Rare Book School
Preliminary Reading List

Introduction to Special Collections Librarianship

Susan M. Allen

Preliminary Advices

Please read/become familiar with the following before coming to Charlottesville:

ARL Special Collections Task Force. Minutes, documents and reports are available at http://www.arl.org/collect/spcoll/index.html. See especially Special Collections Task Force Final Status Report, 2006.

ACRL. Code of Ethics for Special Collections Librarians.

Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. 8th edn, by John Carter and Nicolas Barker. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004. Indispensable and highly enjoyable. Also available directly from Oak Knoll Books, or it may be downloaded online as a .pdf file.

Dimunation, Mark.  "Red Wine and White Carpets: What We Didn't Learn in Library School, or When the Dog and Pony Goes Bad."  RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage 7, No. 1 (2006): 73-84.

Traister, Daniel. "The Rare Book Librarian's Day. " Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 1, no. 2 (1986): 93-106.

Your Old Books (Chicago: ALA, 1994). http://www.rbms.info/yob.shtml. Written for a general audience; useful introduction to concepts and categories of rare books and book values, and to FAQs rare book librarians regularly get about these topics.