appears to be the first printing in England, and second edition overall of the libretto of Handel\u2019s Messiah<\/em> (The first edition was in Dublin.) It is also the first edition printed in England by six years. According to Elizabeth Lawrence, EUL Assistant\u00a0Rare Books Librarian, \u00a0“The oratorio was first performed in Dublin in 1742, and then again in London in March 1743.\u00a0 The publication we have, the libretto, known as the \u2018word book\u2019, was published to sell at the theatre, so the audience had half an idea what was going on.\u00a0 There are no copies of this edition currently on ESTC.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As part of the Funk Donation Projects our cataloguers have been meticulously working their way through the New College Pamphlets collection, which numbers in the region of 35,000 items. Part of this collection had already been catalogued online via previous grant funded projects but a team\u00a0effort by New College Library staff\u00a0has enabled thorough checking of this collection, to identify all of the items which hadn’t met the criteria of the earlier projects and were uncatalogued. Earlier this month our cataloguer quietly announced that she thought the complete cataloguing of this huge collection was, finally, complete – which was fantastic news.\u00a0Part of the cataloguing work on this collection entailed checking and matching\u00a0items on ESTC<\/a>, the English-Short Title Catalogue that lists British books published between 1743 and 1800. Through this work we’ve discovered hundreds of pamphlets which were unique to ESTC – that’s to say, unique in the world. All of these have been reported to ESTC so that this knowledge can be shared with scholars worldwide, and digital images of their title pages added to the University’s image database<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As well as a fantastic find this pamphlet is also a great example of the value of cataloguing our rare books collections online.\u00a0This edition of Handel’s Messiah<\/em> was already catalogued on New College Library’s old sheaf catalogue, which has been serving us since 1936, and\u00a0those people who knew where\u00a0to look\u00a0could have found this entry there:\"Sheaf<\/a>
\nNow the newly created online catalogue entry<\/a> gives us much more detail:<\/p>\n

\"Online<\/a><\/p>\n

As well as the additional detail there are huge benefits in discoverability and connectivity for research. Anyone within the University of Edinburgh researching Handel’s Messiah<\/em> can now easily discover this item, alongside all the other editions and scholarly works on Handel’s Messiah<\/em> in the University Library. The University of Edinburgh’s library catalogue is also uploaded into the union catalogue COPAC, which allows single search discovery to over 90 of the UK’s major research libraries.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it’s important to remember each book catalogued by the Funk Donation Projects has been retrieved and handled by a rare book cataloguer, enabling them to accurately assess and record the individual\u00a0book’s binding, provenance and whether there are any missing pages.\u00a0Handling the books in this way\u00a0can sometimes turn up quite unexpected material, like the Messiah<\/em> which was bound into a volume of sermons!<\/p>\n

It’s through this work that our rare book cataloguers are enabling New College Library’s\u00a0Special Collections\u00a0to emerge from the shadows of the stacks\u00a0and join the academic conversation.<\/p>\n

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity<\/em><\/p>\n

With thanks to Janice Gailani, Funk Projects Cataloguer and Elizabeth Lawrence, Assistant Rare Books Librarian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not every day that you find a\u00a0rare edition of Handel’s Messiah in your library but I’m delighted to say that we have\u00a0one at New College Library! This recently catalogued\u00a0pamphlet from\u00a0our Special Collections\u00a0appears to be the first printing in England, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[199,4],"tags":[213,78,125,131,141,154],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42UaT-BL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2341"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2378,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2341\/revisions\/2378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/newcollegelibrarian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}