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Archaeology of a Book: An experimental approach to reading rare books in archival contextsMain MenuIntroductionReading the First Books is an exploration of America's earliest printed booksPath: ProductionThis path explores the narratives of production embedded in the material qualities of the Advertencias.Path: CollectionPath describes the collection of early printed books in religious libraries across Mexico. 16-18th centuries.Path: AcquisitionPath describes the dispersal of early printed books in libraries and private collections beyond Mexican borders.Path: (Digital) FuturesBook history in a digital futureReferencesReferences, citations, and further readingTermsIndex of termsAuthorship & AcknowledgementsHannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection
Mismatched catchwords in the Advertencias
12015-03-13T13:47:22-07:00Anonymous43586Image shows two pages of the Advertencias (Folio 114 verso and 115 recto) from the Primeros Libros website. The catchword on the verso page reads "dem", while the first word on the recto page is "eodem." Facsimile image is from an exemplar held by the Benson Latin American Collection.plain2015-05-18T11:03:12-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
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12015-03-13T14:56:39-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255First WordHannah Alpert-Abrams6The catchword does not match the first word of folio 115.plain2015-03-13T15:06:28-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
12015-03-13T15:04:27-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255Duplicate textHannah Alpert-Abrams3The unmatched catchword reveals an error in the content of the book: "eo" has been typed twice.plain2015-03-13T15:06:30-07:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
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12015-12-12T15:59:28-08:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255Media GalleryHannah Alpert-Abrams4Media from the "Archaeology of the Book" projectstructured_gallery1229762015-12-12T16:03:09-08:00Hannah Alpert-Abrams9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
12015-02-27T10:34:55-08:00Catchwords8An examination of the catchwords of the Advertenciasgallery2015-09-10T16:08:32-07:00To help ensure that pages were printed and bound in order, printers used "catchwords," or sequences of letters at the bottom of each page. If done correctly, these letter sequences should match the first letters of the following page.
For example, consider the beginning pages of volume 1 of the Advertencias. In the bottom right corner of the left-hand page, you should see the string of letters "ber." If you move to the following page, notice that the first word is "ber" (actually the second half of the word |aber (saber, to know)). Since printers didn't number every page, this was an easy way to make sure that pages were properly set and aligned.
Catchwords are also a useful way to track print history. Though the goal is for every catchword to perfectly match the subsequent page, this is rarely the case. Consider for example the catchword associated with folio 115 from a copy of Volume 2 held by the Benson Latin American Collection. Here, the catchword (dem) is associated with the word (eodem). A relatively neutral mistake, the error in this case is caused by an error in typesetting: the letters "eo" were printed twice.
The frequent errors introduced into the catchwords, however, makes them a useful tool in attempting to understand the printing process underlying the production of a book like this one. When we systematically compare catchwords across exemplars, an inconsistency comes to light. In some copies of Volume 2, the first word of folio 304 (¶Pau) is associated with a matching catchword (¶Pau). This is seen, for example, in an exemplar held by the Benson Latin American Collection.
What does this discrepancy tell us? Nothing definitive. But in a comparison of catchwords across 17 exemplars, 10 used the catchword fub, while the remaining 7 had the more accurate ¶Pau. This means that at some point during production, type was reset, and the printers either corrected their error, or introduced a new one.
Why was the type reset? One possibility is that the book went through two or more print runs. If the the printers didn't have enough type for the entire book, or if they were working on multiple projects at once, they would have taken apart the frames after printing the book - or a segment of the book - in order to produce the next one. If they then found themselves printing the book again, they would have been forced to reset the type.