Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
The Hudson Valley ascendent
By Bruce McKinney
This month I write about a mostly forgotten place, Rondout, New York, once a transportation hub at the intersection of the Rondout Creek and Hudson River [map link] that rose on opportunity and fell with its withdrawal. It was alter-ego to a Kingston that was better known, a lucky place where many found work and a few made fortunes. I return to Rondout to suggest that its now forgotten history, relating maps, books, ephemera and pamphlets provide an exceptional opportunity to consider an alternative way for material to be organized and presented on the web. I'm speaking of Wiki Bibliographies in which broadly accessible bibliographically complete snapshots by subject provide an ever evolving picture of all known and all available material including books, manuscripts, maps, ephemera [including postcards] and newspapers available on stationary sites [the listing sites] and transitories [eBay and traditional auctions].
Today there reside upon the net as tens of millions of faint stars, interesting and relevant materials, that must rely upon the perception and understanding of those searching to find, among the truckloads of sand, the single grains that suit specific interests. I suggest the market has it backwards. The material should, and I think will, be organized into living [ever adjusting] online bibliographies that incorporate related material under tight subject headings to provide a place for currently available examples and past transaction history as well as full text versions all to be accessed via a single forum. Today sellers upload to listing sites. I think in time they will allow, even encourage, their inventory to be drawn up into many such Wiki Bibliographies where rather than waiting for the material to be found by the knowledgeable, such material will be continually displayed in its logical collecting and research contexts. This will answer the question: where is the new collector? They have been overwhelmed with choices. Wiki-bibliographies will turn subjects into road maps.
Because the array of material will far exceed the typical self-imposed inventory constraints of booksellers I believe that many historical societies and libraries will find in the development of Wiki Bibliographies a natural place for themselves as administrators of what I expect will become the intellectual core of many entirely new and as well as other elaborated and reconsidered fields. Typically in the wiki world, dealers will offer and auction houses sell; collectors and acquiring libraries obtain and researchers analyze – all within a single context. For collectors such an approach will also make reselling a natural possibility. In addition to institutions collectors, collector-dealers and specialist dealers will also find this approach valuable for the development of their fields and their role within it. Wiki Bibliography administrators will consider, confirm or reject material for appropriateness. On many wikis a wealth of pamphlets and ephemera will be contextualized for the first time and material that has floated under the radar for generations will now enter the subject cannon.
For historical societies and libraries such wikis will I believe attract a natural audience and with it opportunities to broaden membership. In the new world of associations affinity will trump proximity. Additional members will help sustain such institutions.
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Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Patriotism before the Civil War
Now let's take a look at what a working example of a Wiki Bibliography looks like. We have created two. The first is on the printings of Paraclete Potter, a Poughkeepsie printer involved in the trade from 1802 to 1840. The material I've identified includes newspapers, almanacs, books and pamphlets. He inevitably also printed broadsides but I've so far not found any.
The other wiki is about Rondout, the town at the nexus of the Rondout Creek and Hudson River that came and went in the 19th century and left a colorful if mostly forgotten history that its wiki bibliography may help restore to public awareness. The balance of this article focuses primarily on Rondout while the Potter bibliography is an option for selecting an alternative to examine. Here is a link to an article I wrote on Paraclete Potter in the September issue of AE. The structure of wikis will be consistent but, as is the case with these two examples, content and emphasis will widely vary.
Shortcut to the Wiki Pages.
Background on Rondout
In the early development of the Hudson Valley Kingston, facing the Hudson River to the east and the Rondout Creek to the south provided both protection and access for early settlement. Kingston was in Indian country, the early buildings fortified and many of the houses made of stone. Early development in New York State was along waterways as travel by land was slow, arduous and sometimes dangerous. In the early 19th century a toll road highway system developed to connect inland points with the communities such as Kingston. In the same era canals were developed to extend the convenience of water transport to places that had significant materials but no natural water outlet by which to send them to market. Apropos of this coal mines in northern Pennsylvania, to send their salable fuel into New York City, needed efficient transportation and from that need the Delaware & Hudson Canal was proposed in 1823 and completed in 1828. It stretched 108 miles from Honesdale, Pennsylvania to Eddyville on the Rondout Creek. A few miles further on, near to where the Creek runs into the Hudson and where deep water mooring was possible, Rondout was born. The canal, the steady cargo, New York City's increasing requirements, and the absence of competitive alternatives then turned a minor footnote into a thriving place that in sixty years would peak and then decline into historical obscurity.
