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The STCN, The Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands, is the national retrospective bibliography for the period 1540-1800 in the area now called the Netherlands.[1] One of the difficulties facing cataloguers in such an enterprise is how to discriminate between line-for-line reprints that look identical and how to avoid mistaking them for copies of the same edition if the copies are spread over more than one library. But we also have to know how to discover whether a given copy is a reissue of a particular edition with a cancellans title-page suggesting a different edition or else an authentic reset new edition. After all, the information given on the title-page may suggest a separate, different edition, not a reissue. For a catalogue in which the entries are to be for individual editions and issues these are very real problems.
The need has long been felt for a reliable and economical method of identifying different editions. The fingerprint is such a method. It is a formula which indicates some particular exclusive features of a piece of printed matter and hence of a particular edition. After Madan's invention of two identification tests at about the turn of the century[2] the formula developed in two directions in the seventies. The principle in either case is that a reprint, even if at first sight it appears identical, is never exactly the same as its example.
One method was developed by J. W. Jolliffe et al. for the LOC project.[3] Jolliffe started from the differences that might occur at the ends of lines at particular places. His method, the details of which were worked out by an Anglo-French working group, is set out in a manual[4] which is now used in many libraries in Britain, France and Italy.
The second method starts from the position of the signature relative to the text in the bottom line of specified leaves. It is not infrequently described in the literature and is recommended by Foxon, Laufer and Gaskell. Foxon used it in his English Verse 1701-1750 and it is demonstrated by Todd in his article on The Gentleman's Magazine.[5] Up to that time no rules for using the method had been available. In about 1971 the method was introduced to the Netherlands by Prof. J. Gerritsen for use on the STCN, and rules were drawn up by a working group.[6] Because the fingerprint has been designed specifically for books printed with movable types before 1800 the method cannot be used with books containing little or no typographic text, such as books of plates, atlases and music books. With computerization in mind, Prof. Gerritsen's fingerprint was revised by the editors of the STCN in 1982. The result is the version presented here. The software to enable the computer to bring together wholly or partially identical fingerprints is currently being developed. In the meantime, and very successfully, identification of typesetting is being done 'by hand'.
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