Re: [Paddlewise] Stephens's "Canoe and Boat Building"

Below is a snipped message from Jim Holman, and my response to it:

At 10:51 AM 6/27/99 -0700, you wrote:
>While doing some research on the internet prior to purchasing a canoe, I
kept coming across references to a book by W. P. Stephens called Canoe and
Boat Building for Amateurs, which was published before the turn of the
century.  
[snip] The one I have is from 1885, with a copyright date of 1884.  So I'm
assuming that the one I have is either a first or second edition.  I
haven't seen any references at all to this edition -- only to the 1889 or
'91 editions.  [snip]

The best place to look for descriptive information on out of print books,
ones that are held in major libraries, is a subscription-only database, the
World Cat[alog], from OCLC in Ohio.  In that database on a quick and dirty
search, I have found no holdings for a paper format copy of this presumably
first edition.  Two libraries list microform holdings that are copies of
it.  By 1891 it was in its 5th edition.  In 1987 the Mystic Seaport Museum
published Fifty Plates from...the 1885 and 1898 editions, "Printing plates
were made directly from the original plates, preserved by the G.W. Blunt
Library"[Mystic Seaport Museum?].  Presumably that library has the book as
well as the plates, but that's not a certainty.

I'd be delighted to have a copy of this book here in the Williams Library,
Texas Maritime Academy, Texas A&M University at Galveston.  Your local
public library would no doubt be interested too, or the Hatfield Marine
Science Center Library there in Newport, Oregon.

Natalie, "the paddling librarian"



Natalie Wiest, Library Director
Jack K. Williams Library, Texas A&M University at Galveston
P.O. Box 1675  Galveston TX 77553   U.S.A.
Phone:  (409)740-4567   Fax:  (409)740-4702
Email:  wiestn_at_tamug.tamu.edu


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