Anne Welsh (University College London)

This paper uses Tom Phillips’s A Humument as an object lesson, considering the various ways in which challenging the boundaries of book arts also pushes our definitions of the discipline of Bibliography (the study of the book as object) and Philip Gaskell’s assertion that “Bibliography’s overriding responsibility must be to determine a text in its most accurate form.” In exploring the many forms and formats in which A Humument exists – including a mass-produced book, a series of prints, USB with audio recording, web app, celestial and terrestrial globes and a skull – this paper highlights the ways in which an understanding of a text which is far more than “just” text can provide an opportunity to consider the bibliographic models that underpin our cataloguing practices.

 In the 21st century, as new approaches to Knowledge Organisation, including Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and its successor the IFLA Library Reference Model and international cataloguing standard Resource Description and Access attempt to redefine and restrict the meaning of ‘the Work’ as a concept within bibliographic description, this paper considers A Humument and Phillips’s writing about it as a useful way into the ideas expressed by Gaskell that “All documents, manuscript and printed, are the bibliographer’s province; and it may be added that the aims and procedures of bibliography apply not only to written and printed books, but also to any document, disc, tape or film where reproduction is involved and variant versions may result”. The practical considerations of cataloguing artists’ books are at the heart of this presentation, with clear examples of how changes in international cataloguing models and standards are affecting, arguably increasing, the day-to-day decisions that have to be made by cataloguers on the ground.

Phillips’s use of the term “Gesamtkunstwerk” is explored and the “work in progress” as a challenge and / or explication of the bibliographic consideration of ‘the Work’ and ‘the ideal work’ is also interrogated. Finally, the paper ends with a meditation on the first page of A Humument in its various versions and a contemplation of its opening lines, “I | sing | a | book | of the art | that | was” and their potential implication for the art and practice of cataloguing today.

​

Anne Welsh is Lecturer in Library and Information Studies at University College London, where she teaches the core Cataloguing and Classification module in the MA Library and Information Studies (MA LIS) and the optional module on Historical Bibliography in the MA LIS, MA Digital Humanities, MA Archives and Records Management and MA Early Modern Studies programmes. Practical Cataloguing (Facet, 2012) is a core text on iSchool courses worldwide. She collects mass-produced artists’ books, and is interested in them not only as works of art, but as challenges to the way we order and structure modern collections.