Her Name Was Book

She came into the world as Joyce Columbia Bernur and when she left it in February of last year she was Joyce Columbia Book. She also left $77,000 to the Berkeley Public Library.

Book lived in the Berkeley area for the whole of her adult life and beside her love of reading and libraries she was also an early supporter of animal rights.

BPL Community Relations Librarian Alan Bern told the East Bay Express that in her later years "She was once heard to say that she wished she could just move into that library and live there for the rest of her days."

When she could no longer get to the library she utilized the Berkeley Public Library's Outreach home delivery program. She loved 'cozy' mysteries or mysteries with cats in them and was a collector of books on astrology.

Ms. Book R.I.P.

Story at the East Bay Express

The Return of the Bookseller Catalog

Derringer Books. Catalog 17. Designed by Andrea Latham

Publishers might be considering giving up on the printed catalogs but bookseller catalogs are making a comeback. Since the early days of bookselling the catalog was the cornerstone of a bookseller's business. It was the premier sales channel for the trade. They became; however, an early casualty of online bookselling. Many booksellers completely abandoned the catalog format while focusing on developing an online presence. Most of us thought they were no longer necessary. Now, a little over a decade later, most have returned to the catalog.

Jeff Maser. Catalog 46. Designed by Andrea Latham

Why? A lot has to do with online saturation. Outside of one's own website it has become very difficult to separate oneself from the hoards of people who have joined the online bookselling ranks. There are just too many books online and most are being listed by people with little or no experience in traditional bookselling. The quality is being swallowed up by the quantity. The saddest part is that it has become virtually impossible for the end user, the potential customer, to make sense of what they are seeing online. Buying books online has become a crap shoot.

Serendipity Books. Catalog for the New York Antiquarian Book Fair 2004. Designed by Andrea Latham

So, it is back to the catalog and while we were away the technology, printing and production options have improved greatly allowing us to infuse new life to this old bookselling staple. As the images in this post show, high quality graphic design has also entered the fray.

Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers. Catalog 39. Designed by John Hubbard

While I was preparing this post we received the latest catalog from Rulon-Miller Books. Rulon-Miller's cover rant perfectly conveys the frustrations and new challenges the traditional bookseller faces. Click on it to enlarge and enjoy!

Emory University Unleashes The Danowski Poetry Collection

Emory University kicked off National Poetry Month with a bang. They had three Pulitzer Prize winning poets (Mark Strand, W.D. Snodgrass and Richard Wilbur) headlining a conference titled “A Fine Excess: A Three-Day Celebration of Poetry.”

It was during this event that Emory took the wraps off what some say is the most important collection of English-language poetry in the world.

It was the first public display of the fruits of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library which they acquired in 2004.

The 75,000 rare books, posters, periodicals and recordings that make up the collection is "a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century."

I repeat "a nearly complete record of all published English-language poetry in the 20th century."

The library arrived in 1,500 boxes and tea crates, and is still being processed!

The exhibition is titled “Democratic Vistas: Exploring the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library,” and features 250 jewels from the collection including:

-A magnificent copy of the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. (1855)

-Anne Sexton's annotated copy of Sylvia Plath's Ariel.

-one of 11 known copies of William Carlos Williams' first book, Poems (1909), which was never reprinted

-a first edition of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock and Other Observations" (1917), inscribed to his close friend Emily Hale;

Danowski has provided a 24-page handwritten introduction to the archive, titled “Anything you perhaps don’t recognize, please Google.”

Emory University Press Release

New York Times piece, Atlanta Sings of Poems Electric, Past and Present, by Brenda Goodman

New York Times slideshow of the exhibit

Thinking About Book Collecting?

Well so is Kristen Ogden. Her piece over at the Kenyon Review blog, "Antiquarian Book Collector Wanna-be", gives us a worthy peek into the process.

Ogden says: "As it turns out, book collecting is pretty easy. Book Collecting As A Hobby by P.H. Muir offers a pretty good justification for buying first editions rather than spending half the cost of a first edition on a cheap paperback. If you know it’s an author or subject you’ll like, you might as well buy the good stuff because it’ll last longer, and if you ever get rid of it, you’ll get some sort of return on your investment."

She goes on:
"First editions are mostly well-crafted, well-made, and put together with care. Much different from the quick-print paperbacks on newsprint paper that yellows after a few months and almost surely has a “NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ‘INSERT HOLLYWOOD STAR’S NAME HERE” sticker on it. The reading process is just. . . different."

Now if we can only find a term that is a little more user-friendly then Antiquarian...

How To Open a Book

Click image to enlarge

Found this little gem in a book recently. The text originally appeared in Modern Bookbinding Practically Considered : A Lecture Read Before the Grolier Club of New York, March 25, 1885 with Additions and New Illustrations by William Matthews and was published by the Grolier Club in a limited edition of 300 copies in 1889. There is no printing or publishing history present on the Notice.

