[Digital] Collation 101

The primary method of my research isn’t one included in the course, so I thought I’d take this week’s open blog post together with the theme of studying text to provide a short introduction for those who aren’t familiar with it.

Collation, digital or otherwise, falls under the umbrella of analytical bibliography which aims to analyze texts in order to discover the ideal copy, or the conceptual book which embodies the creator’s intent, free from human error and editorial deviation (Howard-Hill, 2007, p. 13). At its core, collation is the process of comparing. 

In descriptive bibliography, collation and the collation statement are the result of comparing a book’s signatures to the original order of construction and noting any deviations from it (Gaskell, 1995, p. 328). Collation in analytical bibliography is the comparing of two or more (or even many) copies of the same book in order to locate differences such as changes in the word and letter order over time, the setting of type, the appearance of broken type, and many others (Gaskell, 1995).

In practice, collation looks a lot like getting ones’ hands dirty in research. Traditionally, it involves numerous copies of the same edition of a book (an edition being all copies of a book printed at any time from a single setting of the type (Bowers, 2012)), spread out over a table in a library, or set up in a machine designed to aid the human eye in spotting differences, such as the McLeod Portable Collator as seen below:

The McLeod Portable Collator,
source: http://www.english.utoronto.ca/facultystaff/emeritiretired/mcleod.htm

 

Digital collation is simply the use of image manipulation tools to make the comparison. The method currently in use involves overlaying images of the same page and adjusting transparencies in order to see even minute differences in typesetting (Agata, 2003). While digital collation comes with its share of disadvantages compared to collation in person, such as being unable to examine the paper stock and relying on reproduced images, it has the distinct advantage of allowing study of works where multiple physical copies do not exist in a single location. This possibility is highlighted by Agata’s work on the Gutenberg Bible.

With an understanding of what collation is, the question remains: why? While the often-stated goal of collation is to arrive at an understanding of an ideal text, this concept has faced a lot of skepticism. Instead, the fruits of collation might include understanding marks of human error and change in order to learn more about the changes of a book over time during its printing. Randall McLeod, in his piece on the poem “Easter-Wings”, notes that the purpose of such detailed textual criticism might be understood as a way to juxtapose editorial practice in order to reveal the path of a text over time and to better understand the very human influence which shapes a text as we see it (McLeod, 1994).  

What are your thoughts on collation as a method? It’s often called one of the more scientific elements of bibliography. Does this seem true to you?

Sources:

Agata, M. (2003). Stop-Press Variants in the Gutenberg Bible: The First Report of the Collation. The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 97(2), 139-165.

Bowers, F. (2012). Principles of bibliographical description. Winchester and New Castle, DE: St Paul's Bibliographies and Oak Knoll Press.

Cloud, R. (1994). FIAT fLUX. In R. McLeod (Ed.), Crisis in Editing: Texts of the English Renaissance. (61-172). New York: AMS Press.

Gaskell, P. (1995). A new introduction to bibliography. Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll Books.

Howard-Hill, T.H. (2007). Why bibliography matters. In S. Eliot and J. Rose (Eds.), A companion to the history of the book. (9-20). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.