LIBR 520 Collection Management

1
LIBR 520Collection Management

• BACKGROUND

2
The Library of Alexandria

• It was only the cultural pretensions
  of tyrants, kings and emperors which could
  conceive anything like a universal
  collection of books. -
  Roy Macleod The Library of Alexandria,
  (p.76)

3

• A monastery without a library is like a castle
  without an armoury. - anonymous monk, 1170
  A.D.
• the beginning of the Middle Ages is marked
  by an interesting development, a taste
  for collecting books. -D.N. Marshall,
  History of Libraries, (p.79)

4
Gabriel Naude - French librarian of early 1600s
wrote Advice on Establishing a Library his
advice ...

• Easiest way to get books was to acquire an
  entire undissipated library of someone who
  has died or to convince someone to
  donate books.

5

• A great LIBRARY cannot be constructed it is the
  growth of the Ages. You may buy books, at any
  time, -with money but you cannot make a Library,
  like one that has been for Centuries a-growing
  even though you had the whole amount of our
  National Debt to do it with.
  -- John Hill Burton
  The Book-Hunter (2nd Ed., p. 169)

6

• By 1876, librarian William Mathers wrote in
  Public Libraries in the United States of America
  that books were flying from the press as thick as
  snowflakes on a wintry day.

7
BibliochlothanasiaLibrary Hygiene and the
Librarian

• Librarian B.J. Enright used the term
  bibliochlothanasia lengthened from the word
  ochlothanasia meaning death from
  overcrowding.
• Modern scholars refer to this struggle with
  information as, data-smog.

8

• "And concerning the number of books, the
  establishment of libraries, and the collection
  in the Hall of the Muses, why need I even speak,
  since they are all in men's memories?
  -- Athenaeu