| a bibliographical newsletter Issue 7 April 2019 |
Exeter represented in a medieval COPAC
A new team of bibliographical heroes has emerged - the unnamed Franciscans at Oxford who some time between 1300 and 1320 compiled the Registrum Anglie de libris doctorum et auctorum veterum, a manuscript union catalogue of some 1400 manuscript books in England, Scotland and Wales. It listed the works of 98 authors owned by 189 monastic or cathedral libraries. A massive undertaking, it was compiled on the basis of on-site surveys and is organized geographically according to the division of Great Britain into the custodiae of the Franciscan order. It was never completed. Although 189 monastic and cathedral libraries were assigned location codes, only about 90 have significant numbers of books but the three surviving manuscripts of the Registrum date from the beginning of the fifteenth century, so it provided a useful compilation for many years. It was edited with an introduction and notes by Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse and the Latin text established by R.A.B. Mynors and published by the British Library in association with the British Academy in 1991. There is a copy of this edition in Exeter University Library. Exeter Cathedral Library was assigned the location number 95 and at least two of the manuscripts listed have survived in the Bodleian Library, the gift of the Dean and Chapter in 1602.
Above is the contents page of Bodleian ms. Bodley 808, a collection of works by or attributed to Saint Jerome and formerly at Exeter. Below is the version of the Registrum at Christ Church Canterbury, the section relating to Jerome's works. The first line: Super libros Regnor[um] reflects the same error in the contents listing (regnorum instead of regum) and, despite the error in the location (25 instead of 95) indicates that the Exeter volume was the source of these entries.
More on the Baring-Gould Library - and some implications for the Devon Bibliography
Following a profitable day with the American descendants of Sabine Baring-Gould at Lewtrenchard Manor identifying and bookplating items in their collections, attention has been directed towards the section of the Baring-Gould library transferred from Killerton to the Special Collections of the University of Exeter Library. For several years Sue Guy has been re-cataloguing these and they are now much better recorded than previously on the listing drawn up by the National Trust. So it was a delight to discover that the more than 1600 catalogue records can be easily downloaded into a text file and edited without too many problems to upgrade the records in the existing Baring-Gould database which forms part of the Devon Bibliography. This task is in progress at present and it has become evident that many other records on the University Library catalogue could be similarly integrated in the Devon bibliography. Apart from the many items of local significance in the Library's main collections, the holdings of the Devon and Exeter Institution Library are recorded on the catalogue, normally with fuller records than the skeleton data that it has been possible to obtain for the Westcountry Studies Library's holdings. What is not so good is the subject description of these records, so many records will have to be merged with data held in the SWHT records. It is to be hoped that SWHT will be able to provide reports of records in a bibliographically coherent format to assist in this Registrum devoniensis for the 21st century.
A patron saint for the Devon bibliography
Recent discussions about adopting Boniface as Devon county's patron saint have directed attention to this "greatest Englishman" and have shown him to be an eminently suitable patron for the Devon bibliography. He was certainly very concerned about books, seeking out copies to be sent over to him in Germany from scriptoria in England and, most fitting of all, at the time of his martyrdom in 754, using a book to shield his head from attackers, as shown in this illumination from a tenth century sacramentary preserved in Fulda. Fulda also has a volume associated with Boniface, the Ragyndrudis Codex, which has sword cuts on its binding - an unusual bibliographical saintly relic, perhaps the very book he held to protect himself. However this tradition is not present in the earliest life of Boniface, written by Willibald but only emerges later. Michel Aaij discuses the development of the tradition in "Boniface's booklife: how the Ragyndrudis Codex came to be a Vita Bonifatii", Heroic age : a journal of early medieval northwestern Europe, issue 10, May 2007. Some time between 747 and 751 Boniface wrote to Archbishop Egbert, "be so kind as to send us some of the works which Bede, the inspired priest and student of Sacred Scripture, has composed - in particular, if it can be done, his book of homilies for the year (because it would be a very handy and useful manual for us in our preaching), and the Proverbs of Solomon. We hear that he has written commentaries on this book". He ended his letter "Finally, we are sending you by the bearer of this letter two small casks of wine, asking you in token of our mutual affection to use it for a merry day with the brethren". Surely someone who keeps things in proportion in this way is a very human patron of this enterprise.
