The FRBR Blog

This is a follow-up to De Revolutionibus and De Revolutionibus redux. I just noticed that in the external links section of Wikipedia’s entry on Copernicus, there’s a link to a digitized version of a manuscript of the book, written by Copernicus.

The history of this copy (which they call an “autograph” because it’s written by hand) says:

The Autograph De revolutionibus preserved in the Jagiellonian Library is a result of work of the great scholar, intermediate between a rough copy and a fair copy. It had remained in Copernicus’ hands until his death (24 May 1543). His papers and books passed to his closest friend, Tiedemann Giese (1480-1550), a bishop in Chelmno at that time. He bequeathed his library to Warmia Chapter. However, the autograph went to the collection of George Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574), astronomer, Copernicus’ pupil. Rheticus was occupied with publishing the work of his master, but the basis for printing was not the autograph but its copy.

It knocked around a fair bit after that, ended up in Prague, and was given back to Poland in 1956.

What does this mean for we FRBRians? Well, it’s the same work, De Revolutionibus. No doubt there. Is this the same expression as the one we were discussing earlier? I don’t know. The quote above says “the basis for printing was not the autograph but its copy.” Who made the copy? We don’t know. How different is this autograph from its copy, and how different are both from the printed version? We don’t know. We’d have to check what researchers have found out (or get smart students to make a project of it).

For fun, let’s assume that the text of the copy is different enough to seriously count as a new expression. We won’t be picky about a different letter or word here or there. Let’s say there are noticeable differences that merit distinction. Maybe textual or numeric changes were introduced prior to printing, or Rheticus edited it, or some such. We’re pretending.

Now we have two expressions: the text of the autograph and the text that made up the editions (manifestations) printed in 1543 and 1566. Let’s summarize how things stand, viewed with FRBR, before any digitization was done:

Work: De Revolutionibus by Nicolaus Copernicus

• Expression 1: text (in an abstract sense) of autograph version
  • Manifestation 1: Copernicus’s handwritten copy (with that text on paper)
    • Item 1: Copernicus’s handwritten copy
• Expression 2: text (in an abstract sense) that went to press (which we’re pretending is sufficiently different)
  • Manifestation 0: Rheticus’s copy of the handwritten version (with that text on paper)
    • Item 1: Rheticus’s copy, wherever that is now
  • Manifestation 1: first edition, Nuremberg, 1543 (where the printer put the text into physical form by printing it on paper)
    • Item 1
    • Item 2
    • Item 3 and so on …
    • … up to item 400 or 500 or so, Gingerich estimates
  • Manifestation 2: second edition, Basel, 1566 (where another printer put the text into physical form)
    • Item 1
    • Item 2
    • Item 3 and so on …
    • … up to item 500 or 600 or so, Gingerich estimates

How does the Polish digitization of the autograph copy affect the first expression? How do we express what’s on their web site — and what’s on your hard drive when you’ve looked at a page and it’s stored in your browser’s cache — in FRBR terms? Aha! Now you’re scratching your head!