We have noted in previous posts some of the advantages that accrue to book collectors who live near institutional libraries. If such libraries permit public access to their stacks,
[n]ot only will you get a really good feel for what's been published..., you also will be exposed to a wide range of conditions, bindings, typographic styles, illustration styles, etc., that may well prove useful to you as you build your private library. And the serendipity involved in this sort of concentrated browsing may very well expose you to collectible topics and/or authors that otherwise would have remained unknown to you.
Even if you do not live near such a library, though, institutional libraries still have much to offer book collectors, since many of these libraries have very active publishing programs.
Many of these publishing programs have been around for quite some time. The Library of Congress, for example, began publishing in 1801. Many European libraries began publishing even earlier. The University Library of Leiden, for instance, published the world's first catalog of institutional library holdings over two centuries earlier (1595):
Such catalogs (often published as bibliographies) have long provided book collectors with ready checklists of what to collect in their areas of interest...
...as have more recent publications devoted to these libraries' various "treasures:"
One could, in fact, build a private library devoted solely to books published by institutional libraries. So many so-called treasure books have been published, for example, that a fairly sizable collection of such books could be put together relatively easily and inexpensively. Purists, of course, will want to make sure that all such titles were actually published by the institutional libraries themselves (which was not the case with Pearls of the Orient, above).
Alternatively, one could collect all of the books that have ever been published by a single institutional library such as the Library of Congress (images via Charles Agvent and Between the Covers Rare Books):
This could get quite expensive, though, since many large institutional libraries like LOC and The British Library have very extensive publishing programs (and many of the earliest titles published by such libraries are quite scarce and rarely available in the marketplace):
Alternatively, one could collect only specific types of books that have been published by institutional libraries -- books about particular artists, for example. (The title below was published by the State Library of New South Wales):
The histories of institutional libraries are popular with some book collectors. The history below left was published as a Limited Edition in 1937 (image of the Viscount Eccles copy via George Ong); the history below right (same library) was published in 2002:
Collectors should keep in mind, as we have noted in previous posts, that many institutional libraries (and their respective Friends groups) also often publish collectible ephemera such as keepsakes....
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