The New York Times actually published the excerpt above in the Saturday Review of Books and Art section on December 23, 1899!

Bauman Rare Books Bets on Vegas

Last week it was announced that the Reading Room at Mandalay Bay, the last independent bookstore in Las Vegas, was closing its doors. This week word comes that Bauman Rare Books, one of the preeminent antiquarian booksellers, is opening a store at Shoppes at the Palazzo. The Palazzo is home to some of the world's premier luxury brands and Bauman is hoping to fit right in.

Those of you who read the Book Review section of the Sunday New York Times are familiar with Bauman's frequent back page ad offering various hi-spots of collectible books.

They might be the only bookseller with a PR firm on the payroll and it seems to be working. They are clearly positioning themselves as the dominant luxury brand in the rare book market. With their home store in Philadelphia, their showroom on Madison Avenue in New York and now the shop in Vegas Bauman seems confident that the antiquarian market will continue to grow and prosper. Bauman says that rare book collecting "is a conservative market that affords exceptional value. For the price of a painting you can have a library."

The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) should take heed and like Bauman work on positioning themselves as the place where many of the best books in the world live.

Bauman press release on the Vegas opening.
Las Vegas Sun article: "Bookstores aren't our thing, but Vegas has literary life"

Book Lunacy

The unassuming-by-all-appearances softcover, Lunacy and Arrangement of Books as cleverly written by Terry Belanger brightened a dark, dismal, and chilly winter morning fairly recently and evoked a smile of sheer delight. (I usually glower rather fiercely and silently.) Although very modest and slender in appearance, it managed to cover quite nicely many strange and peculiar treatments of volumes -- from Samuel Pepys risers to make all the books level along the top edge to architectural failures in a reading room where large books couldn't be opened due to the low lighting fixtures.

The writing is direct and contents presented without preamble or pretense. This little volume is important because it reveals the idiosyncrasies of the book trade - that which every buyer and seller of books should know and be aware regarding cataloging, shelving, use, and selection. Informative, amusing, vital, and pertinent: peruse this book and learn from it. Book arrangements are indeed lunatic.

-Reviewed by Lynn Wienck

AbeBooks Latest: Rare Books $10 and up

AbeBooks continues to amaze me. They act like a company with a borderline personality, courting the traditional bookselling community at every turn while doing all they can to push these same booksellers away.

AbeBooks has recently announced that they are adding a new search feature to their Rare Book Room.

"We have added a feature to the Rare Book Room search that automatically pre-selects the price range to show only books priced at $10.00 and over."

Now their same loose definition of 'bookseller' is being applied to 'rare'.

Remember this is the company that still claims that "Rare and antiquarian booksellers make up the core of our business."

This initiative does nothing but further dilute the language of the book trade, it does not strengthen or help the traditional bookselling community in any way.

Wait, there's more.

AbeBooks is now soliciting antiquarian booksellers to join their newly launched Rare Book Appraisers section. Only booksellers that are part of one of the major trade organizations are eligible.

I can hear the call now:

"Hello, I got your name through the AbeBooks. I need an appraisal for an old book my father left me.

I did a search at the Rare Book Room on Abe and ..."


Why now? Well, AbeBooks just announced its new "Win A Bookseller For A Day" contest. The lucky winner will get a visit by a real live bookseller. The winner will have all day to marvel at this endangered species as he/she scours your collection to determine the market value for your books.

The image at left is the one currently displayed on the contest page. I guess the value is in the collection.

"The contest is being supported by a marketing push that includes magazine ads, email newsletters, site content, and publicity. The contest is part of an on-going campaign focused on antiquarian, rare and collectible books."

Please.

Interestingly enough the contest is being co-sponsored by Fine Books & Collections magazine. The magazine is one of the tops in the trade and why they choose this route is a bit troubling. Granted they have had a lot of success with their collegiate book collecting contests but this one isn't so pure.

I am sure the weeding process will produce an admirable winning collection but I trust Fine Books could have found a more appropriate partner. I wonder if it was pitched to the ABAA or ILAB. True, many of the booksellers list their books on Abe but for many this is a matter of economic necessity not desire. Fine Books advertisers are almost exclusively members of the trade or companies that provide services to the high-end collector. I just don't see how this move will strengthen their brand. It might increase circulation and expand awareness but it in the end they are getting in bed with a company that believes rare books start at $10!

Lastly, AbeBooks is trying to trademark the term 'passion for books.' Legally this may work but in reality it is a bit of an insult. In the 10+ years I have followed this company a 'passion for books' never entered my mind as a company trait.

