Can you tell your Scripsit from your Sculpsit?

Here's a little bit of book history to broaden your mind!

If you're looking at REALLY old music, sometimes you see tiny writing at the bottom of the title page - "Script" or "Sculpt", and then a name.  Rudolf Rasch, who is a book historian, and Associate Professor of Musicology (Emeritus) at Utrecht University,  has kindly provided us with an explanation:-

"Script = scripsit = “he wrote”, normally this refers to the one who designed the engraving or made a drawing as a design for the engraving. This should refer to a title page only. [Typesetter is not a good description of this person.]

"Sculpt = sculpsit = “he sculpted”, refers to the engraver.

"If a title page is signed by a “sculpsit” one is not a priori certain that the same engraver did the music too. The best way to decide whether the engraver of the title page also engraved the music is too look at the form of the letters on the title page and on the music pages. In many situations title page and music are engraved by the same hand, but there may be cases where the publisher had different engravers work at the title page and the music.

"But please keep in mind: 18^th-century indications are never full-proof. Never turn off common sense."

So now you know. Just a little advancement in knowledge every day ...!  One day you might be grateful to Whittaker for sharing this little piece of book history with you!

The Beauty of Belaieff, by Richard Beattie Davis

The historic Russian music publishing house, Belaieff, produced startlingly beautiful covers for their scores.  The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has today been gifted a copy of the late Richard Beattie Davis' book, The Beauty of Belaieff.  

Like the collection, the book itself is beautiful. 

•  More about the book itself HERE.
• Find it in our collection, HERE. 

Richard Beattie Davis (1922-2008) was an English musicologist and collector.  His collection is now in Florida Atlantis University - the Davis Music Collection.

Book Review

A lifetime’s dedicated research has gone into Richard Beattie Davis’s magnificent book, The Beauty of Belaieff.  Describing Mitrofan Petrovich Belaieff as ‘more an enabler than a creator’, Davis documents the impressive music publishing house that this wealthy timber merchant established in middle life.  Belaieff’s publishing output is in itself a record of an epoch in Russian music, and Davis’s book devotes chapters to each of the 18 composers that Belaieff promoted.

The publication in colour of over one hundred and fifty title pages makes this volume handsome enough to merit the epithet, ‘coffee-table book’ as well as being a serious study, for these illustrations both enhance and inform the extensive text.  Music title pages are a rather unique art-form, and although this volume is not a history of Belaieff’s commissioned art-work per se, it goes without saying that Davis does provide commentary on them.

Davis systematically collected Belaieff publications on a grand scale, and his research embraced published histories, reference works, a vast amount of correspondence between Belaieff and his composers, not to mention extensive library visits.  It is gratifying, and humbling, to consider that Davis's initial researches in Westminster Music Library, and then in other libraries, were to bear fruit in such an admirable monograph.  Books of this stature are a welcome endorsement of the importance of specialist music libraries to music-lovers and researchers, and underline not only their important function of retaining old and perhaps forgotten music for posterity, but also the ‘enabling’ role that their staff are able to offer.

Dr Karen E. McAulay   

 

Success in Research - Useful Series in Whittaker Library

We’ve got several new books in this series now.  Here are the two latest ones, about presenting your research and achieving impact in research.  And there's another about to be catalogued, on publishing journal articles. 

Find the series in our catalogue, HERE.

Funded AHRC Music Research Studentship - Fabulous Opportunity

We're sharing this information at the request of our music librarian colleagues in the British Library:-

"AHRC Collaborative PhD Studentship: Music, print and culture in the 16th and early 17th centuries

"Applications are invited for an AHRC collaborative PhD studentship, held at Royal Holloway, University of London, and The British Library, on the theme of 'Music, print and culture in the 16th and early 17th centuries'. The studentship commences in autumn 2014. Full details are here: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/music/news/newsarticles/newcollaborativephdfundingscheme.aspx

"The deadline for receipt of applications (including two references) is Thursday 13th March 2014. Interviews will be held at the British Library on Friday 28th March and Wednesday 2nd April 2014.

