[Download] "From the Other Side of the Counter: Experiences of a Librarian Turned Researcher." by Australian Academic & Research Libraries * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: From the Other Side of the Counter: Experiences of a Librarian Turned Researcher.
- Author : Australian Academic & Research Libraries
- Release Date : January 01, 2003
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 194 KB
Description
When the National Library moved into its present building in 1968, I was appointed its first Keeper of Rare Books. In that capacity I worked on several bibliographical publications, the most important of which was my French Plays, 1701-1840 in the National Library of Australia; A Bibliography, published in 1973 as a contribution to the Third David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies. While handling those plays I was struck by the number of them which had been printed in Toulouse, a city I had visited briefly, and which had captivated me by its charm. In the introduction to my bibliography, I regretted our distance from those European archives where there must be more information about 18th century printers. Later I left the NLA and began studying for the priesthood with the Society of Missionaries of Africa. I could have studied theology in London or Toulouse: I chose Toulouse! During my three years there I was required to write a long paper in Church History. While casting about for a suitable subject I remembered those 18th century printers and decided to see if I could discover more about them. The material I found did not relate to the printers of plays, but to a family of printers who, for over a century, held the tide of 'Printer to the Archbishop and clergy of Toulouse'; the most prominent of them was Claude-Gilles Lecamus. It was at the Archives departementales de la Haute-Garonne that I found a bundle of papers which I felt had been waiting 200 years just for me to come and study them. The bundle, call number 1 G 404, contained the itemised accounts presented by this firm to the diocese each year from 1683 to 1783. Let me say at once that the firm published very few books, for the diocese or for anyone else; it made its fortune from jobbing printing. For the clergy it printed things like pastoral letters, forms, announcements about public prayers--for the success of the king's arms, or in thanksgiving for a royal birth, programs for the annual series of clergy conferences--what we would call ongoing formation, and so on. The accounts indicate the date the work was done, the number of copies printed, and the price. Over such a long period, they serve as a window on to the life of a moderately important diocese.