My hope is that sometime soon either AbeBooks will come around and show the passion for booksellers that they purport to show books or that an alternative online marketplace will emerge that caters to the pre-internet professional bookseller.

The time is ripe.

So You Want to Be a Book Collector

In 1909, almost 100 years ago, these Twelve Maxims For Book Collectors appeared in Volume 1 of The Bibliophile. A Magazine and Review for the Collector, Student and General Reader.

Even today, one would be hard-pressed to find a better guide to the field. So if you are just starting out or have thought about starting a book collection here is your 12 step program. No need to spend your money on how-to books in the field or on book collecting classes, save that money and buy a good book!

1.—Before starting to collect any class of books, make sure that it is within your means. Nothing is more unsatisfactory than a collection which is restricted to poor copies of third-rate books. If you can't buy good books in one class, choose a cheaper class and buy the best in that.

2.—A little originality is a valuable asset. At the time when £2,250 was given for the first edition of Boccaccio's Decamerone, £lOO was considered a high price for a First Folio Shakespeare. There are plenty of bypaths of Book-Collecting which are still untrodden, and a Collector who is happy in his choice of one of these will have the pick of the market and do well for his heirs.

3.—Start with a special subject, and extend your range as your interest grows. You will spend twice as much if you begin purchasing over a wide field and then narrow down, and you will make twice as many mistakes.

4.—Don't buy a book unless you really want it. Save your money for the chance which will give distinction to your collection.

5.—Don't try to make bargains before you know the game. The idea of getting a book unreasonably cheaply disturbs the judgment, and to buy books about which you know very little from a vague idea that they have fetched high prices is sure to lead to throwing money away. The better attitude is at all times to be ready to pay a fair price for a good book.

6.—Never haggle with a bookseller. He is sure to have a reason for his price, and even if it is a bad reason he will be loth to abandon it. Moreover, should he give way, now and again, in order to effect a sale, the Collector who always beats him down will certainly be the last person to whom he will offer a good book. N.B.—If you mean to haggle, don't telegraph for a book first
and dispute the price afterwards, unless you can show serious misdescription.

7. Don't accept quotations of Auction [or online] prices as irrefragable proof of a book's value. You may know who bought the book, but you don't know who put it into the sale, and dealers are sometimes willing to pay 15% for a quotation. One sale-price, even if genuine, proves nothing.

8. -Don't buy cropped or imperfect copies, except of the very rarest books. They will give you no pleasure while you keep them, and however little they may cost they will assuredly sell for much less.

9.—Learn how to collate a book for yourself, and collate your purchases as soon as you get them home. If possible, make sure from a book of reference as to what a perfect copy ought to contain.

10.—If a book comes to you unsoiled, thank fortune for it, but don't battle too vigorously against a little dirt. There are many worse evils. A book cleaned with lime or acids is almost always seriously damaged, though the damage may take some years to show itself. Even excessive washing, without any injurious ingredient, will give a blurred appearance to print, and take all the strength out of the paper. Be content with what can be done with moderate washing and a little size.

11.—Don't make up one copy of a book from another. Making up of this kind destroys the history of the book, even when very carefully done, and often leads to exasperating mistakes. Making up by means of fac-similes is also a very doubtful advantage. The Bibles which have passed through the hands of the late Francis Fry are excellent examples of how books should not be treated.

12.—Think twice and thrice before you throw away an old binding, however bad its condition. If it has ceased to be able to protect the book, have it honestly repaired, that is without any attempt to conceal where the old leather ends and the new begins. Leather used for patching should be quite plain. Where it is absolutely necessary to have an old book rebound, remember that elaborate modern gilding should be reserved for modern books. It is quite out of place on old ones.

Fore! Amazing Golf Collection Lands at the University of British Columbia

Meat-packing magnet Sam Martz has given his 4,700+ collection of golf books to UBC.

It is the greatest collection ever assembled on the sport that will be kept intact and available for public perusal. Martz believes he has put together the third-largest collection of golf books in North America, behind the collection of the United States Golf Association and one that is in private hands.

The University of Chicago houses the collection of Arthur W. Schultz which is made up of 1,600 books but according to Ralph Stanton, head of rare books and special collections for UBC, "doesn't come close to the depth of Sam's."

The goal is to catalog and make available online the entire collection.

There is one big problem; however, and that is that there is no extra monies available to process the collection. "Like the python that swallowed the pig, how do you digest all of that?" is how Stanton frames it.

So as great as this news is it is tainted by the reality that it could be years before the collection is fully cataloged and available.

This problem of unprocessed material awaiting the light of day is a significant one and not confined to UBC. Many special collections in university libraries throughout this country are spread so thin that it is an impossible task to properly process the material that is acquired.

