Collecting, Curating, and Researching Writers' Libraries. Ed. by RICHARD W. ORAM and JOSEPH NICHOLSON.

Abstract

This book is both a reflection Of, and a contribution to, the growing movement around taking interest in books and libraries not primarily for their printed content but for the value in their provenance or physical characteristics. Its focus is on the private libraries of Anglo-American authors, primarily but not exclusively those who would be thought of as literary writers, and it is intended partly as a practical manual for both librarians and researchers, and partly as an awareness-raising vehicle around the topic in general. Its principal editor, Richard Oram, is based at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, where the value of preserving and identifying authors' libraries as special collections has long been recognised. They have been doing this for several decades, for well-known names like Joyce and Waugh as well as lesser-known ones like Compton Mackenzie and Ronald Sukenick, so he is well placed to write an introductory chapter summarising the issues and challenges around capturing and studying authors' libraries. They have obvious potential insights into their owners' thought processes and interests, particularly if annotated, but libraries are fluid things, with books coming and going throughout a lifetime, and the collection left after an author has died may be only a fragment of what was once owned. Should we look more at the titles on someone's shelf, or the state of the books, taking more notice of the ones which are falling apart than the ones which are pristine? Oram provides a brief overview not only of the historical development of authorial libraries, but also of the growth in interest and attention paid to them. The following chapter, by his co-editor Joseph Nicholson, is aimed at librarians and is written as a practical manual for the arrangement and cataloguing of writers' libraries within larger library systems, dealing not only with the niceties of MARC cataloguing but also with such questions as ‘shelving: together or apart?’, and ‘classification’. This is all standard stuff for those within that world, and a chapter to be speed-read by those who can remain blissfully unaware; it is technically comprehensive, but could perhaps ask some more fundamental questions around whether the purpose of holding such books in libraries is sufficiently driving the cataloguing philosophy (too much respect for librarians' sacred cows?).