Do a Google map search today for Rondout in New York State and it finds only a creek. Rondout, the place, long ago disappeared, its moment in the sun brief. On David Burr’s 1829 "Map of the County of Ulster" there is Kingston and a coterie of nearby villages but not yet a Rondout. In the 1840 re-strike of this map executed by Stone & Clark "Roundaut" is present. Bolton and Twaalkskill, present in the 1829 map, have then disappeared and in their general place the spectral "Roundout" hoves into view. In 1845 Rondout appears among the list of communities that have a post office and on the 1847 Disturnell's Map of the State of New York the place is identified by its correct spelling and places it among many nearby names - Kingston, Eddyville and Rosendale that survive to the current day. From that day to the present in fact only Rondout will prove to be ephemeral. The others would survive to become Google map search results.
When the Gazetteer of the State of New York by J.H. French is published in 1860 its modern description of Rondout suggests a robust place:
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Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Kingston dominated Ulster County printing
"Rondout, upon the Hudson, at the mouth of Rondout Creek, was incorp[orated] April 4, 1849. It is the center of an extensive trade upon the river and [Delaware & Hudson] canal. The principal trade is that of stone, obtained from the neighboring quarries. It contains 8 churches, a bank and a newspaper office. The people are principally engaged in the coal trade; and a large number of steamers, barges, and sailing vessels are constantly engaged in freighting coal, stone, and cement from this place. About 20 steamers are engaged in the freighting business of this place. Lines of steamers also run regularly to Albany, New York, and intermediate places. A steam ferry connects the place with Rhinebeck, on the e[ast] bank of the Hudson. The Newark Lime and Cement Manufacturing Co. manufacture a larger amount of waterlime and cement annually than is produced at any similar establishment in the country. Pop[ulation] 5,978."
Kingston, at the same time, has a population of 3,971.
In 1872, with railroads increasing and canal traffic declining, Rondout and Kingston merged. Rondout had the larger population, Kingston the more established name. They agreed upon Kingston as the unifying name and Rondout's descent into oblivion began. One hundred and thirty-six years later Rondout is the firefly that for a moment shined bright but with the passage of time has ever grown more distant and remote.
What's in the Rondout-Wiki Bibliography on day one?
In its first iteration it emerges that Rondout-Kingston was home to almost 30 versions of weekly and daily newspapers between 1820 and 1920. There were so many efforts, many lasting years, even decades, that the potential for newspapers to emerge as bound volumes and single copies amounts to certainty. Maps are also very important. A succession of sheet and pocket maps is accessible online and originals show up periodically on every selling venue. Their increasing detail, the canals, railroads and place names, and even their relative type size tell a story. Very few books were published there but one, Bevier's the Indians, is a remarkable rarity. Most of the accessible detail that emerges is found in the pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera that randomly appear mostly on eBay, occasionally on listing sites, once and again at book fairs and in booksellers' catalogues. Most of what has come out is simply random – various data points that in themselves say little but which together turn single notes into a tune and perhaps in time a concerto. There are of course also postcards. In this first iteration I haven't included them but they too elaborate the Rondout-Kingston story.
In a great sense Rondout-Kingston was simply a microcosm of the 19th century American experience. It was the collision of opportunity and hard work advancing on the wings of rising population, lengthening life expectancy and transforming technology. In that very moment when the world was transforming day by day it had its golden moment and achieved an unusual if fleeting success.
Today it is seems entirely fitting that Rondout, once an exuberant place, that was both the determined and lucky opportunist might again, if only briefly, occupy a center stage. For just as Rondout conquered opportunities and was itself conquered by them, so too the book, manuscript, maps and ephemera fields are adrift in galloping change that threatens to remake the entire landscape for museums and historical societies, collectors, historians and dealers who live and die with such material. What better
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Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
- By Bruce McKinney
Wallkill Valley Railroad Directory
place to test the idea of building authoritative bibliographies and around them paths to historical records, copies for sale, and even the full texts themselves. If I am correct, the problem these last 15 years has not been that people have lost interest. Rather it is that they have lost sight. In time I believe these constantly updating, always available bibliographies will define and establish, on firm footing, the aggregation, study, collecting and selling of such material to a world that once its understands such efforts are authoritative will embrace the methodology and salute the effort.
So it is interesting that a place whose name has disappeared may become a battleground to help determine the future of book, manuscript, map and ephemera sales on the net. You have to wonder if Henry Hudson had any premonition when he sailed by on the Half Moon in 1609. Kingston, that long ago digested Rondout, was once, if briefly, the capital of the state, home to an IBM pregnant with fresh ideas for converting electric typewriters into deluxe office equipment that later became a phalanx of systems software that brought the world into the computer age. In a world where revolutions are fought on the same ground for different reasons generations and even centuries apart, Kingston and now mostly invisible Rondout look to be ground zero for a test of how the world of books thinks and reacts about its future.
If you would like to propose a wiki bibliography to develop and manage as a core holding for your business, collection, institution or society, click here to open a conversation with us. For many in the field today this will be an important step into the future.
Click here for the Wiki Bibliography Home Page.
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