Cataloging a Life’s Work: Notes from the George Bixby James Baldwin Collection

Abstract

In June 2024, as the rare materials cataloger at Cornell University Library, I began the task
of cataloging a near-complete collection of the published works of the writer, intellectual,
and civil rights activist James Baldwin. George Bixby, a New York City-based publisher,
bibliophile, and book collector, gathered these editions over the course of five decades,
with the ultimate aim of creating a bibliography of Baldwin’s work.1 Although this project
remained unfinished by the end of Bixby’s life, the resulting collection consequently represents
the tandem bodies of work of both George Bixby as collector and James Baldwin
as author. By the project’s close, I successfully enhanced or created 172 individual catalog
records in advance of a library exhibition centering on Baldwin’s life and work