Scope: Descriptions of the manuscripts will not necessarily aim for originality or exhaustiveness, but will be confined to essential information presented in a compact format. The descriptions will generally include a collation, list of contents, brief codicological description, brief history, notes on special problems and characteristics, and selected, up-to-date bibliography.
Length: Descriptions should, as a rule, be brief, although certain manuscripts, especially those with extensive and diverse contents, will require lengthier descriptions.
Arrangement of sections: Descriptions should contain the following information in the following order (exceptions are discussed below):
(a) City and Library of location of manuscript.A number of points might be noted.
(b) Shelfmark
(c) ASMMF catalogue number, Ker Catalogue number, and Gneuss "Handlist" number, followed by customary name or title. (N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957; rpt. 1990 with supplement originally published in Anglo-Saxon England 5 [1977], 121-31); Helmut Gneuss, "A preliminary list of manuscripts written or owned in England up to 1100," Anglo-Saxon England 9 [1981], 1-60.)
(d) History
(e) Codicological description
(f) Collation
(g) List of contents
(h) Notes on special problems and characteristics
(i) "Photo notes"
(j) Selected bibliography
(c) Customary titles are to be placed in double quotation marks.(e) Codicological descriptions will discuss bindings, size of pages and writing grid (length by width, in millimeters), rulings, prickings, arrangement of vellum (hair/flesh; note: HFHF refers to four leaves, not two) when this can be determined, nature of ink, presence of colors, characteristic erasure marks. later (non-Anglo-Saxon) writing, damage and repair, etc. They will also take note of glosses, drypoints, and other markings that are not visible on the fiche. Scribal hands or textual niatters are not to be considered in any detail. Conventional or agreed-upon dates and places of production of a particular manuscript will be mentioned, but new determinations are not the aim of the descriptions.
(f) Collation: Ideally, a collation will show how many pages the original codex had, their order, and what has been added, lost, and rearranged. Where published collations exist, describers will check the collation against the manuscript and incorporate recent findings. In some cases, it will not be possible to collate a manuscript (e.g., where leaves are mounted in frames, where, because of binding, no collation can be done without damage to the codex, etc.). In all cases, the collations must be checked against the original manuscript. For the collation, quire numbers (here the term preferred over "gathering") will be written in Roman numerals, with the number of leaves within each quire written in superscript Arabic numerals. This information, in turn, is followed by the folios or pages that comprise the quire (e.g., II6 ff. 101-106). A useful discussion of collation is given by N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957; rpt. with addenda 1990), pp. xx-xxiii; a section from p. xxii is offered below (modified to omit specific manuscript numbers to which Ker refers). Total number of folios, including blanks, is to be given at the beginning of this section in Arabic numerals, with added leaves in Roman numerals (e.g., ii + 229 + i). If a manuscript is "paginated," these numbers should be followed (e.g., pages i-ii + 1-75).
(g) List of contents: In most cases, contents will be listed by customary titles and exact manuscript location (folio and line number). Manuscript titles, incipits (and, where necessary, explicits), and gloss (where appropriate) will be included in the item description. Customary titles are to be given in quotation marks. Manuscript abbreviations should be expanded, with expansions indicated by angled brackets (e.g., d<omi>no). The following character sets and abbreviations are to be adhered to:
< > expansions, e.g., d<e>i [ ] supplied readings; when blank, used to indicate missing text. ( ) erasure | line end || page end / used to separate folio numbers from line numbers, e.g., f. 154v/13a-6b = folio 154v, line 13, column a to line 6, column b. a, b, etc. indicate columns, e.g., f. 154v/13a-6b. " " customary title ' ' incipit, explicit, gloss F. / f. Folio Ff. / ff. Folios r recto v verso c century, e.g., 15c, 10/11c chap(s). chapter(s) corr. corrected d. died, e.g., d. 998 fl. floruit boldface used for titles or headings written in manuscripts A-S Anglo-Saxon OE Old English PG Patrologia Graeca PL Patrologia Latina Listing contents:
sample:
(h) Notes on special characteristics and problems treat significant items that are peculiar to the manuscript at hand, noting, for example, fire damage that may have obscured readings, notes on readings that are "lost" in the gutters of tightly bound manuscripts (although transcriptions of longer items should not be included), etc.15. ff. 36v-37r/7 Oratio s<an>c<t>i iohanis baptist[e] | 'S<anct>e iohannis baptista qui | sp<irit>u & uirtute heli<a>e fui[ti]'.51. ff. 103rv Ratpert of St. Gall, Hymn, "Ardua spes mundi": U<ersus> in letania mai<ore> | 'A[rdua spes] mun|di solidator | et in[c]lite celi' [written in two columns, with interlinear neumes] (on text and tradition, see Stotz 1972: 36-72).
