What is Forensic Bibliography?

The term “forensic bibliography” refers to the use of bibliographic information as a tool for investigating the makeup and value of book collections and/or particular books. As in criminal or scientific forensics, small clues can lead to further and more complete answers, such as recreating an entire library by starting with a few existing sources (Tesar,2013). Careful examination of a particular book can lead to answers about its physical make-up, production, and value.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate forensic bibliography is to look at a real-world example provided by an anonymous Canadian blogger with a background in library management. He describes his process of taking a non-standard reference to an ancient manuscript, and following it to uncover an entire history of how such documents were collected and managed over the years (Adventures, 2012).