"Informal enquiries to Stephen Rose (stephen.rose@rhul.ac.uk)."

Summer publishing internship in New York, anyone?

This is an unpaid opportunity that has been shared on the IAML music libraries list.  It could be very interesting to a music student considering publishing as a career - great for the CV, and with a publishing giant - Grove Music at Oxford University Press, no less!

      Internship. We’re looking for a summer intern to help us with a variety of Grove Music editorial projects.  The job posting should be up shortly at the OUP jobs site.  The position is unpaid and students should be able to receive college credit. 

Anna-Lise Santella | Editor, Grove Music Online and Oxford Reference

Oxford University Press | 198 Madison Avenue | New York  10016

anna-lise.santella@oup.com | +1 (212) 743-8322

www.oxfordmusic.com | www.oxfordbibliographies.com  | www.oxfordhandbooks.com

twitter: OUPMusic  | OUP Music blog

Have you planned what articles you can publish?

Writing from the thesis: the publishing plan

A blogpost by Nottingham Education Professor Pat Thomson.  ('Patter', to her blog-following friends.) 

Getting published (scholarly writing)

As promised, here's another suggestion to follow up:-
 

PhD to Published

You can also follow PhD to Published on Twitter @PhDtoPublished - and there's a weekly evening Twitter-chat about it too, hashtag #acwri.

Somewhere to write? Journal for Artistic Research

JAR

Journal for Artistic Research

http://www.jar-online.net/

This is a journal brought to my attention by Anna Birch, Research Lecturer here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

• Online
• Open Access
• Sign up to JAR (free), to find out more.
• Considering submission?  Sign up first, to access the submissions pages.

Scholarly publishing? Visit The Scholarly Kitchen

If you're looking to publish your research work, then you'll be glad of any authoritative help.  Introducing a blog I've recently come across:-

The Scholarly Kitchen

 

Do take a look!  Tomorrow, we'll share another couple of useful websites for scholarly authors.

Publishing your thesis as a book

Continuing yesterday's writing theme - I've just contributed a blogpost to the 'PhD to Published' website.  If you've written a thesis, you're likely to be wondering what to do with it next? 

Publishing your Thesis as a Book: a Question of Planning. Part One
http://www.phd2published.com/?p=2363

I've also done a blogpost of my own about writing readably.   If you're interested, you'll find it here.

(My Twitter presence: @Karenmca #acwri #phdadvice)

The future of publishing?

Are books dead? 
 
Here's a very, very clever YouTube video from Dorling Kindersley publishers.  Just 90 seconds, but thought-provoking.

PhD to Published

Here's a blog that will be relevant to anyone just finishing / recently having finished a PhD:-

PhD to Published

How do I publish a book?

Subject librarians learn to expect the unexpected.  Today's question is: How do I get a book published?

1. Are you looking for a publisher, or self-publishing?
2. Here's a self-publishing guide, on Tom Andry's blog.  Our thanks to Pat Thomson for her advice here.  We bloggers stick together!
3. Pat also suggests this self-publishing guide: 25 Things You Need To Know, by David Carnoy (on the CNET Reviews website)
4. You need an ISBN;  this will make it easier to sell and promote your book. Here's a useful link: http://isbn-information.com/get-isbn.html
5. So, to get an ISBN, where do you go? In the UK, it's Neilson Book Services.
6. You need to have publisher status.

NB: we don't claim to be experts! Any useful info that comes our way will be added here in due course.

PhD2Published - getting that first book published

Here's a useful website, if you're looking to getting a book published:-

http://www.phd2published.com/

Join the community of scholarly authors!

Self-plagiarism

Sounds like some new kind of perversion, doesn't it? But basically, Pat Thomson writes about the perils of submitting substantially the same paper to two different journals.  And that's called self-plagiarism.

Dangerous, indeed.  Read on ...