University of Virginia Library

TOLERANCES

In "Tolerances in Bibliographical Description" (The Library, 5th ser.,
23 [1968], 1–12; reprinted in Readings in Descriptive Bibliography, ed. John
Bush Jones [1974], pp. 42–56), I attempted to provide a rationale for
thinking about the degree of accuracy and the quantity of detail appro-
priate for descriptive bibliographies. These two basic matters required
discussion because not many bibliographers had given them systematic
thought, and bibliographers still need to be reminded of their importance.
The number of details covered in a given bibliography can obviously be
seen by examining the bibliography, whether or not the bibliographer
has thought coherently about the relative proportions of detail devoted to
each described feature. (The question of "degressive" bibliography—that
is, the practice of reducing the quantity of detail for certain categories of
material—which is mentioned in note 1, is discussed more fully in my
1984 essay "The Arrangement of Descriptive Bibliographies" [see "Ar-
rangement" below].) In contrast, the degree of accuracy in measurements
cannot be known unless it is indicated in an introduction. Including some
statement like "measurements are made to the nearest sixteenth of an

inch" is an obvious (and undemanding) requirement. Yet in the decades
since I wrote this piece, very few bibliographers have regarded such a
statement as a necessity. Among those few are David L. Vander Meulen,
in his bibliography of Pope's Dunciad (1981 dissertation); David Hunter, in
Opera and Song Books Published in England 1703–1726 (1997); and Roger E.
Stoddard in A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American
Verse Printed from 1610 through 1820 (2012). But in most bibliographies, one
still looks in vain for an indication of tolerances.

A topic that naturally came up in my essay was what system of mea-
surement to use, and I stated that the bibliographer who employs the
metric system would be "clearly on the side of the future." In the nearly
half-century that has elapsed since then, the United States government
seems to have lost whatever interest it once had in joining most of the rest
of the world in officially adopting the metric system for general purposes.
(The story has been told in John Bemelmans Marciano's 2014 book, What-
ever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet.) So one reason
for bibliographers to use it has apparently vanished (though a candidate
for the 2016 American presidential election brought the matter up). In
any case, there is no question about the metric system's greater logic, and
most people, I believe, find it more convenient to work with. If one wishes,
or needs, to go beyond the nearest millimeter, it is easy for the eye to de-
tect quarters or thirds of millimeters. My suggestion in this essay of using
thirds of millimeters for measuring type faces was endorsed by Vander
Meulen in his Dunciad bibliography (1981 dissertation). A simple solution
to the quandary of what system to use would be for bibliographers to
report figures in both systems (to accommodate users all over the world),
placing one figure in parentheses following the other one. If one works
in the metric system, one can simply divide the number of millimeters by
25.4 (or the number of centimeters by 2.54) to obtain the figure in inches;
or if one works in inches, one can multiply by 25.4 (for millimeters) or 2.54 (for centimeters).

Perhaps this is the place to say that bibliographical description does
not require the use of elaborate equipment
mainly just a ruler, a mag-
nifying glass, and a micrometer), as Vander Meulen has noted in several
places, such as "The Low-Tech Analysis of Early Paper" (Literary Research,
13 [1988], 89–94). In his Engelhard lecture, Where Angels Fear to Tread:
Descriptive Bibliography and Alexander Pope, published the same year (and
printed in a new edition in 2014), he summed the matter up this way:

Though modern devices such as the cyclotron have added exciting new possibilities
to analysis, I, like most bibliographers, had no access to such aids. My approach was
distinctly low-tech, but with tools that not enough bibliographers have learned to
use well: a clear plastic ruler; a magnifying glass, with which I got a free dictionary;

later, a wallet-size Fresnel lens [flat magnifier], which has served me as well as the
glass; a loupe with a printed scale for measuring type size; a small flashlight; and a
micrometer for recording paper thickness.

One might also mention outside calipers, for measuring paper thick-
ness or bulk at the center, and the Arthur Seibert Emoskop, for greater
magnification. Other useful equipment, such as the NoUVIR Inner-Page
Transilluminator or the Howard Eaton Pocket Viewlight (for examining
paper; see "Paper" below) and collators (for comparing text and other
features of two copies of an edition), can be expensive and not easily por-
table and should be supplied in special-collections reading rooms. Two
post-1968 (but now somewhat outdated) discussions are Warner Barnes,
"Optical and Mechanical Instruments for the Study of Rare Books and
Manuscripts," Direction Line, 10 (Winter 1980), 21; and Paul S. Koda, "Sci-
entific Equipment for the Examination of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and
Documents," Library Trends, 36 (1987–88), 39–51. See "Paper" below for
a few comments on Ian Christie-Miller's equipment for examining paper
(and hidden text); and for a few further points about micrometers, see
my 1971 essay on paper (cited under "Paper" below), in note 70 and the
surrounding text. For a fuller listing of related articles, see my Introduction
to Bibliography (2002 revision), section 9K, pp. 339–343.

In my 1968 essay I briefly discussed title-page transcription, type mea-
surement and identification, and color specification to illustrate the idea
of levels, and I referred to the description of paper and of publishers'
cloth. Two of these topics (type and color) I had previously treated at
greater length in separate essays, and the others I took up in later essays,
all of which are cited below. A system of alternative levels, within which
one can select an appropriate degree of accuracy and quantity of detail,
is important for helping one to maintain equable proportions throughout
all the parts of a description—which in turn reflects an understanding of
a description as a piece of historical writing.