ff. 172r-173v/4 canticu<m> annæ matris samuelis || f<e>r<ia> .iiii. | 'Exultauit cor meum | in d<omi>no' [gloss:] 'gefægnode heorte min on'.
At base, the system adopted for indicated items follows that used by Ker in his Catalogue. In the first two samples above, an item number precedes the folio numbers. Folio numbers indicate recto and verso as appropriate; line numbers follow a slash, followed by column numbers (e.g., f. 136/15a). To avoid confusion, the word "beg." can be used to separate the title from the incipit. Titles are set in boldface and incipits (and explicits) in Roman type. The incipit is set in single quotation marks. Note the use of the word "[gloss:]" in the last example to distinguish between the incipit and the Old English gloss. If an explicit is to be included, an ellipsis should separate it from the incipit. A parenthetic note can be used to indicate any unusual aspect, such as, for example, a heading added in a different hand.
Item numbers. Since indexing will use folio numbers, each item need not be numbered. A miscellany might have each item numbered; but for other manuscripts it may suffice to number sections only. For example, a psalter manuscript may be divided into (1) prefatory matter; (2) psalms; (3) canticles. Each section, then, would be numbered (1-3 here), but not the individual items within each section. Each manuscript will have its own features, and so the writer should decide what system is most appropriate.
(i) "Photo notes" comprise notes detailing, any discrepancies between what can be seen in the original manuscript and what can be seen on the fiche. E.g., "In the gutter: f. 23v/36 mihi." Italics should be used for letters visible in the gutter but not visible on the fiche.
(j) Bibliogaphy: Bibliographies should be highly selective and focus on citing the "best" editions and pertinent publications on codicological matters. Bibliographical items must be spelled out in full. For books, this includes full name(s) of author(s) as recorded on the title-page of the publication, full title of work, place of publication, publisher, series information, date, and reprint information. For articles, this includes volume number, date (of journal issue), and pagination. Bibliographies are to be arranged in alphabetical order by author. A "master list" of descriptive catalogues will be sent with the fiche and updated as needed. Citations within the entry are set in parentheses and include name, date, and page(s), e.g., (Sawyer 1942: 23). In listing place of publication for books, only the first place of publication should be given.
[article] Pope, John C. "The text of a damaged passage in the Exeter Book: Advent (Christ I) 18-32." Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981): 137-56.Microfiche headers. Each fiche will be supplied with a header that includes the following information: [first line:] (1) assigned number for final catalogue; (2) city, library, and shelfmark (note that for British Library manuscripts, the abbreviation "BL" is used and for Bodleian Library manuscripts, the abbreviation "Bodl. Lib." is used; (3) ASMMF packet number; (4) fiche number; [second line:] (5) Ker number; (6) Gneuss number; (7) short title or indication of contents. The layout is as follows:[article in a collection] Horgan, Dorothy M. "The Old English Pastoral Care: The Scribal Contribution." In Studies in Earlier Old English Prose. Ed. Paul E. Szarmach. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986, pp. 109-127.
[edition] Doane, A. N. ed. The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
[multivolume] Horgan, Elizabeth. The Secret Life of an Anglo-Saxor Scholar: John Parker and his Circle. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923, vol. 1, pp. 23-4.
[series] Wright, W. W. Great Expectations: The Battle of Maldon in History. McKinnell Studies on Medieval History, 13. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
[reprint] Ker, N. R. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959; rpt. 1990 with supplement.
