If family and friends have thrown up their hands in exasperation at your request for yet another book (or gift card with which to buy more books), there are other gifts available during this holiday season which likely would go much further towards helping you develop the private library of your dreams. At the top of this list are gifts you can give yourself.
The most notable of these gifts is education. No book collector, however advanced, can possibly know everything there is to know about book collecting. That is why most advanced book collectors constantly seek out opportunities to advance their knowledge of books, book collecting, book history and related bookish concerns.
Organizations devoted to specific aspects of books, book history, book collecting and the like thus make an excellent gift at this time of year. Many of these organizations publish journals on a fairly regular basis, and offer as well the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with like-minded book collectors several times a year. The memberships for most of these organizations is quite inexpensive, and are a tremendous value. We list 135 such organizations in the left-hand column of this blog under Bookish Organizations:
Another excellent gift would be a course or two at Rare Book School, California Rare Book School, London Rare Books School, or a one- or two-day workshop at any one of the venues listed here. Among this year's offerings at Rare Book School, for example, are two new courses designed specifically for collectors, one on collecting law books, the other devoted to provenance research.
If you can't afford the expense (of both time and money) required to take advantage of the above courses, consider a subscription to one of the few remaining print periodicals devoted to book collecting, like The Book Collector or Firsts or Book & Magazine Collector:
If you need more shelf space and are considering doing a little weeding, why not consider donating some of your books to other readers via Book Crossing....
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