 Resources Getting Started Building a research library on the topic of 16th century Germany
Written by Marion McNealy
Building a library on a particular topic can be expensive, just ask me! I've made plenty of buying mistakes and often wish that there had been someone to tell me how to get started in building a physical library around the topic of 16th century Germany that was specifically geared towards recreating clothing. Here are my recommendations for a general "Get you started" library. Of course there are additional books I could recommend for more specific areas of interest, but this would be a good start. Total Cost for this library? Around $250 plus shipping and handling. Recommended Starter Resources
A detailed analysis of surviving garments with construction details, close-up pictures and other great little goodies. Add on pack for starter libraryOK, you've got your starter library, and you just want more books. Well, I've been there too, and here are my secondary recommendations... but first a public service announcement. My book recommendations are what I find personally useful to a native English speaker with a limited amount of German. Plus I have a strong visual learner streak, so I tend to look at artwork a lot and go "ooooooh pretty/interesting/cool! How can I make that and make it look right?". So now that you know that, here are the recommendations for the add-on pack for the starter library. You may think, "But these should have been in the starter library!" Ah, but my good friends for the low, LOW price of around $77 USD, plus shipping and handling you can have these in addition to the starter library! (You see, that's how a addiction library is built, twenty bucks here, thirty bucks there, and the next thing you know, you have a lot of money invested into it and you need a new book case and your SO sees a new Amazon box and says "I see you got yourself another present....") Add-on pack recommendations
Pick up one at your local used bookstore that is hardbound and thick, say about 2-3 inches, has lots of words in it and fits nicely in your hand. Older is better in this case, since the German language has changed a lot in the last 30 years or so. DO NOT get one of the tiny little ones, that just leads to frustration. $15 A facsimile of a tailor’s pattern book from 1589. A good resource for pattern shapes and period layouts. A wonderful resource if you are interested in Spanish influenced German styles as portrayed in Jost Amman’s books. While not a technical handbook on how to only draft patterns in a period fashion, it is a good resource on pattern drafting and tailoring basics. It does include instructions on how to draft a dartless body block, which is what you use in There are other modern pattern drafting books out there, but none that are really tailored to this specific use. This is the best and most easily available one that I've found so far and until I get my own pattern drafting instructions up, its what I recommend. Weeding, aka "Making space for the new books"In the first two sections, I wrote what should be in your library. Now I'm going to talk about what shouldn't be in your library. There's this great concept I learned about in library school, and its called "Weeding". Weeding is going through the collection and getting rid of books or resources that are no longer useful to you. Let's face it, sooner or later you WILL run out of bookshelf space, or places to put bookshelves. And really, are every last one of those books useful to you? Do you enjoy them? Are the books you love getting lost in the books you are just anti-pathetic about? Have you bought too many books that were mistakes? In which case, its time to weed. How to weed your personal library
If the answer to any of these questions is "No", seriously ask yourself what its doing on your bookshelf. There are lots of other books out there that could use that bookshelf space and that you'd probably like better. So, there are three choices you face
Lets talk about option #3 Getting rid of books.The lovely thing about this new fangled invention called "the internet" is that it has made the buying and selling of used books so much simpler. I like to sell my used books on Amazon because that's where I've gotten the best prices for them and its the easiest for me to list them as being for sale. Selling your research books that are no longer useful to you not only frees up bookshelf space, but it can also free up another precious commodity, CASH! That's right, the thing you use to buy more books with! So, in summary:
How to find new books that you'll likeFinding new and interesting books is not usually a problem for book lovers, but sometimes you want to find something specific, something that your local library or even university library doesn't carry...Let me introduce you to the wonders of WorldCat WorldCat is what is known as a Union Catalog, a technical librarian term for a whole bunch of library catalogs rolled into one big searchable database. I like to use WorldCat to find new and interesting resources to order via ILL. Searching WorldCatIts pretty easy to search in WorldCat, you can search a general word like "Landsknecht" and plow through the results, or you can look up a book that you like and see what other books fall into that same subject header, or catagory. To find more books in that subject header, click on the link and it will take you to the pages that list all the books that are catagorized with that subject So its possible to go from searching for general works with the word "Landsknect" title, to finding works on secular songs in counter-Reformation Augsburg. Once you find an interesting book or other resource material, copy and paste the important information into a text file for future reference. I like to do it this way: At the top of the file I write out my search topic, and I name the file something useful like: 7-16-07_GermanMusic (The date plus the topic) Then at the top of the file, I write the search topic and any search terms I use on a particular resource:
Then as I find resources, I copy and paste the whole text information from the WorldCat page. I also check to make sure that the resource is in the US and is owned by more than one library. Scarce books are less likely to be loaned out than abundant ones. Sacred and secular music from renaissance Germany Tugend und Untugend Virtue and vice : German secular songs and instrumental music from the time of Luther. And so I continue until I feel I've exhausted that vein of information. When I switch to a new search word or method, but in the same topic of 16th century German Music, then I'll add in the new search term and put the new results underneath it su:Ballads, German.Early German ballads. Once I have a good list of books that I'd love to look at and read, I save the file and order the most interesting ones via the ILL (Inter-library loan) program at my local library. If you've never used this service at your local public libray, ask a reference librarian and they will be able to help get you started. Happy Reading! |
