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Library Collectors’ Council
Rare Finds - Library Collectors’ Council Funds a Record Number of Acquisitions
Before the voting began, Alan and Janet Stanford bought outright for The Huntington Joseph Morgagni’s De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis, 1761. The work is the first systematic text in the field of pathology. Listed in Bern Dibner’s Heralds of Science as one of the 200 most influential works in the history of science, it was a title which neither the Huntington nor the newly acquired Burndy Library had.
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“This is much more richly detailed in a debit/credit format than any published summaries of the Public Records Office accounts,” notes Mary Robertson, William A. Moffett Chief Curator of Manuscripts. “One of the innovations in the system was a mechanism for managing the national debt, which played a crucial role in England’s ability to wage war against France during the 18th century.”
In the second round, the group bought the papers of Joseph Harwell Barrett, a member of Abraham Lincoln’s “kitchen cabinet” and his biographer during the second presidential campaign. The archive was hitherto unknown, probably having remained in the Barrett family, and includes more than 350 letters not only involving other members of Lincoln’s inner circle, such as William H. Herndon, but also correspondence with Barrett’s family, including his in-laws, the Lowell family of Massachusetts.
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Peter Blodgett, H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts, notes that “Schieffelin’s correspondence not only shows his driving desire to find the next big mining strike, but it also reveals this solitary frontiersman’s powerful obsession with evading the clutches of modern life.”
_______________________________________ After the Dunning purchase, there were insufficient funds remaining to obtain anything further, but a coalition of members---Ken and Tracy McCormick, Dick and Nancy Spelke, Stewart Smith and Robin Ferracone, Alan and Janet Stanford, and Phil and Sally Swan---contributed additional funds to allow the Library to buy Herve Friend’s panoramic photograph of the Allesandro tract in Moreno Valley, 1891, an important photo-documentation of Inland Empire development.
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____________________________________________________ © 2007, Huntington Library. All rights reserved.
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It was the sort of shopping spree librarians dream of: At the 10th annual meeting of The Huntington’s Library Collectors’ Council, a record number of seven new acquisitions were funded. The Council, a group of 35 member families, met with Library staff in January to review prospective selections for acquisition. Nine choices were offered for consideration, ranging from a 15th-century book of hours to a collection of 20th-century literary papers. After presentations by curators from the Manuscripts and Rare Book departments, Roy Ritchie, the Keck Foundation Director of Research, summarized the research value of the materials. The Council then adjourned until the evening’s voting at a black-tie dinner hosted by members Bruce and Marty Coffey.
