What I Can Do For You

• Transcription/ Translation/ 

Dating & Locating of Historic Documents

Historic handwriting is often impenetrable, full of abbreviations and unfamiliar letterforms.

Paleography is the study of historic handwritings to not only read them, but to date and locate them using clues in how letters were formed, which abbreviations were used, and other physical traits of the handwriting.

I have trained to transcribe medieval documents at institutions across U.S., U.K, and France and have taught this auxiliary science at workshops at Indiana University and was invited to teach Gothic paleography at the London International Paleography School.

I have worked with private dealers to increase the value of their documents by transcribing them to clarify their content and by providing a date and location for unknown documents.

Once we’ve figured out where your document came from and a time period within 50-100 years, you might want to know what it says.

I can offer a translation. My French to English translation of Jules Verne has appeared in the Trinity College Dubin Journal of Literary Translation and I am currently working on an translation of a previously unedited Anglo-Norman Apocalypse text.

The languages I currently offer transcriptions of, and translations in to English, are: French (modern & ancient), Italian, Spanish, German, & Latin.

I can also help you identify and give a general idea behind Old Irish & Middle Welsh. 

• Collection Development

Do you long for that 18th century leather-bound library aesthetic in your home? Are you looking for a specific edition of a hard-to-find book? Are you a library in need of a teaching collection? Do you need help navigating the wily world of auctions?

Let me bring my twin professional experiences as a rare bookdealer and a Special Collections professional to you as you develop your collection of rare & antiquarian books or medieval manuscripts. 

With an eye for the unusual, the miscatalogued, and the historically important, I have been tracking auctions and book vendors for interesting & international pieces for interesting & international people since 2019. I can help you develop your collection using resources from the U.S., U.K., and Europe. 

Recently, Mobilis Books, my bookstore, has homed items in the collections of Lambeth Palace Library and Kew Gardens, as well as private collectors from as far away as New Zealand and Japan, to across Europe, and North America.

• Cataloguing

There are many reasons why you might want your collection catalogued. Maybe you’re a dealer with a piece outside of your expertise; a private collector who wants a record of their holdings; or a library with a small collection that needs to be made accessible to researchers quickly.

I’ve been describing and organizing collections for private dealers, individuals, and Special Collections libraries since 2017.

Each catalogue description can include the following components: a physical description of the object to trade- or Special Collection-industry standards in the appropriate format; a narrative bibliographic description of the physical object, including a cultural contextualization if possible; and, for Special Collections, a MARC 21 record.

I have catalogued medieval manuscripts to 21st century film holdings, from European handpress to Japanese woodblock printings. My catalogue records supplement the holdings of Yale University, the John Rylands Research Institute (University of Manchester), the Indiana University Moving Image Archive, and the Margaret I. King Library (University of Kentucky), as well as the catalogues of many dealers in the U.S.. From 2021-2024, I held post as the Rare Books Cataloguer of Pembroke College, Cambridge University, and I have been cataloguing for Mobilis Books since 2019.