Purpose, readers’ expectations, project feasibility and standards are the four concerns central to the planning of library exhibition catalogues. If these four are addressed successfully, other issues remain incidental. If there is shortfall in any one of these critical zones, no amount of manipulation of the peripherals can disguise the publication’s weakness.

PURPOSE

“What is this all about?” rises to the mind of the potential reader of any publication. Now, the librarian coordinating the project—in order to make the catalogue’s purpose clear to the reader—must first, of course, answer that question. The choice of valid purposes is broad. In deed, a catalogue will always serve to memorialize the exhibition: Thomas Tanselle reminds us that the catalogue is the only permanent public record of an assemblage of books often destined not to remain together.¹ But as one examines the harvest of recent catalogues, one sees several other purposes at work as well. Among them are:

• making known to scholars and collectors the nature and availability of a collection;
• thanking a donor or meeting the stipulation of a gift;
• showing, when material is on loan from a collector, that the library would value acquiring the books;
• celebrating the opening or anniversary of the library or linking the collection to an event, era or place in history;
• boasting, pure and simple, hoping to elevate the stature of the library and its parent institution;
• developing staff. The late Robert Rosenthal held that the catalogue “gives the denizens of the library the chance to express their authority, knowledge, concern and interest in a public, original and imaginative.”²

1. G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Literature of Book Collecting” in Book Collecting, edited by Jean Peters (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1980).

2. Robert Rosenthal, Curator, Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, The University of Chicago, 1954–1989, in conversation 1984.

In John Gay’s The What D’Ye Call It we find the acquire instructing a troupe of roving actors:

And is the play as I order’d it, both a tragedy and a comedy? I would have it a pastoral too: and if you could make it a farce, so much the better—and what if you crown’d all with a spice of your opera? you know my neighbors never saw a play before; and d’ye see, I would show them all sorts of plays under one.

It is immaterial whether the quire’s play was a success. One thing is sure: the failure to conceive and project the clear central purpose for the catalogue has plunged as many into mediocrity as have inept design and substandard printing.

The importance of clarity of purpose can be understood in the comparison of two catalogues on American bookbindings. The catalogue of the Maser collection, for all its valuable information and rich color illustrations, flits uncertainly between homage to the donor and serious bibliographic exposition.³ In the Papantonio collection catalogue, however, goals have been prioritized so that a natural and commanding flow of purpose is evident.⁴ The man, his role—quickly covered by a preliminary text—flow naturally into the substance of the book. The purpose becomes clear immediately. The Foreword’s first line states the reason for the exhibition; the Introduction answers the question, “Why these books?” and briefly details their relationship.

3. Bookbinding in America 1680–1910, from the Collection of Frederick E. Maser, with an essay by William Spawn (Bryn Mawr College Library, 1983).

4. Early American Bookbindings from the Collection of Michael Papantonio (New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1972).

Now, although the catalogue accompanies and records the exhibit and — one might hope—captures some of its immediacy, the catalogue clearly cannot be the exhibition nor should it try. Once the exhibit has been dismantled, the catalogue commences its lone, long life as a book, free of those volumes neatly labeled in glass cases, free of the geography of the exhibition hall which has determined a narrative sequence and largely how many books could be shown. Naked it stands before the reader who might never have seen (nor cared to see) the exhibition. No doubt, Donald Gallup had this in mind when he declared that an exhibition catalogue becomes valuable only in so far as it contains references to material beyond the exhibition or collection, extending the catalogue’s scope enough to make it a useful tool in its subject field.⁵

5. Donald C. Gallup, retired Elizabeth Wakeman Dwight Curator of the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, in conversation 1983.

Once the catalogue’s purpose has been clearly articulated and understood among its creators, the design—that is, the way in which text and illustrations are presented—can be used to support that purpose. The design will be successful when the type is inviting and easy to read, when the illustrations are within reach of the references, when everything the designer has introduced helps to clarify what is meant and there is nothing superfluous to lead the reader to do a double-take or ask, “What’s this supposed to mean?”

In developing a catalogue, Mies van der Rohe’s “Less is more!” speaks with a fresh force. What a temptation it is for the designer (whether library staff or hired professional) to start with the text and illustrations and take flight from there—rivaling the words and eclipsing the pictures with devices so fresh, different and smashing that the main thrust of the book is smothered by the manner in which it is presented. Also, it is important to beware of graphic solutions which have been constructed (or must be defended) by an intricate rationale of verbiage. “Mmmm, yes, now I see what you’re trying to do,” must never pass for a nod of approval. The best exhibition catalogues have started and finished with text and pictures—pure, simple and to the purpose.

This is article first appeared in Volume 5, Number 2, 1990 of Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship (pp. 77–84).