What To Do and Not To Do When Researching Rare Books (Honours Research part 3 of 3)

My research

For my research into Trompe L’Oeil books, I had the goal of finding more examples of these books. I searched for these Trompe L’Oeil books in Dutch, French and English databases, I contacted various libraries in the Netherlands and abroad, and I contacted John A. Lane, an American historian with extensive experience in the field. I wrote one post on this blog in the beginning of my research, to outline its goals, then I wrote another blog post where I studied the Trompe L’Oeil engraving that was sent to me by Erika Andrási of the OSZK (Orságos Széchényi Könyvtár), and the last blog post will be this one. This last blog post will detail what I learned while doing research, more specifically what I learned to do and not do when it comes to research into a difficult subject as Trompe L’Oeil books.

 

Why specifically this research?

My research goals were quite ambitious: there was a chance that I would not find anything. Nevertheless, I was willing to risk this because it would have been very rewarding if I did find another book. I wanted to find additional examples because I was curious whether these books are as rare as they seem, or that they simply have been destroyed or become a victim of bad categorisation in libraries. Additionally, Trompe L’Oeil is a widespread art form, why are all of the known Trompe L’Oeil books Dutch, then? Finding more examples of Trompe L’Oeil would help place the already known works into context as well. This research would be my contribution to the discussion about these books, and I hope it was helpful.

 

Results

As a result of my research, I found examples of Trompe L’Oeil, but I did not find examples of books in this category. Trompe L’Oeil itself is not rare, but Trompe L’Oeil books like Cryn van Zuyderhoudt made are rather rare. The engraving from the OSZK that was sent to me was interesting, and thus it was decided to include it into the research, even though it was not directly related to my research question.

 

What was effective for research into such a niche subject?

The aspects of my approach that are needed for effective and successful research, in my opinion, are:

-Casting a wide net:

In any research, but especially if it is one that has few examples or few materials to work with, it is useful to cast a wide net. This means that the channels used to gather information should be diverse. In the expected, normal channels the results will probably be lacking, since this is the first place where other people have generally already looked. This means that information about Trompe L’Oeil books is more likely to be in smaller, less known libraries, since the inventory of bigger libraries is categorised better. I searched for these books in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague and the Leiden University Library, as well as looking for the books in French and English databases. However, to cast a wider net I contacted four Hungarian libraries, and John A. Lane. Diversifying one’s sources means that the chance to find a diamond in the rough becomes greater.

-Establishing criteria in order to search efficiently:

The problem with this subject is that it is difficult to describe what Trompe L’Oeil books exactly are, and that there are different names that describe Trompe L’Oeil. In Dutch, there are multiple names for it, and it is likely that this is the case in other countries as well. When attempting to find other examples, it is paramount to consider what these books might be called. Additionally, having a good description of the books can be helpful when asking people from different cultural backgrounds.

-Asking the right experts:

Finally, when it comes to this subject, Google search was of no help, nor was simply searching for ‘Trompe L’Oeil’ in various library databases (the results were books that I was already familiar with). Thus, it became crucial to rely on experts from various libraries, because they have more in-depth knowledge about their field, and can also give suggestions about where to look that might not be obvious for someone without their level of experience.  

 

How can the lack of results be explained? What could have been done differently?

The results of the research were lacking, there were some interesting examples found of Trompe L’Oeil, but not specifically examples of books. There are some things which are perhaps needed in such research that can be utilised in follow-up research.

-Patience:

This way of doing research requires patience and time. It can take years of research to get the desired results. One should start such research without too many expectations. This seems like a cliché, but it is nevertheless important to be very patient, because it is simply not guaranteed that any additional Trompe L’Oeil books can be found.

-More physical research:

One problem with libraries was that, to search in their collection, I had to ask librarians to bring out specific books or texts from their collection. I had no permission to browse through their collection, because the books I was interested in were rare and valuable. This was a bigger problem than I had imagined beforehand, since I did not have specific titles that could be searched for, all I had was a description. However, I could have thought about more ways to conduct research with physical sources. I tried searching for the author Cryn van Zuyderhoudt (the artist behind some known Trompe L’Oeil books), but this was not a success, unfortunately.

Conclusion

In conclusion, doing research about a topic which is as niche as Trompe L’Oeil books, can be rather difficult. Especially since the aim of the research is to find more examples of these books without a guarantee that these even exist. Therefore it is important to think about how to do conduct the research and have a clear plan about how to achieve the desired results. When it comes to my research, there were some things that increased the chance of success, like diversifying my sources, trying to come up with good search criteria, and trying to find the right experts to get information from. There are two additional things which are important for such research as well: patience, or time investment and enough physical research. I believe that if all these things are present in the research, there is a high chance that it is efficient and successful in its tasks.