 | Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography |  |
Color
"A System of Color Identification for Bibliographical Description"
was published
in Studies in Bibliography, 20 (1967), 203–234,
and reprinted
in my Selected Studies in Bibliography
(1979), pp. 139–170. My recommen-
dation of the ISCC-NBS Centroid Color Charts, emerging from an extensive
survey of
possibilities, was clearly the correct one, and those charts have
gained fairly
wide acceptance among bibliographers since then. Their use
was endorsed in Philip Gaskell's
A New Introduction to Bibliography
[1972,
1974], pp. 238–239, and, for the
book-conservation community, in Abbey
Newsletter for
December 1980. A list of eighteen bibliographies using the
charts was
published in 1990 by Craig S. Abbott in
"Designating Color
in Descriptive Bibliography: The ISCC-NBS Method in Practice"
(Papers
of the Bibliographical Society of America, 84:
119–129).
Abbott also explained some of the mistakes made in those
bibliog-
raphies in the use of the charts, the most basic one being a failure
to
understand that each chip represents the center of the color-name
block
designated by the accompanying number and abbreviated name.
Thus
bibliographers who say their matches are inexact do not recognize
that
their choice of the closest match in each case does in fact provide
an
exact match to the area surrounding the centroid chip. I made this point
in
1967, but it cannot be stated too often, considering how
frequently
bibliographers have misunderstood it. (Although Abbott objects to the
phrase "centroid number"—and the citation of a
specific number in the
form "Centroid 191"—as indicative of this confusion, I
think the usage
can be condoned as a shorthand version of "the number associated
with
a chip in the ISCC-NBS Centroid Color Charts.") Abbott further notes that
bibliographers have sometimes
misinterpreted the abbreviations assigned
to the color-name blocks and expanded
them improperly—not realizing,
for instance, that lower-case letters indicate the
"-ish" form of a color
name (so that "yG," yellowish green, is a different color
from "YG," yel-
low green). As Abbott observes, many
bibliographers have seemingly used
the charts without consulting the related
ISCC-NBS dictionary, where
provides some useful cautions for bibliographers wishing to employ the
Centroid Charts.
One of the requirements I formulated for an appropriate color-
matching system
was that there should be "strong assurance of continued
availability in the
future." Because the Centroid Color Charts were
published
by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), I believed that they met
this
requirement. Unfortunately, however, in 1983 the NBS
discontinued their
sale, pending the results of a test of the stability of the
color chips by the
color consultant H. Hemmendinger; and
in February 1984 the NBS dis-
covered that twenty-seven of the chips
(out of 251) had shifted enough to
move from one color-name block to another.
Although the charts were
included in the NBS's 1984–85 catalogue of
Standard Reference Materials
and in the March
1984 price list, they did not appear in the
October
1984 price list and have not been available from the NBS
since then. On
6 April 1984 I wrote a long letter to Richard W. Seward of the Standard
Reference Materials
section, explaining why the charts were essential for
bibliographical work and
(recognizing that bibliographers formed a small
constituency) making the obvious
point that a color standard was needed
in many areas of endeavor. It seemed to me,
I said, that a "national
bureau of standards" could be expected to provide a
standard for color
designations. I received no reply, and three months later (on 9
July 1984)
I telephoned Stanley D.
Rasberry, chief of the Office of Standard Refer-
ence Materials, with whom
I had a cordial but unencouraging conversa-
tion. He confirmed that distribution
of the charts had stopped, and he
said that the only hope for any resumed
production (since the NBS did
not have its own color laboratory) was the receipt
of private funding.
There the matter has rested, except that over the years several
persons
associated with the development of the charts have privately sold
copies
from the small stock that remained (after the distribution of many
cop-
ies by the NBS), out of an original edition of 20,000. The most recent
of
those persons has been Nick Hale, who had been technical
director
of the Munsell Color Company at the time it oversaw the production
of
the charts (by the Tobey Color Card Company) and who had alerted the
NBS to
the problem of shifting in 1983. Hale's
possession of the stock was
publicized to the bibliographical world on 19 July
1996 by Sandra Alston
(of the Fisher
Library at the University of Toronto) through the email
list of the
Bibliographical Society of Canada. When Hale (then of Hale
Color Consultants, Inc., which is now in Naples, Florida) sent out
copies,
he included with each set a statement about the color shifts, along with
a
thorough report of the results of the 1984 measurements; and as of
June
2003, at which time about 150 sets were left, he also enclosed
a brief ac-
count of the history of the Centroid
Charts.
The significant color-chip shifts discovered in 1984—that is,
the
twenty-seven that shifted from one color-name block to another—are
as
follows: the chip for block 24 shifted to block 235; 56 to 59; 59 to 62;
75
to 78; 108 to 110; 118 to 125; 126 to 138; 129 to 131; 139 to 141; 147
to
166; 194 to 197; 195 to 199; 196 to 200; 197 to 201; 198 to 202; 200 to
204;
206 to 210; 208 to 212; 213 to 202; 215 to 229; 218 to 223; 220 to
225;
221 to 226; 225 to 243; 239 to 259; 247 to 250; and 257 to 260.
