Every item of data recorded (a certain style of decoration or binding, the date of a manuscript note, etc.) is treated as a valuable clue for provenance, therefore it can be geographically located and chronologically dated. This enables to track the movement of books across Europe and through the centuries.
Provenance nameDouce, Francis (1757-1834), 1757 - 1834 [Former Owner] (Male, Scholar, No characterisation/lay) Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, bequeathed his collection to the Bodleian Library; see Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts Bequeathed by Francis Douce to the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1840); Macray 326; Craster 15-16; `Francis Douce 1757-1834', BQR 7 (1934), 359-84; Munby, Connoisseurs, esp. 35-56; David Rogers, `Francis Douce's Manuscripts: Some Hitherto Unrecognized Provenances', in Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard (Oxford, 1975), 315-40; Douce Legacy; P. R. Harris, A History of the British Museum Library 1753-1973 (London, 1998), ad indicem; I. G. Philip, `The Bodleian Library', in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys, The History of the University of Oxford, 6 (Oxford, 1997), 585-97, at 593.
Provenance nameDouce, Francis (1757-1834), 1757 - 1834 [Former Owner] (Male, Scholar, No characterisation/lay) Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, bequeathed his collection to the Bodleian Library; see Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts Bequeathed by Francis Douce to the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1840); Macray 326; Craster 15-16; `Francis Douce 1757-1834', BQR 7 (1934), 359-84; Munby, Connoisseurs, esp. 35-56; David Rogers, `Francis Douce's Manuscripts: Some Hitherto Unrecognized Provenances', in Studies in the Book Trade in Honour of Graham Pollard (Oxford, 1975), 315-40; Douce Legacy; P. R. Harris, A History of the British Museum Library 1753-1973 (London, 1998), ad indicem; I. G. Philip, `The Bodleian Library', in Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys, The History of the University of Oxford, 6 (Oxford, 1997), 585-97, at 593.