Several major decorated paper collections in Europe are working together to develop a tool to help them catalog their respective holdings. As a long-time collector of decorated papers, researcher, and writer on the topic for many years, I have always made a point of visiting the major collections in the cities to which I travel. A few years ago, at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the National Library of the Netherlands) in The Hague, my wife Michèle Cloonan and I met its curator, Henk Porck, a brilliant conservator, curator, librarian, and paper historian. He and I discussed the arrangement of his massive collection and its accessibility. He wanted to develop a tool to assist in the cataloging of the papers, but he had a long way to go. More recently, we visited the superb paper collection at the Deutsche Bibliothek (The National Library of Germany) in Leipzig, and we learned from its knowledgeable curator Frieder Schmidt that he was wrestling with the same issue. He recognized that to do a good catalog of such an important collection, the institution needs a controlled vocabulary to create uniform cataloging records and to make the catalog meaningful as a finding aid. Scholars studying decorated papers are likely to do research in more than one archive. Instead of each collection having its own finding aid with its individual, idiosyncratic vocabulary, it would certainly save the time and headaches of researchers if there were one vocabulary used by all collections. Cataloging Decorated Papers sidney berger Detail of paper relief sheet, cast by the author, 4 . x 5 . x . inches. All works in the collection of and all photos courtesy of the author. Detail of colored, textured paper from Terry Taube of Hawaii. 30 - hand papermaking On our own end, Michèle and I have a sizable collection of decorated papers that we need to catalog as well. Even though both of us have the training and background to do so, we have never gotten around to this project. About 15 years ago I laid the foundation for such a task when I was the lead author of Paper Terms: A Thesaurus for Use in Rare Book and Special Collections Cataloguing (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association \[ALA\], 1990). Aware of my work in this field, a group of libraries in Europe invited me in early 2004 to join in discussions on developing a thesaurus for decorated papers. We all recognized how valuable it would be for all libraries to use the same terminology, allowing the institutions to communicate effectively with one another and to provide researchers with a consistent language to access their institutional holdings. The countries represented at the time were Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. (Since then, Poland and Turkey have joined and plans are afoot to bring in other countries that have strong paper collections.) The committee included scholars, archivists, librarians, and practitioners (paste paper makers and marblers), along with an expert on Dutch gilt (brocade) papers. After two full days of discussion on what would go into the thesaurus, how it would be used, and whom it would serve, the committee voted to make the first edition in English, as it is the most international bibliographical language. I was appointed to create the first draft of the thesaurus. Adapting a model that is recommended by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), I proposed that the thesaurus be in two parts: an alphabetical list of all terms and a second listing, the hierarchy, showing the genealogical relationship of all the terms. The main challenge was creating an organized, hierarchical structure into which all decorated papers fit. I decided to use the same schema that I developed for the ALA thesaurus: describing where and how the paper is decorated. There are five main divisions in the hierarchy: 1) colored papers (colored in the original papermaking process); 2) papers in which decoration occurs in the distribution of fibers (e.g., lace papers, watermarks, cast paper); 3) impregnated papers (e.g., dyed papers, batik papers, papers embedded with inclusions, iridescent papers); 4) papers that are decorated with surface applications (e.g., flocked papers, foil papers, marbled papers, paste papers, printed papers); and 5) surface treated papers (e.g., creped papers, embossed papers, glazed papers). Every word or phrase in the alphabetical listing is one of three things: a preferred term (the one to use if there is more than one to choose from); a non-preferred term; or a gathering term. Thesauri work best when they observe the principle of reciprocity, that is, with appropriate, comprehensive cross-references. For instance, if the preferred term is "Sprinkled papers," a note will say that this is to be used for "Scratted papers." And at "Scratted papers" one will find a note saying, "USE Sprinkled papers." In this manner, both the cataloger using the thesaurus as a cataloging tool and the researcher using it as a finding aid will be directed to the preferred terms, thereby maintaining a consistent language across the field. Selecting terms was not an easy task given the broad audience for the thesaurus: papermakers, paper decorators, archivists, librarians, scholars and researchers, booksellers, collectors, artists, historians, bookbinders, conservators and preservationists, paper merchants, auctioneers, and students. Each user group would like to see its own, familiar jargon reflected in the thesaurus. Deciding what Detail of Cockerell marbled sheet (20 - x 25 - sheet size). Detail of paste paper, made by the author. winter 2005 - 31 goes into and what is excluded from the word list required a delicate balance, attempting to satisfy many different constituencies. The committee met in February 2005 to discuss the first draft of the thesaurus. There were many spirited debates. For instance, several members of the committee did not want certain items in the thesaurus such as lace papers or watermarked papers. They made a sharp distinction between decorated papers and decorative papers. They contended that a decorated paper starts out undecorated and then receives decoration. A decorative paper was simply one that was pretty, no matter how it arrived in that state. Remarkably this led to a long discussion about what exactly we were there to put together. I pointed out that we were working together to produce a tool to assist us in cataloging our collections. And since many of our collections include lace papers, it would be necessary to have the term "Lace paper" in the thesaurus. Excluding this term would make it impossible to include lace papers in our cataloging. I suggested and everyone agreed that we change the title of the thesaurus to: Decorated and Decorative Papers: A Thesaurus for Cataloging and Processing Collections. Another key issue that came up throughout our meetings is the visual nature of decorated papers. After much discussion, we have decided to augment the word-based thesaurus with a searchable image bank, linking each key term to a visual example. Once completed, this database will be accessible on the Internet for use by all catalogers and researchers. We also decided to translate the English thesaurus into other languages. The English version would still be the international standard, but the translated versions would be helpful to those not familiar with English. The meeting in Leipzig ended on a quite optimistic note. Libraries that need to catalog their collections can now look forward to having – fairly soon – a tool to help them. Some repositories have been holding back from this work for decades for want of a tool. The tool is in sight, and the sense of cooperation is encouraging. Due out in late 2006, the first version of the thesaurus will be paper-based, with an online version soon to follow. The online thesaurus will eventually be accompanied by links to images, chosen by a small committee, to show an exemplar of each term in the listing. The thesaurus will soon become a reality thanks to the foresight, cooperation, and generosity of the Deutsche Bibliothek, which has been the host of the meetings. Our thanks must go to the two catalysts of the project, Frieder Schmidt in Leipzig and Henk Porck of the Netherlands, and, indeed, to a host of dedicated experts from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Poland, for helping to bring this project to fruition. The author wishes to acknowledge the support of Simmons College for two research grants which, in part, made possible his participation in this project. Detail of lace paper from Japan. Detail of chiyogami printed paper from Japan.