Acknowledgements
I should like to express my indebtedness to the late Philip Gaskell, who first introduced me to the incunable collections in the University of Glasgow, when he appointed me to the Library’s Special Collections Department in 1963. To my former colleague, the late Hester M. Black, I owe a great deal: it was she who first introduced me to the pleasures of provenance study. Projects like this are never the achievement of just one person and I am also very conscious that I am building on the work of many past librarians at Glasgow and elsewhere who are now anonymous.
Coming to more recent times, I first and foremost want to thank David Weston, former Keeper of Special Collections in the University of Glasgow Library. He has been a source of constant encouragement and advice and it is true to say that without him this catalogue would not have seen the light of day. To Julie Gardham, Senior Librarian in Archives & Special Collections, I owe a special acknowledgement: for her generous support at all times and for all the good publicity she has successfully attracted to the Glasgow Incunabula Project by virtue of blogs, seminars, talks and exhibitions. She has not only been responsible for designing the web version of this catalogue, but she has completed, single-handed, the enormous task of migrating its data as part of the full-scale revision of all the incunable records in the Library’s Opac catalogue. I am also much indebted to Robert MacLean, also of Archives & Special Collections, for his many helpful suggestions and improvements, and especially for his provenance contributions, as well as for his work on the maintenance of the web catalogue. To all the other staff of the Department I want to say thank you for making my return from semi-retirement both enjoyable and productive: in particular, Paula McKerrow and the late Paul Fitzpatrick, who have, with unfailing good humour over the years, fetched and carried from the rare book stacks thousands of books for me to work on; and Sarah Gillies deserves an especially big thanks for so patiently receiving and processing my frequent upgrades and revisions of text. The indispensable contribution to the Project made by the staff of the Photographic Unit in the University Library (particularly India Fullarton) should also to be recorded; they have prepared a minimum of three images per incunable (amounting in total to over 3,000 images) to illustrate the web catalogue.
The staff of other Glasgow libraries have given me help I could not have foregone: Andrew McAinsh (formerly of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians Library); Patricia Grant and Linda Burke (for incunables at the Mitchell Library, the Burrell Collection, and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum); Carol Stewart (Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde)
I am also hugely indebted to other librarians and scholars outside Glasgow, who have generously provided the Project with information and assistance: Lilian Armstrong, Terence Bailey, Joseph Bernaer, Elma Brenner, Susanne Budde, Martin Davies, Jeroen De Keyser, Iain M.L. Donaldson, Cristina Dondi, Stephanie Dreyfürst, Christina Duffy, Oliver Duntze, Falk Eisermann, John Goldfinch, Klaus Graf, Lotte Hellinga, Karen Limper-Herz, Alan R. MacDonald, John Monfasani, Laura Nuvoloni, Paul S. Needham, John P. O’Brien, Philip Oldfield, Douglas Osler, Edward Potten, Stefan Reif, Holger Richter, W.D. Ian Rolfe, Marja Smolenaars, Piotr Tafiłowski, Steven Van Impe, Valérie Neveu.
A slightly unsung group of experts that I would like to acknowledge are the compilers of catalogues of recent auction sales of incunables. I have learned a lot and derived much pleasure from perusing catalogues such as the Doheny sales (New York: Christie’s, 1987, 2001); the George Abrams sale (London: Sotheby’s, 1989); the Friedlaender sale (New York: Christie’s, 2001); the Beriah Botfield sale (London: Christie’s, 1994) – to name but a few.
As well as those already mentioned above, many other staff in Archives & Special Collections as well as University of Glasgow work placement students have contributed to the project website over its ten year genesis (editing data, creating links, photographing books, writing blogs etc), and I would like to acknowledge the work of the following in particular (with apologies for anyone who has been inadvertantly omitted):
Rachael Beardwood (Graduate Trainee)
Siobhan Buchanan (Museum studies placement student)
Lara Burton (Graduate Trainee)
Michelle Craig (Graduate Trainee)
Samuel Dyer (Photo Unit)
Adam Flynn (Renaissance Art placement student)
Sarah Graham (Conservator)
Hannah Grout (Graduate Trainee)
Sequoia Hearne (Photo Unit)
Fiona Laird (Graduate Trainee)
Andrew McAinsh (Graduate Trainee)
Emma Malarkey (Graduate Trainee)
Olivia Moloney (History & History of Art placement student)
Rebecca Moloney (Graduate Trainee)
Patrick J. Murray (College of Arts)
Fiona Neale (Archives & Special Collections)
Dr Paris O’Donnell (Graduate Trainee)
Katie O'Neill (Museum Studies placement student)
Lisa Ramsay (Graduate Trainee)
Louise Robertson (Conservator)
Struan Watson (History of Art placement student)
It is a pleasure to record all the help I have received from far and wide, giving me information I could never have discovered on my own and saving me from many a faux pas. However, perfection is a mirage in a work of this kind, dealing as it does with hundreds of thousands of pieces of data. I have tried to be as diligent and accurate as I could, but errors and flaws, some from ignorance, others from lapses in concentration, will inevitably show through the weft and weave of the text. For these I am solely responsible.
Jack Baldwin
October 2020
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