Why I Hate Booksellers’ Catalogues (Not Really … Well, Maybe Sometimes)

Abstract

During the past few months, I have been asked about accepting as gifts two rather large accumulations of antiquarian booksellers’ catalogues. One was from a private collector who had kept his catalogues over a thirty-five-year period. The other was from a bookseller himself, who had also never been able to throw out a catalogue and had accumulated many boxes of them since the late 1960s, along with much earlier ones he’d inherited from various sources. These two potential donors came to me because they had heard that the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, under my direction, had started to save . . .