You are asked to supply the short title or indication of contents.177. London, BL, Cotton Caligula A. vii ASMMF 1.1 1 of 6
Ker 137; Gneuss 308 Heliand
Indices and concordances. There will be a number of concordances,
comprising (a) shelfmark, Ker number, Gneuss number, ASMMF packet number,
ASMMF catalogue number; (b) Gneuss number, Ker number, shelfmark, ASMMF
packet number, ASMMF catalogue number; (c) shelfmark, ASMMF packet number,
ASMMF catalogue number, Ker number, Gneuss number; (d) ASMMF packet number,
ASMMF catalogue number, shelfmark, Ker number, Gneuss number. There will
also be a general index (names, contents, etc.; cf. Ker's index) and in
index of Incipits. Packets will be assigned consecutive numbers within
each issue. Thus, the first issue will contain packets 1.1-1.10, the second
2.1-2.8, and so forth.
Final indexing will use
the following system: catalogue number, issue volume page number (with
catalogue number in italics), and, for manuscript items and the index of
incipits, folio numbers (with catalogue number in boldface). The catalogue
number is a "permanent" number that will be assigned to the manuscript
in anticipation of the final catalogue. Issue volume page numbers will
use a decimal to separate issue volume number from page number. Each issue
will contain a number of packets (e.g., 12 manuscripts or packets to an
issue). The folio numbers refer to the specific manuscript folios on which
the particular item can be found. Following an incipit, for example, one
might find: 123 22r; in the general index, a reference to a name
in the description might be followed by 197 2.6. The first number
is the catalogue number; the second number indicates issue volume and page
number.
Collations:
From Ker's Catalogue, p. xxii.
Number of leaves and foliation (or pagination). Flyleaves and post-medieval insertions are shown by Roman figures, e.g., iii + 94. If these or other leaves are not actually numbered in the manuscipt references to them are within parentheses.Composite manuscripts, manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon and post-Anglo-Saxon material, manuscripts containing scratched glosses (predominantly). Regardless of whether a codex contains Anglo-Saxon material bound with, e.g., thirteenth-century material, the codex is to be described in full. This may entail two (or more) virtually separate entries (two collations, etc., plus information on when the sections were bound together, if available). The discretion of the person preparing the description must be called into play in such cases. For manuscripts containing numerous scratched glosses, reference to the editions must suffice in lieu- of attempting to record what cannot be seen on the microfiche (as would be the case were the user to order a microfilm from the library). In such cases, the responsibility falls upon the person preparing the description to bear in mind the discrepancy between what the fiche shows and what can be determined from consulting hte original manuscript.Collation. The formulas used to show the construction of a quire are these:
(a) I8. The eight leaves forming the quire are four conjugate pairs (i.e., four sheets), 1 and 8, 2 and 7, 3 and 6, and 4 and 5.
(b) I8 3 and 6 are half sheets. Six of the leaves are conjugate pairs, 1 and 8, 2 and 7, 4 and 5. Two of them, 3 and 6, are not conjugate.
(c) I6 + 1 leaf after 5. Six of the leaves are conjugate pairs, 1 and 6, 2 and 5, and 3 and 4. A seventh leaf lies between I5 and I6 and is an original part of the quire.
(d) I6 + 1 leaf after 5. This differs from (c) in that the odd leaf is not an original part of the quire, but has been inserted at a later date.
(e) I8 wants 2. Formally this quire is identical with (c), but a gap in the text or some other evidence shows that the odd leaf, I7, was once paired with -- but may not have been actually conjugate with -- a leaf now missing after I1.
Each manuscript will have its own peculiarities and problems; thus, while guidelines for the preparation of descriptions are necessary in order to ensure general uniformity throughout the project, they are guidelines only, not strict laws.
Submission of descriptions: Before sending any descriptions, please consult with one of the editors. For final submissions, all descriptions should be submitted either as attachments (no PDF files please) using WordPerfect Windows versions, or Word for Windows or on floppy disks (along with a double-spaced hard copy). MacIntosh format cannot be accommodated. Edited hard copy will be returned to the describer for comments and approval. Materials are to be submitted to A.N. Doane, 6195 Helen C.White Hall, 600 N Park St. , Madison , WI , 53706 (andoane@wisc.edu). Final acceptance for publication is of course subject to approval by the project editors and publisher's reviewers.