I had strongly suspected that one or more subscribers might take umbrage at my dismissal of a collection as the exemplar par excellence of a private library. Since no one did, I will take umbrage at it myself!
While one can easily dismiss the economic posturing that surrounds the emphasis on condition and focus in building a private library, it is much more difficult to dismiss the very real impact that these two "holy grails" of book collecting have on the value of a private library to scholars.
Scholars advance scholarship by collecting and evaluating various types of evidence. Scholars who work in fields like descriptive bibliography, for example, collect and evaluate evidence such as the type of paper on which a particular book was printed, the typography chosen to print such book, the sequence in which the pages of the book were printed, the material chosen to bind the book, and so forth.
While very little definitive evidence can be gleaned from a single copy of a particular book, multiple copies of the same book provide scholars with a much stronger basis for drawing conclusions about the publishing history of a particular work. That is why collections, such as that of The Folger Library, which focus on multiple copies of a single title (in the Folger's case, Shakespeare's First Folio) are so important to scholars.
But it's not just multiple copies of a particular title which are useful to scholars. Consider the following three collections:
- A collection of fine press publications, printed on handmade paper using hot metal type, bound in full Niger goatskin or similar materials, with no title having been produced in more than 100 copies.
- A collection of paperback science fiction novels, complete for most major science fiction authors, in virtually pristine condition.
- A melange of paperback and hardback novels, spanning several different genres, in average used condition.
Which of these three collections do you think most scholars would find most valuable...?
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