FEPA News

FEPA NEWS 45 60 The World of Research The past few years has seen a rather healthy debate in the European philatelic press (mainly The Philatelic Journalist and FEPA News. Refs. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18) about the judging of philatelic literature at national and international exhibitions. No doubt this has followed many discussions and meetings among those directly involved. I have been following this debate from the published articles and have enjoyed numerous conversations on the subject with knowledgeable philatelic friends. I find those directly involved have a healthy passion and believe that they are taking the matter forward in a constructive way; I wish them every success. During my years as Curator and Head of the Philatelic Collections at the British Library (1983-2013) I have fully understood that the best time to encourage good research, and the resulting scholarship, is during the early stages of the research process where the results might end in a publication. To this end I, and my fellow philatelic Curators, always took time (and still do) to talk to philatelic students and encourage, often with ideas or advice, about their project. Over the years I can see that this process has helped many authors to write or compile better texts fuller with information and insight. I put together an article Philatelic Research–A Basic Guide. (Refs. 2, 5) which has been widely published and translated, and is now in its third edition, with a view to aiding this process. This prompts me to observe that the judging of philatelic literature at exhibitions is a splendid thing but would it not be more advantageous to the quality of philatelic literature, and to the users of that literature for now and for ever (for it is for them that it is written), to mentor budding researchers as authors before their monograph or article has been published? Just a few philatelic publishers already do this to some extent. One of the many times that I was privileged to do this in 2017 when I worked with Alan Druce FRPSL and the manuscript of the award-winning printed book Perkins Bacon Great Britain Line-Engraved Postage Stamp Printing 1840-1846, published in two volumes by The Royal Philatelic Society London in 2018. Part of this process I have written about in the article Perkins Bacon Line-Engraved Stamp Printing: A case study in the use of Archives for philatelic research, (Ref. 6) Some of the qualities, qualifications and experience which are necessary for a research mentor to possess to aid both the author and the publisher are: 1) A general and sound knowledge of philately in relevant disciplines to the subject matter of the book. 2) A knowledge of philatelic research technique in general. (Ref. 2, 5) 3) An understanding of the scope and desirable scope (if lacking) of a book. (Ref.3) 4) A knowledge of bibliography and librarianship. (Ref. 7, 19) 5) A knowledge of philatelic publishing and its economics, etc 6) The disciplines of competitive book judging. It has occurred to me on many occasions that the competitive judging of philatelic literature may be something of an academic exercise. In my case it was in 2004 when I was the joint publisher of New Zealand and Dependencies – A Philatelic Bibliography. (Ref. 1). It was compiled by David R Beech, Allan P Berry and Robin M Startup and comprised 288 pages. It took over sixteen years to put together and was the product of considerable international effort resulting in three pages of acknowledgements. The listing of New Zealand Official (Government) Publications alone took 121 pages. It was published to critical appreciation with very little, and only minor, additional material coming to light. It was extensively subject indexed, was printed on conservation quality paper and was sewn hard bound in buckram. It was entered in competitive exhibition and gained, so I seem to remember, silver or vermeil medals. It was difficult to The evaluation of philatelic literature David R Beech MBE FRPSL has added some thoughts to this discussion: