Author: Josiah H. Drummond
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2014-08-19
Total Pages: 128
ISBN-13: 9781500895723
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From the Introduction: FOR many years there has been a growing desire among the Craft for knowledge and instruction beyond that received in the Lodge room. This has led to the collection of Masonic books and documents. In view of the very large number of Masonic books and pamphlets that have been published, and the great number of masons in almost every community, it would seem that the managers of general Libraries, which are intended to furnish information upon all important topics of public interest, would have included standard masonic works in their collections. But it has not been so and even now few of our largest Libraries have any books of a Masonic character. This has led to the formation of Libraries exclusively masonic. I believe that Bro. T. S. Parvin of Iowa, was the pioneer; he commenced the Library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa in 1844, but its growth was very slow for many years. The publication of their Proceedings by the various Grand Masonic Bodies now adds annually a large amount to the material for Masonic Libraries; and as it is well understood that these Proceedings contain the jurisprudence and the material for the history of the progress of the Institution, the demand for them has become greater than ever before. But for these purposes, full files are necessary. One great difficulty in their collection arises from its not being known what Proceedings have been issued. The same difficulty has been experienced in the collection of Masonic Periodicals. To remedy this, these "Memoranda" were collected, originally for my own use, but given to the public at the request of others. To save space in the Notes of Proceedings, I use "I." for Grand Lodge, "II." for Grand Chapter, "III." for Grand Council, and "IV." for Grand Commandery. The Proceedings of Grand Bodies being usually published annually in octavo. I have not given the size, and time of publication unless they are exceptions to the general rule just stated. As a rule also, I do not notice special sessions of the Grand Bodies, when the Proceedings thereof are published only in the same pamphlet with those of the annual sessions. I find that there is now, in general use, no uniform method of accurately describing the size of books. Formerly, the terms "octavo," "duodecimo," etc., had a very well defined and. uniform meaning, because the sheets used in the publication of books were substantially of the same size, and of course a term, showing how many leaves one sheet made, would accurately describe the size of the book. But while in these later times the sheets are of siv.es, dictated only by the taste or whim of the manufacturer, the old terms to indicate the size of books, are retained, although they not only fail to do that, but absolutely mislead. I have endeavored in my descriptions to give the size as nearly as possible in comparison with the old standard of sizes, but I have found it, in many cases, impossible to carry out my design. As an illustration of the difficulty, I mention the tenth English Edition of Preston's Illustrations: in some descriptions it is given as octavo, and in others as a duodecimo, and there are apparently copies of both sizes; but an examination shows that the size of the printed page in each variety is precisely the same, viz: duodecimo; but copies were printed on sheets of larger size, so that by giving wide margins, the book, as bound, is as large as an ordinary octavo. There would seem to be a necessity for the general adoption of a new rule on this subject; but the almost infinite variety of sizes in books now published makes that quite an impossibility. The best that could be done, so far as I can see, would be to give the size of the printed page in inches ; but this would not accomplish the result, as books having the same printed, page are put up in bindings of different sizes.....