I have touched on this issue before when writing about the guy who donated the world's longest diary to Washington State University where it has lived in over 80 boxes since 1996 and has yet to be processed and when I asked the head of special collections when she expects the collections to be processed and available for public viewing she said "after I retire."

Also see my previous post from last March, The "No Information Left Behind" Act, where I suggest that maybe a 1% digital archive tax on all new computers or a tax on universities that spend more money on their athletic programs than on their library programs could be enacted to help fund the processing of these collections.

What I am afraid of and what we don't want to see happen is for potential donors who possess these great collections to bypass the library donation option due to the fact that their collections cannot be properly processed and cared for. Every collection that is ultimately broken up or disposed of elsewhere due to the inability of the library to properly handle it is a net loss for our society as a whole.

Article in the Province
Article in the National Post (pdf)

Books as Investments. Asia Joins the Fray

This came in a bit late for my previous post Book Collecting Juice which including a link to a recent article in the Telegraph about books as an investment.

The Standard, an English language paper in Hong Kong, has a piece by Ronald Chan titled Judging the Fine Print which comes on the heels of the inaugural Hong Kong International Antiquarian Book Fair that will take place from November 30 to December 2

Chan, founder and chief executive of the private investment company Chartwell Capital, says:

"The growing interest in rare books has finally hit Asia, with alternative investors seeing them as an undervalued asset class... As many factors determine the value of rare books, it is challenging to calculate its overall return as an asset class. But if we only look into the titles of auction quality, their investment returns beat other asset classes."

Using Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as an example Chan charts the books appreciation against the annual returns of the Hang Seng index, The Dow Jones, gold and US Treasury. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory blew away the competition amassing a 20% annual return, only the Hang Seng was close with an 18% annual return.

Chan also reminds us that "millions of books have been published over the past 100 years, but only hundreds have become classics with dramatic increases in value. The true nature of rare-book investment has been distorted by a focus on the winners that are in demand at the expense of the rest."

One can still build a formidable collection that isn't focused on hi-spots, thematic collections offer as much investment potential.

Chan then gives us a phrase worthy of inclusion in the next edition of John Carter's ABC for Book Collectors.
"Misleading vividness" - a term he uses to denote "books that are popular today [that] might fade into oblivion tomorrow."

Maybe it's time to start sending our catalogs to investment firms?

Book Collecting Juice

Timothy Taylor has a great piece in the December issue of The Walrus titled Unlimited Editions: a collector's obsession of award winning books. Taylor profiles John Meier of Vancouver, B.C. whose collection of the Governors General Award winners trumps that of the Canadian government. A fascinating read, sprinkled with bibliomania, espionage and Howard Hughes .

Upon first seeing the collection Taylor says:

And then I saw them, looming in the grainy half-light. Custom-built glass-front bookcases from floor to ceiling along every available wall, every shelf full, the colours of a thousand spines seeming to rustle in the darkness. And in the same instant that I understood the lights were low to protect the volumes from fading, I understood further that these were not merely books, but collected books.

The article is a good reminder of how private collections are an essential part of preserving our literary and cultural heritage.

On the other end of the collecting bell curve we have Toby Walne's piece in the Telegraph How to make a killing from first editions which caters more to the beginner book investor-collector. It emanates from the recent news of a first edition of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights which sold at auction in London for £114,000, more than twice the presale estimate. The piece appears in the money section of the paper which usually means that if they are doing pieces on books as investments other investments aren't doing so well.

One place to head after reading the above piece and deciding that books are for you would be to David Brass Rare Books who justed posted their latest catalog which features a spectacular copy of the first edition, second state of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and then this:


An inscription by John Lennon to Eric Clapton on the dedication page of Arthur Janov's book The Primal Scream. Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis
"By 1970, the Beatles had broken up. Lennon traveled to California for several months of Janov's therapy, which inspired the Plastic Ono Band LP signaling Lennon's definitive break from his past with the Beatles. Much of the material in that album was drawn directly from Lennon's primal therapy sessions"

Wow.

Drink Books

Camper English has a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today on collectible cocktail books titled Bartenders shake and stir their way through cocktail history.

English, who writes the booze blog Alcademics talks with Josey Packard, a bartender at Alembic in the Upper Haight who also studies recipe history and collector John Burton, owner and instructor of the Bartenders' School of Santa Rosa, about their interest in older cocktail books

Highlights:

-The first known cocktail book is "How to Mix Drinks" by Jerry Thomas and was published 1862.

-"Because of their proximity to sticky liquids, well-used cocktail books often don't hold up over time, which may be why vintage cocktail books from the 1860s through the 1940s are rare and highly collectible."

-In addition to their recipes or desirability to collectors "Modern cocktail enthusiasts use them to rediscover how and what people were drinking when the books were written, what bar life was like in the beginning of the last century, and the history of bartending as a profession."

Cheers!