Rare Book School
Preliminary Reading List

Introduction to Rare Book Librarianship

Daniel Traister


Preliminary Advices

Articles and books are listed in the rough order of their significance in each section. Please read at least something in each section by the start of class.

The work of special collections librarians

1. "Rare Book Librarianship: A Special Intensity," ed. Terry Belanger [articles by John Bidwell, William Keller, Ruth Mortimer, Daniel Traister, and Peter VanWingen], Wilson Library Bulletin, 58 (October 1983), 96-119. More than a decade old, these articles still provide varied perspectives on the functions of special collections in a variety of institutional contexts.

2. Roderick Cave. Rare Book Librarianship, 2nd ed. (Hamden, CT, 1982). Cave's textbook is increasingly out of date. It was, moreover, always far too perfunctory in its treatment of the issues it discusses. Yet it at least raises many basic issues of special collections theory and practice and offers an introductory context for thinking about them. It does so in a lead-footed fashion, yet as the only even approximately reliable text on the subject that exists it remains worth reading. [NOTE: A. B. Scham, Managing Special Collections, New York 1987, is NOT an "even approximately reliable text on the subject." If that is the only text you can find locally, just say no: choose ignorance.]

3. Rare book and manuscript libraries in the twenty-first century, ed. Richard Wendorf (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, 1993). Two issues of the Harvard Library Bulletin [vol 4 (new series), nos.1-2], reprinted in hard cover.

4. Michael T. Ryan. "Developing Special Collections in the '90s: A fin-de-siècle Perspective," Journal of Academic Librarianship, 17:5 (November 1991), 288-93.

5. Terry Belanger. "Meditations by the Captain of the Iceberg," The Book Encompassed: Studies in Twentieth-Century Bibliography, ed. Peter Davison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 302-309.


Recent trends

You will find it useful to read through/dip into a run of issues of Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, the twice-yearly journal published by the Association of College & Research Libraries (a division of the American Library Association); begin with the most recent issue and work backwards.

6. "Recent Trends in Rare Book Librarianship," ed. Michèle Valerie Cloonan, [whole issue of] Library Trends, 36:1 (Summer 1987). 1987 no longer seems as recent as it once did; but the articles by Stephen Paul Davis, John B. Thomas, III, Daniel Traister, Stephen Ferguson, Martin Antonetti, Laura Linard, and Samuel A. Streit continue to be variously rewarding. Bring a handkerchief if you plan to read Margaret S. Child on "NEH Support for Special Collections": it is to weep.

7. Rosann M. Auchstetter. "The Role of the Rare Book Library in Higher Education," College and Research Libraries, 51 (May 1990), 221-30. Auchstetter may not know what to do with the issues she raises, but she at least raises important issues for anyone working with special collections in an academic context.

8. Lucy L. Gordan. "Life in the Berg Collection," Wilson Library Bulletin, 68 (April 1994), 26-31. The activity of a specific special collections unit within a large research library environment.

9. Daniel Traister. "The Rare Book Librarian's Day," Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, 1:2 (1986), 93-105. A demystifying view of the quotidian realities of the profession of special collections librarianship. Reprinted in Library Lit. 19 - The Best of 1988, ed. Jane Anne Hannigan (Metuchen, NJ, 1989).


General background and Philosophy

10. Daniel Traister. "Rare Books and Special Collections," World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services, 3rd. ed. (Chicago 1993), 698-703.

11. _______. "What Good Is an Old Book?" Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, 7:1 (1992), 26-42.

12. Walter Benjamin. "Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting," in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), pp. 59-67 (rpt. NY: Schocken, 1969, same pagination) -- the clever student will also take this opportunity to read the same author's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in the same volume.

If your bibliographical and historical backgrounds are weak, you might also want to look at the following materials (but bear in mind that these matters are background for this class, not its subject!):

13. Philip Gaskell. A New Introduction to Bibliography. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972 (corrected edition 1974 [New York 1975]; several later reprints and a recent paperback version published by Oak Knoll Books). Gaskell gives an extensive technical introduction to historical bibliography. Once again, PLEASE NOTE that its contents will NOT be discussed in class. If you bog down in the earlier sections, skip to the machine-press period or just skip around: don't let the book intimidate you.

14. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. 1976 (English translation). London: Verso Books, 1984, most recently reprinted 1997.

15. Daniel Traister. "Book," International Encyclopedia of Communications, Erik Barnouw, Editor in Chief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), I: 209-17.


Special collections in the popular press

Here is a representative variety of journalistic treatments that variously view rare book libraries, librarianship, and libraries and their problems. These are worth reading if only because they suggest the strict limits of most of your audience's knowledge of what you do and why you do it.

16. Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. "The Rare Book Game," Forbes (28 Oct. 1985), 336 ff.

17. Damon Darlin. "A String of Firsts," Forbes (11 Oct. 1993), 160-161.

18. Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Belle of the Morgan," House and Garden (Oct. 1991), 73-4 ff.

19. Merle Severy. "Shakespeare Lives at the Folger," National Geographic (Feb. 1987), 244-59.

20. "Treasures on Campus," Southern Living (Oct. 1987), 66-71.

21. "Old Books Make Rare Gifts," Southern Living (Feb. 1990), 26-7.


Special topics

22. Daniel Miller. Books Go to the Rotunda: Reflections of a First-time Curator. Charlottesville: Book Arts Press, 1997. Available from the BAP for $5 postpaid.

23. Christopher Reed. "Biblioklepts," Harvard Magazine March/April 1997, 39-55.

24. Daniel Traister. "Seduction and Betrayal," Wilson Library Bulletin, 69 (September 1994), 30-33 [theft].

25. Philip Weiss. "The Book Thief," Harper's Jan. 1994), 37-56 [Stephen Blumberg].

26. Calvin Trillin. "Knowing Johnny Jenkins," The New Yorker (30 Oct. 1989), 79-97 [forgery, fraud, chicanery].

27. Lisa Belkin. "Lone Star Fakes," The New York Times Magazine (10 Dec. 1989), 66 ff. [forgery].

Readers who enjoyed Trillin and Belkin will want to read extensively in the literature surrounding the Mormon/Evans 1 forger, Mark W. Hoffman, who found in the manufacture of special collections materials sufficient cause for multiple murder. The less bloody and far funnier story of Thomas J. Wise is told by John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain XIXth Century Pamphlets (1934, rep 1969, rev edn 1983).