A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from

press Press may refer to: Media * Publisher * News media * Printing press, commonly called "the press" * Press TV, an Iranian television network Newspapers United States * ''The Press'', a former name of ''The Press-Enterprise'', Riverside, California ...

, meaning cupboard) denotes only the cupboard or case. It is distinct from a

call number A library classification is a system used within a library to organize materials, including books, sound and video recordings, electronic materials, etc., both on shelves and in catalogs and indexes. Each item is typically assigned a call number ...

, which is the code under which a book or manuscript is registered and which is used to identify it when ordering it. Sometimes a shelfmark or pressmark may be used as a call number, but in other cases the call number contains no information about the book's physical location. In certain American institutions, shelfmark and call number are combined to create a long code containing information on location, classification, size, binding, author and date.Peter Beal (ed.), ''A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450–2000'' (Oxford University Press, 2008), s.v
"shelf-mark""press-mark"
an
"call number"
Shelfmarks and pressmarks were usually written, inscribed or stamped on the

pastedown The endpapers or end-papers of a book (also known as the endsheets) are the Page (paper), pages that consist of a double-size sheet folded, with one half pasted against an inside cover (the pastedown), and the other serving as the first free ...

s. When a book was moved, the old shelfmark was usually crossed out and a new one added. Old shelfmarks can sometimes provide valuable information about a manuscript's

provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...

. Shelfmarks originated in the early

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, usually as combinations of numbers and letters, probably indicating the cupboard and shelf. Letters later came to be assigned to specific batch acquisitions. In the modern period, university libraries often organized their collections by subject and indicated the faculty in the shelfmark. As libraries grew larger, alphanumeric shelfmarks were augmented with

Greek letters The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as we ...

and the symbols of the zodiac. By the seventeenth century the

Cotton library The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts that came into the hands of the antiquarian and bibliophile Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631). The collection of books and materials Sir Robert held was one of the three "foun ...

incorporates the names of Roman emperors in it shelfmarks, based on the location of imperial busts in Robert Cotton's original library.

Cave Beck Cave Beck (1623 – 1706) was an England, English schoolmaster and clergyman, the author of ''The Universal Character'' (published in London, 1657) in which he proposed a universal language based on a numerical system. Life Beck was born in Lond ...

introduced a fore-edge shelfmark system for the Town Library of Ipswich in 1651. A diagonal line was drawn across the fore-edge of the books with an additional pressmark to indicate to which shelf of which press the book belonged. Shelfmarking declined in the 19th century with the rise of classification schemes like

Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) (pronounced ) colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. ...

.Michael F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen (eds.), ''The Oxford Companion to the Book'' (Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v
"shelfmark"
(by Richard Ovenden) an
"pressmark"
(by eds.).

References

{{reflist Library cataloging and classification Library science terminology

See also

References