Early Devon maps website
Among the pages on the former Devon County Council local studies website was a mapping database which presented early maps of Devon for 1575, 1765 and 1827 broken into ten kilometer National Grid squares. It was possible to step across the county and also pass from one period of mapping to another. It was used for the parish and community pages of the Devon gazetteer and for a number of other purposes including as a way into the Etched on Devon's Memory website. Unfortunately it was lost on transfer to the SWHT in 2016. Brian Randall of Genuki has recently pointed out that many, but by no means all of the map images were archived on the Wayback Machine and it has proved possible to start reconstituting the website, albeit in a more simplified form. It should be possible to reconstruct all the images for Donn's 1765 map, but there is no suitable source for the Greenwood 1827 survey (much less densely engraved than the Ordnance Survey first edition of 1809 and thus more legible) so the original will have to be recopied and then digitally chopped up. What has been achieved so far can be seen on the Devon bibliography website or by clicking on the key map below.
It is not an all-singing all-dancing website like Know your place mentioned in our previous issue but it does not use proprietary software so can be freely copied and serves its purpose for earlier smaller scale mapping of the county before the arrival of detailed and accurate large-scale surveys with the tithe maps in the 1840s.
Recording the present
We live in changing and uncertain times - climate change and its threats, the rising levels of pollution, the effects of a decade of austerity on the provision of public services, the growing importance of the charity and voluntary sector, the ever growing population and the resulting spread of housing across the surface of our county, the uncontrolled growth of on-line documentation with the added problems of fake news, fraudulent websites and hacking and the poisonous influence of much of social media, the decline of the high street, the growth of homelessness and the continuing farce of Brexit. Where in the county is all this being recorded? The Museum of London is apparently collecting the memorabilia of Brexit so that is a start. The Devon bibliography does try but resources are limited. Here are a few examples of items that have recently been added to the Devon bibliography which might start to fill this new Dark Age vacuum for future historians. They do not include periodicals and newsletters. Most of them do not (yet) figure in library catalogues:
Peninsula Initiative Community Chaplaincy. Helping people make a fresh start after prison. - Exeter : Peninsula Initiative Community Chaplaincy, [ 2018?]. - Folded sheet ([6] pages ; 21cm. — 
Above is the contents page of Bodleian ms. Bodley 808, a collection of works by or attributed to Saint Jerome and formerly at Exeter. Below is the version of the Registrum at Christ Church Canterbury, the section relating to Jerome's works. The first line: Super libros Regnor[um] reflects the same error in the contents listing (regnorum instead of regum) and, despite the error in the location (25 instead of 95) indicates that the Exeter volume was the source of these entries.
More on the Baring-Gould Library - and some implications for the Devon Bibliography
Following a profitable day with the American descendants of Sabine Baring-Gould at Lewtrenchard Manor identifying and bookplating items in their collections, attention has been directed towards the section of the Baring-Gould library transferred from Killerton to the Special Collections of the University of Exeter Library. For several years Sue Guy has been re-cataloguing these and they are now much better recorded than previously on the listing drawn up by the National Trust. So it was a delight to discover that the more than 1600 catalogue records can be easily downloaded into a text file and edited without too many problems to upgrade the records in the existing Baring-Gould database which forms part of the Devon Bibliography. This task is in progress at present and it has become evident that many other records on the University Library catalogue could be similarly integrated in the Devon bibliography. Apart from the many items of local significance in the Library's main collections, the holdings of the Devon and Exeter Institution Library are recorded on the catalogue, normally with fuller records than the skeleton data that it has been possible to obtain for the Westcountry Studies Library's holdings. What is not so good is the subject description of these records, so many records will have to be merged with data held in the SWHT records. It is to be hoped that SWHT will be able to provide reports of records in a bibliographically coherent format to assist in this Registrum devoniensis for the 21st century.
