Roland E. Bounds science fiction paperback book collection

The Roland E. Bounds paperback science fiction book collection is arranged alphabetically by publisher or publishing imprint, as this represents the way Bounds built his collection. An "imprint" is the public name for a particular group of books created by a publisher; a publisher may have dozens of imprints. One such imprint is "Tor." Tor's parent company, Tom Doherty Associates, is actually the publisher of Tor books.

This finding aid includes a box summary list, reflecting the arrangement of the collection by publisher or publishing imprint. The major publishing runs that Bounds collected are housed first, i.e. Ace Doubles spans Boxes 1 through 5. Publishers represented by fewer titles are housed in the later boxes, i.e. Box 106 includes one or just a few titles each from publishers Harper, Hyperion, Island, Ivy, and Jove.

The finding aid further includes a bibliographic listing generated from an Endnote database report. The bibliography is presented in alphabetical order by author (and then title), or, in the case of anthologies, by title. Other data included in the bibliographic report includes the following fields: place of publication, publisher or imprint, date, and series number. The report also includes locational box number and "item number"; these two pieces of information should be used to request items from the collection. The Endnote database also includes series titles (if they exist) and may be consulted for other research queries. Please contact the manuscripts librarian for assistance.

Serial numbers for paperbacks were more important for publishers preceding the use of the ISBN (International Standard Book Number), which started to gain wide use internationally in 1970. Prior to the ISBN, the SBN (Standard Book Number) was used mainly in the United Kingdom, from 1966 - 1974. Publishers sometimes used the last few digits of the ISBN or the SBN as the serial number for a run of books. Some collectors make an effort to accumulate a complete run of serial numbers by a publisher and use these numbers as a system for arranging their collection. The books in this finding aid contain a serial number, a portion of a BSN or ISBN, or if the book lacked a numbering system all together the "Serial number" data field was left blank.

Several of the publication dates in the bibliographic report are actually the printing dates or an estimation of a printing date for a particular edition. This was done to add value to the collection from a research stand point. Finding a publication date for a particular work is quite easy while finding out when an edition of a work was printed is not always as easy. Collectors of science fiction sometimes use the printing date as well as the publisher and serial number to arrange their collections. If a printing date was not clearly marked on volumes in this collection, an effort was made to estimate the decade of the printing.