Winter Quarter 2008 / Jed
Some Meanings of Bibliography
- Etymology: from Greek roots "biblio" (book) and "graph" (writing).
- Lists of books, articles, and/or other resources on a topic, by a particular author, printed in a certain place, in a particular format, etc. (Enumerative bibliography)
- The study of the physical aspects of book production-printing, editing, binding, paper-making, ink, illustration processes, etc.-and the transmission of a text from the author's manuscript(s) to the published version(s). In the field of literary study, these studies are often devoted to determining an author's intentions regarding the exact wording of his or her works. (Critical or textual bibliography)
- In addition, librarians in academic libraries who are responsible for acquiring and managing the collections in a particular subject are often called "bibliographers."
Some Types of Enumerative Bibliography
- Primary or Secondary. In the context of literary or cultural studies, this distinction means listing works by a particular writer or cultural figure or listing works about that person's works or cultural productions. A listing of all Shakespeare's plays and poems would be a "primary" Shakespeare bibliography; a listing of all the criticism published in 2006 about King Lear would be a "secondary" Shakespeare bibliography. Note, however, that a particular publication can be either primary or secondary depending on the context: An essay by Virginia Woolf about the novel Great Expectations could be in a secondary bibliography for Dickens, but would be in a primary bibliography for Woolf herself.
- Complete or Selective . Either a primary or a secondary bibliography can be either complete or selective. For example, a listing of all of William Faulkner's novels may be limited just to one edition of each novel or may attempt to be a complete listing of all editions in all languages that have ever been published. Similarly, a secondary bibliography may claim to list every article, book, or even parts of books that have critiqued James Joyce's Ulysses, or it may deliberately limit the scope, for example by listing only those items in English or only those published during a certain period.
- Descriptive. In addition to simply listing editions of an author's works, a "descriptive" bibliography actually tries to describe a copy of each separate edition or printing of an author's works and, further, to establish a chronological order of the various editions or printings when the date is either not present or unreliable and other information about how many copies were published. This enables a scholar or a book collector to determine which edition he or she is looking at or perhaps to find interesting cultural context about the book, such as its popularity, its affordability, etc. Example:
Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.
PS 3231 .M93 1993Gilson, David. A Bibliography of Jane Austen. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
PR 4036 .G54 1982
- Current or retrospective. A current bibliography attempts to list items from a very recent time period. In terms of literature, it can be either primary or secondary. For example, a listing of "the best new American novels of 2006" would be a current primary bibliography. A listing or survey of last year's scholarship on 19 th century American fiction would be a current secondary bibliography. In order to stay current, most "current" bibliographies are published or updated frequently. Many scholarly journals publish an annual bibliography, checklist, or bibliographical survey essay on the previous year's scholarship in a particular subject. For example: There are four survey articles published each year entitled "Recent Studies in the English Renaissance," "Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama," "Recent Studies in the Restoration and 18 th Century," and "Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century" all in the journal Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. Some current bibliographies are so large they need an entire book to themselves, such as The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography (NY: AMS Press), published annually. Bibliographies that are published on a frequent, regular basis are sometimes called serial bibliographies.
On the other hand, some bibliographies (usually book-length) attempt to compile all of the relevant items (or selected items, within parameters defined in the bibliography's introduction) that have ever been published on a topic. Again, these can be bibliographies of primary or secondary materials (or both). For example, A Bibliography of Regional Fiction in Britain and Ireland, 1800-2000 by Keith D.M. Snell (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2002) attempts a comprehensive, retrospective listing of all primary works that meet its criteria: works in a particular genre (fiction), published in two countries, published in a 201-year-period, and that also meet the author's definition of "regional." An example of a retrospective secondary bibliography would be: The English Novel 1578-1956: A Checklist of Twentieth-Century Criticisms by Inglis F. Bell and Donald Baird (Denver: Swallow Press, 1958). An example of a retrospective source that lists both primary and secondary materials is Ten Modern Irish Playwrights: a Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography by Kimball King (NY: Garland Publ., 1979). Although occasionally such bibliographies may have revised editions or supplements, most often they are, in a sense, "dead on arrival." They are very useful for the years they cover, but to find more current resources on the same topic, you would need to consult a current bibliography.
- Trade. A sub-category of current enumerative bibliography is "Trade" bibliography. This type of resource attempts to list all the books (or other type of resources) that are currently available "to the trade" in a particular area (such as a country) or in a particular language. Usually, these are not subject-specific. The most well-known of these is Books in Print, but there are similar resources for journals, microforms, and, of course, various non-print media (CDs, DVDs, videos, etc.). With the increasing globalization of the publishing industry, the distinction of country of origin can often be blurred. For this and other reasons, most available books in the English language, regardless of place of publication, are listed in the database Global Books in Print. One tricky thing to remember about trade bibliographies is that although the information in them is kept current, the date of publication of a book has nothing to do with its inclusion; rather, its current availability is the key factor. For example, the novels of Hemingway and Faulkner have never really gone out of print, so they are listed. On the other hand, a book published just two or three years ago may already be "out of print," and therefore no longer listed.
- Annotated (or not) . Either a primary or a secondary bibliography may or may not include annotations or comments. In a primary bibliography, these may help further explain the distinctions between various editions or printings of an author's work. In a secondary bibliography, the annotations provide potentially useful summary or critical commentary about the book or article listed, which may help you determine whether you want to spend time tracking down and reading the entire article or book. Some annotations, particularly for article-length publications, are called abstracts. They are sometimes written by the author him/herself, or may be written by professional indexers.
An even more extreme form of annotated bibliography is a bibliographical survey article, such as the quarterly surveys published in the journal Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (mentioned above). An annual collection of bibliographical survey articles summarizing the scholarship in all areas of American literature is: American Literary Scholarship (Duke University Press).
- Print or Online. Whether a bibliography is available in an online format or is available only in printed form has nothing really to do with the type of bibliography it is. Any of the above examples could be published in print, online, or both. Furthermore, for many older print bibliographies that have now been converted into online formats, the data itself is exactly the same-no more, no less. However, the online version provides several benefits.
- First, an online bibliography (or database) cumulates all the citations that would have previously been published serially, i.e. in annual (or other time period) installments. Therefore (theoretically, at least) you should be able to retrieve all the citations ever listed in the multiple print volumes of a serial bibliography with one search command.
- A second major benefit is that in a digital format, the pieces of data can be searched in a variety of ways, whereas in a print bibliography you are limited to the arrangement of the bibliography plus whatever indexes are provided. For example, in a large literary criticism database you could construct a search for articles on a particular topic that were only published in one particular journal, by a particular scholar, in a particular language, in a particular year or years, etc.
- Many online databases allow you to create an "alert" service that will periodically send to your email account a listing of new citations that meet your particular search strategy(ies).
- With the increasing digitization of the full texts of books and, particularly, journals, the databases can sometimes include the full texts of the sources that your search retrieves; alternatively, your library may be able to link from the citations in a database to the packages of full-text resources it acquires.