A patron saint for the Devon bibliography
Early Devon maps website
Among the pages on the former Devon County Council local studies website was a mapping database which presented early maps of Devon for 1575, 1765 and 1827 broken into ten kilometer National Grid squares. It was possible to step across the county and also pass from one period of mapping to another. It was used for the parish and community pages of the Devon gazetteer and for a number of other purposes including as a way into the Etched on Devon's Memory website. Unfortunately it was lost on transfer to the SWHT in 2016. Brian Randall of Genuki has recently pointed out that many, but by no means all of the map images were archived on the Wayback Machine and it has proved possible to start reconstituting the website, albeit in a more simplified form. It should be possible to reconstruct all the images for Donn's 1765 map, but there is no suitable source for the Greenwood 1827 survey (much less densely engraved than the Ordnance Survey first edition of 1809 and thus more legible) so the original will have to be recopied and then digitally chopped up. What has been achieved so far can be seen on the Devon bibliography website or by clicking on the key map below.
Copies: WSL: copy passed for cataloguing. -
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Offenders. Social services. Added 5 March 2019
Regen. Devon community energy : impact Report 2018 / produced for The community energy sector in Devon, funded by Devon County Council ; written by Jobe Bryer, Jodie Giles and Doug Eltham. - Version 4. - Exeter : Devon County Council, 29 March 2018. - 37 pages : illustrations ; PDF document. - Accessed February 2019. -
Copies: No hard copy located. -
Subjects: Devon. Energy supplies. Renewable sources. Reports, surveys. 2018. - Added 2 Feb 2019
Saint Petrock's (Exeter). Where to find free food in Exeter. - Updated 19/12/2018. - Exeter : Saint Petrock's, 2018. - Folded sheet ([6] pages) ; 21cm. -
Copies: WSL: copy passed for cataloguing. —
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Homeless persons. Food supply. 2018. — Added 5 March 2019
SQW. How firms across HotSW are preparing for Brexit : report to HotSW [Heart of the South West] LEP, Devon County Council and Partners , May 2018 / SQW. — Exeter : Hearth of South West LEP, 2018. — 20 pages : maps ; PDF file. — Accessed October 2018. —
Copies: No hard copy located. —
Subjects: Devon. Internation organisations. European Union. Departure by United Kingdom. Economic aspects. 2018. — Added 19 October 2018
Sustainability and Transformation Partnership for Devon. Data pack: Devon children and young people’s sustainability and transformation plan, January 2018, version 4. - [Exeter] : Sustainability and Transformation Partnership for Devon, 2018. - 83 pages : maps, tables ; PDF document. - Accessed November 2018. -
Copies: [No hard copy located]. — Added 29 November 2018
Devon County Council. Exeter transport strategy (2020-2030) : strategy document. - Consultation draft January 2019. - Exeter : Devon County Council, 2019. - 14 pages : illustrations, maps, tables ; PDF file. - Accessed January 2019. - Supported by Innova SUMP Interreg Europe, European Development Fund. -
Copies: No hard copy located. —
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Transport planning. 2020-2030. - Added 28 January 2019.
Exeter City Council. Liveable Exeter : a transformational housing delivery programme. - Exeter : Exeter City Council, 2019. - 30 pages : colour illustrations, maps ; PDF document. - Accessed February 2019. -
Copies: No hard copy located. -
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Housing. Planning. 2019. - Added 8 February 2019.
HM Inspectorate of Probation. An inspection of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Community Rehabilitation Company, February 2019 / HM Inspectorate of Probation. - London : HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019. - 40 pages ; PDF document. - Accessed February 2019. -
Copies: No hard copy located. -
Subjects: Westcountry. Probation services. Dorset, Devon and Cornwall Community Rehabilitation Company. Reorts. 2019. - Added 17 February 2019.
Stagecoach. Route Consultation 2019 : the route ahead for bus services in the South West. - Exeter edition. - Exeter : Stagecoach South West, 2019. — 12 pages : colour illustrations ; PDF document. — Accessed March 2019. -
Copies: No hard copy located. -
Subjects: Devon. Bus services. Stagecoach. Routes. Consultation. 2019. — Added 10 March 2019.
Wildlife and wind farms - conflicts and solutions : onshore : potential effects. Volume 3 / edited by Martin Perrow. — Exeter : Pelagic Publishing, 2019. — 1 volume : illustrations (colour) ; 25 cm. - ISBN 9781784271275 (pbk.) : £45.00 ; BNB Number GBB910315. - Prepublication record
Copies: BL: BNB. -
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Publishers. Pelagic Publishing. Publications: Wind power plants. Environmental aspects. Added 11 February 2019.
This page last updated 9 April 2019