Persons
who consult descriptive bibliographies that cite centroid numbers
(and
the corresponding color names) should be aware that these
twenty-seven
numbers may not be accurate (depending on the date of the
bibliogra-
pher's work). But given the approximate nature of such citations in
the
first place, along with the fact that the only major chip shifts are to
closely
related color blocks, the shifting is not likely to render any
previously
written description seriously defective. The copies of the charts that
are
used in connection with reading these bibliographies may not of
course
precisely match those that were used by the bibliographers, but this
situ-
ation is not a serious problem. In 2003, Hale expressed the belief, based
on his long experience, that the chips
had probably changed very little
since 1984 and thus were still
usable.
Whether new descriptions, however, should be based on the Centroid
Charts is a question that one might at first think ought to be
answered in
the negative. After all, they are not readily available, and at least
twenty-
seven of the samples in them are not accurate. But it may be that there
is
no satisfactory alternative from a practical point of view. The two
main
contenders are the charts produced by the Munsell Color Company and
by
Pantone, Inc. Munsell has tradition behind it, since the Munsell system
is the
fundamental one of the twentieth century (see my discussion of it in
the
1967 essay) and is in fact the system on which the centroid sampling
of
the color solid is based. And the Munsell Book of Color
is published in two
editions, one with glossy and the other with matte samples
(over 1600 of
them). The fact that matte samples are available and
that the samples are
removable makes the Munsell Book
especially appropriate for bibliographi-
cal use (and it is indeed widely employed
for scientific as well as industrial
purposes). It is unwieldy, however, and at
present each edition costs about
$1000. It is not suitable for bibliographers to
carry easily with them,
and most will not wish to spend the money on a copy.
Libraries could
of course be encouraged to purchase copies for their
special-collections
reading rooms, but inevitably bibliographers will still find
many places
without a copy.
Pantone is more commercially oriented than Munsell, but bibliogra-
phers will be
interested in the fact that the Pantone system is frequently
used in the
graphic-design and printing industries. There is a wide variety
of Pantone
Matching System Color Guides for different purposes; most
or uncoated samples, identify each one with a Pantone number and name,
and cost in the $100–$500 range. A loose-leaf book is also available, as
well as apps for mobile devices. And there are several websites (such as
www.pantone-colours.com) that offer comprehensive showings of Pan-
tone colors, each labeled only with a Pantone number; but matching to
a computer screen is not recommended, since colors can vary from one
screen to another. (Pantone is a subsidiary of X-Rite, which offers spec-
trophotometers, but besides their costliness they go beyond the specificity
required for bibliography.) A compact and convenient book does exist,
called The Pantone Book of Color (1990), by Leatrice Eiseman and Lawrence Herbert, who provide an informative introduction. It displays 1024 col-
ors labeled with Pantone numbers and with names; the Pantone names,
however, are often fanciful—such as "dusty jade green" or "moonlite
mauve" or "apricot wash"—and are not appropriate for bibliographical
citation.
The matter of naming is vitally important, since a description must
enable one to
visualize a color without recourse to a chart (though a chip
number is there for
times when greater precision is needed). The merit
of the ISCC-NBS naming system
(used in the Centroid Charts) is that only
commonly
understood adjectives are used. The ISCC-NBS dictionary
(discussed in my essay)
enables one to convert Munsell notations as well
as centroid numbers to the
standard color names; but the use of Pantone
numbers (though it would allow easy
access to an approximation of the
colors on the internet) would not accommodate
the use of those names.
Taking all these considerations into account,
bibliographers would be
well advised to follow one of two courses. (1) Continue to
use the Centroid
Charts, since 89.2% of the chips are
probably still accurate (in that any
shifting has not moved them out of their
color-name blocks) and since the
other 10.8% can be assumed to have shifted to
such closely related color-
name blocks as not to invalidate a description (which
in any case refers to
a segment of the color solid, not a single point). (2) Use
the Munsell Book
of Color when convenient to do so,
supplementing it at other times with
the Centroid Charts;
combining the two in a single bibliography poses no
problem as long as all the
names are expressed in the ISCC-NBS standard
forms. Besides the ISCC-NBS
dictionary, another source for the equiva-
lences is a website provided by the
Texas Precancel Club, which lists the
centroid numbers and names along with the
equivalent Munsell nota-
tions and small color samples: search the internet for
"NBS/ISCC Color
System - Tx4.us", or use "tx4.us/nbs-iscc.htm". An example of a
bibliog-
raphy that uses the centroid system and also supplies the
corresponding
Munsell notation in each instance (as "perhaps more accessible") is
David Alan Richards's
Kipling (2010), which thus sets a valuable
precedent.
| Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography | |