[SCA-Dance] To recommend a purchase or not?

[Evelyn Alden]

A gentleman in Calontir (Alban, for those who remember his Pennsic shop) has been buying period books and scanning them in.  He posed the question:

"I've gotten a new one from a dealer I've occasionally used, that contains the
following items (among many others):
CAROSO, Fabritio. Il Ballarino. Venice; Francesco Ziletti, 1581.
".... 22 full-page engravings (6 repeats), large woodcut
initials and ornaments, musical scores.... First edition of this beautifully illustrated manual - one
the most important works detailing late  Renaissance Italian, French and Spanish courtly dance. In it,
dancing master Caroso describes fifty- four steps, provides rules for style and etiquette, and illustrates
specific choreographies for eighty dances fashionable at the time, most of them designed
for one couple and each provided with appropriate music notated in Italian lute tablature
I note that there's a web page that has at least a partial translation of it, available on Justin du Coeur's
webpage, and another on Gregory Blount's page ("These images were scanned at 300dpi from the 1967
Broude Brothers facsimile" and "An updated version of this book was published in 1600, and that edition
is available in translation by Julia Sutton in both hardback (out of print and expensive) and softcover (cheap,
in print, published by Dover).")
Would it be worth my while and yours for me to get and digitize this?"

Opinions?  If he buys them, he scans them and makes CDs and DVDs of the scans available without charge.  Is having an original available to the SCA a good thing (worth him spending his money on), or are the available facsimiles good enough?

katriana
p.s.  Hi!


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