I’ve been working through the first ELC ledger for a few weeks now, and am starting to get more and more comfortable with the format of the pages. I thought this first post would be a good opportunity for me to explain exactly how I “read” a ledger page, and how I work around some of the obstacles that arise in the process.
At first glance, everything in these tomes appears to be self-explanatory. At the top of any ledger page is the name of the individual shareholder in question, alongside the number of library shares that person owns (note – sometimes account transfers are recorded in this space as well). The librarians wisely decided to organize these books in pages of two, so that each shareholder has enough “horizontal space” to display his/her book records.
Below, we have 8 columns that divide up the pages into these criteria: name of book, book number, time when (book was) taken out of library, time when (book is) to be returned without damages, acknowledgement of the reading by signature, when they (the books) were returned, and in what condition the books were returned. The volume of the selected book is usually recorded in the “name” column, and fines are usually recorded in the “condition” column.
The “acknowledgement of the reading by signature” is where things start to become tricky. This space is supposed to be filled by the person who physically picks up the book from the desk, which is not necessarily the titular shareholder. It may be his wife, his neighbor, his best friend, etc. However, there’s no consistency for these entires. One space might appear as “Sarah,” while another reads “daughter Sarah,” yet another as simply “his daughter.” More often than not though, a name will simply appear out of the blue – say, Azariah G. Orton – with no further elaboration on how the person is aquainted with the shareholder. Such entries will entail hours of genealogical research in the future; sleuthing to uncover how the shareholder and representative were related.
Things are further complicated by preceding phrases such as “by” “for” and “per order to.” Likewise, abbreviations make distinguishing the name William (abbreviated as Wm.) from honorifics (Mr. and Mrs.) challenging, and will prove frustrating for those interested in research. A “J. Miller” entry, for example, is far less helpful to someone looking through death records than one that reads “Josiah T. Miller.” Last – but by no means least – is the issue of penmanship, spelling, and legibility. If a signature is recorded in haste, or the individual just has bad handwriting, the name can be nearly impossible to discern (this occurs with book titles as well – refer to Knickerbottom post). You can imagine how many of these issues compound, and slow down the transcription process considerably.
P.S. – If you have a few spare hours, you might want to rack you brain with this entry. My guess…. Matthias Fiznourand. Your help is much obliged.
