A Library of One's Own

I've considered myself to be a reader for longer than I can remember. What I can remember is when I began being interested in books for their stories as objects, not simply the stories on their pages. Working as a Student Library Assistant for the Booth Family Center for Special Collections during my freshman year of undergrad, I was able to marvel at early and special editions of cherished books. More than that, I was able to share some of them. To select and cart books and ephemera out of their secured rooms for classes visiting special collections. To take photos of favorite bindings and first edition title pages and one-of-a-kind dedicatory notes and share them on the library's website and on my social media. It felt like the materials compelled me to make a bookstagram...
 
These ventures were not Goodreads-style reviews of the text. Each was concerned for books as wholly material objects. A misprint on an Art Deco edition of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (truly maddening!) or a first American edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude whose cover looked exactly like my recently purchased paperback copy. While browsing the hushed and cool Book Cellar of my local library branch, cherished text met material form when I came across a well-worn first edition (very late printing) of Anne of Green Gables. Which "kindred spirits" of the past might have read and reread Lucy Maud Montgomery's work before I did? Before my mom did before me, who passed down her own worn paperback copy of the novel to me? What "scope for the imagination" these finds provided!
 
A few years later, it is the summer of 2019. After the sort of draining experience unique to the DMV, I decided to cheer myself up with a visit to a nearby used bookshop I hadn't visited yet. After parking in the adjacent lot, I walked into the bookshop. Pale wooden shelves, full stock. Color. Signage. Covers. No one else was present, so I took full advantage of my moment to take in the rare books shelf across from the register all by myself. Each was wrapped in plastic sleeves, a practice I’ve found most common in southern Californian bookstores. I was still browsing when the bookseller returned. If you image search "rare bookseller" online, picture the first person under the results.
 
“Hello! Can I help you find anything?”
 
“Hi! I’m alright, thanks. I’ll let you know if I do!”
 
As I browsed, more people entered the store. At one point the bookseller, making rounds through the shop, came over my way and discovered me looking through a shelf of discounted books.
 
“Oh! There’s more literature over here. And poetry on that next aisle." He paused and gestured over to the shelf of mostly plastic-sleeved tomes I was initially drawn to. "Uh, over there are books for serious collectors. Or if you have money.”
 
"Thank you!" I mustered, stuck on his choice of words. I certainly didn't consider myself a serious collector, but I enjoyed looking at and finding unique and older volumes and stumbling upon the occasional early edition that was priced within my range. And by range, I certainly don't mean the sort of money I assumed he was speaking of. My range is really a few dollars, that might be stretched up to the price of a new hardcover if it is an older, beautiful, or scarce volume. Even then, I feel like most of my income (if not to food) goes to books...
 
I tried to put this in the back of my mind and went back to browsing the literature sections. After deciding on a few newer books, I brought up an unpriced, older volume of Ella Wheeler Wilcox poetry to the counter to ask for the price. The bookseller couldn't find it in the system.
 
"I'll check online, it'll just be a minute."
 
"Oh! Are you checking Abebooks?"
 
He sighs. “You have to be careful on these sites; there's people that shouldn’t be selling online.” Now I have never used the online marketplace to purchase a book but will often reference it as a quick way to learn more about a particular edition I've found.
 
He eventually named a price for the volume, and I decided against it. As I returned to my car with my books, I felt off in a way I wasn't used to feeling upon leaving a bookshop with a couple of new books to read in hand, and pretty and unique volumes seen.
 
At the moment of our Abebooks exchange, I wanted to ask what his book pricing training was in. A bit surprisingly, this stemmed from genuine interest rather than from irritation-sourced sass. I don't remember at what point in our exchange he made this remark, but he did share that he had not been to any recent book fairs.
 
How does a "serious collector" learn enough to operate? It was not, as this bookseller understood collecting, simply about money. The way he phrased it, money might actually detract from the practice of "serious" collecting.
 
At this point, I did not readily consider myself a collector. But I began wondering how I was meant to discern collectability if I couldn't rely on websites (my smartphone is a bit more portable than a manual on book collecting), didn't have lots of money, and my experience with rare books in special collections was not ever assumed or asked about.
 
These musings collided with my revisiting of an article in the Paris Review written by Diane Mehta the summer before. "The Rare Women in the Rare-Book Trade." Originally, I envisioned a capstone that would involve interviews from contemporary booksellers in relation to Mehta's assessment of, “When most people hear the term rare books, they imagine an old boys’ club of dealers seeking out modern first editions, mostly by men.”

The article itself highlighted how contemporary female rare booksellers are disrupting the field by not only who sells books but what books are traded, signifying what is valued as collectible. This work certainly inspired me. I was able to reframe the many hours spent browsing dusty shelves at used bookstores, antique shops, and estate sales as what it was. Collecting.
 
Still, I hesitated. As I delved into the socio-historical background of collecting, it became clear that even if I memorized every "point" of every edition or volume I found interesting or beautiful, no matter who a book was written, illustrated, or sold by, that I do not fit as an intended participant in the spaces and shelves of rare book collecting.
 
I am not a rare book dealer or trained librarian (yet), but I still wanted to share what I found to be rare—rare in more ways than I was accustomed to knowing rare books as—with others. This sharing facilitates readings of books beyond their texts to their contexts. To singular and exceptional, or "rare" marginalia and dedicatory notes. Gilt bindings and crayon-colored drawings. Inheritances and once in a lifetime garage sale finds.
 
While in practice the traditional parameters of rare book collecting have not enabled the privileging of rarity in this manner, I believe the associations of "rare books" can encapsulate these reactions and personal histories. The work of women including A.N. Devers and Heather O'Donnell (featured in Mehta's profile) inspired me to extend their democratization of the shelves in rare book collections by privileging personal histories. These stories of, not just in, the books. "A Library of One's Own" collects experiences and encounters with material books as themselves rare. This library equips you to be both lender and borrower. Always a learner.
 
When I initially proposed and began this capstone project, I could not have imagined that the events of 2020 would make digital collections more critical than ever. More than simply facilitating equitable access to collections, the ongoing global pandemic and renewed mainstream attention to racial injustices perpetrated against BIPOC on individual and systemic levels stresses the need for book collections that are primarily person-focused.