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3. Printing and Typographical Journals
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3. Printing and Typographical Journals

Although printing and type design as fields of endeavor are distinct from bibliography, bibliographers are frequently concerned with the printing of books and the analysis of type faces; thus any printing or typographical journal—particularly if it contains historical material—may be relevant to the bibliographer's concerns. The number of journals


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in this area is extremely large (as a glance at Ulrich and Küp will show), ranging from trade journals and house organs to scholarly annuals. Indeed, the field of typography has been fortunate in the number and quality of scholarly periodicals devoted to it. The most distinguished is Simon and Morison's Fleuron (1923-30), but other journals containing important historical research are Gerard Meynell's Imprint (1913), Goudy and McMurtrie's Ars Typographica (1918-34), Simon's Signature (1935-54), Harling's Typography (1936-39) and Alphabet and Image (1946-48), Nash's Printing and Graphic Arts (1953-65), Spencer's Typographica (1958-62), Moran's Black Art (1962-65), and Wrolstad's Journal of Typographic Research [now Visible Language] (1967- ). At present the only journal devoted exclusively to historical work in this area is James Mosley's Journal of the Printing Historical Society (1965- ). Of all these journals, only a few have received partial coverage in the standard indexes: part (1926-30) of the Fleuron in IBZ, one year (1926) of Ars Typographica in IBBB, and part (1947-48) of Alphabet and Image in the Subject Index constitute the total amount of such indexing in the pre-SB years, though after that time the Subject Index (British Humanities Index) did include Signature (for 1949-53), Typographica (for 1949-51), and Black Art (for 1962-65).

If these journals are probably the most important in this field for bibliographers, several others contain much useful historical material: graphic arts publications, such as Printing Art (1903-41), PM [later AD] (1934-42), Print (1940- ), Book Design and Production (1958- ), and, above all, the great Penrose Annual (1895- ); house journals, of which the outstanding example is Monotype Recorder (1901- ); and trade journals of the printing industry, such as Inland Printer (1883- ), American Printer (1885-1958), British Printer (1888- ), and Printing Review (1931-59). The only journals of this group which have received any coverage to speak of are Printing Art, most (1907-39) of which is indexed in the Annual Magazine Subject Index, and Penrose Annual, included in IBBB for 1926-38 and in the Subject Index for 1949-61, although the Inland Printer (in IBBB for 1927-37), American Printer (in IBZ for 1911-20), British Printer (in IBZ for 1911-20 and the Subject Index for 1947-61), and Print (in Annual Magazine Subject Index for 1941-49) have each received brief treatment. Many other printing-trade journals have existed, of course, ranging from the nineteenth-century Typographic Messenger to the twentieth-century Typothetae Bulletin and regional magazines like New England Printer, Pacific Printer and Publisher,


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Western Printer and Lithographer, and Southern Printer. Although they are principally concerned with current news, the fact that they occasionally contain material of bibliographical interest makes it worthwhile to check the few available guides to this class of material. The Graphic Arts Index, for example, published by the United Typothetae of America in its Service Bulletins from 1932 through 1934 and in the midmonthly numbers of the Typothetae Bulletin from 1935 through 1940, provides coverage, for the period 1927-40, of the large collection of trade journals (English as well as American) received by the Typothetae library.[21] A later similar guide is Printing Abstracts (1946- ), based on the trade journals in the Leatherhead, Surrey, library of PATRA (Printing, Packaging and Allied Trades Research Association)—now called PIRA (Research Association for the Paper and Board, Printing and Packaging Industries.)[22] These guides to trade journals are naturally of limited usefulness to bibliographers, though they do include sections of historical articles; but their existence serves to emphasize the fact that, in a field like printing with an enormous periodical literature, the need is especially urgent for an index drawing together the bibliographical material scattered through these hundreds of journals, both the scholarly and the trade journals.