ADVENTURES IN SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Submitted by Lynn Williams 

My recent forays into Special Collections during the past few months have brought delightful discoveries of unusual sources and my definition of a book or a monograph-- or even a volume-- has stretched during this initiation period!  Packages that arrived one recent Friday topped my list of acquisitions to date. After Christmas vacation I received two email messages offering unusual sources.  The first was from a collector in Arlington, Virginia who had annual reports for the Alabama Great Southern Railroad from 1895-1940 and another set for the Mobile and Ohio from 1901-1931 as well as issues of Ties, the company magazine of the former Southern Railroad, from 1947-82.  We had already acquired some railroad annual reports and some for both of these railroads, but our holdings were skimpy in the case of the Alabama Great Southern and considerably later for the Mobile and Ohio.  Searches through other research libraries in our area, such as the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, showed better early holdings but not the continuous range of years that this private collection would provide for the early twentieth century.  After email negotiations with the seller, I decided to purchase the railroad reports, but leave the Ties for later consideration.  These arrived Friday in good shape with nice hardbound covers except for the binding of one that had to be repaired.  I was excited to have acquired some hunks of early primary documents for researchers of Alabama railroad history.

The other email was from the proprietor of Cheap Street Press in New Castle, Virginia who offered us gifts: titles by Gregory Benford, a California research physicist writing science fiction, but Mobilian by birth, whose fiction we have purchased from the press before.  The proprietor is retiring the press so he is rewarding good customers over the years.  I was expecting some ordinary, hardback volumes.  Instead I got a package the size of one volume and inside, I found six envelopes that looked like they might have greeting cards with fat letters inside.  Further examination revealed little booklets, to use my imprecise bibliographic vocabulary for a rare books librarian!  They were hand bound by a colored string with colored, heavy paper for the text and hand made, woven, colored, loose end papers with decorated covers, some also in unusual paper.  Exploration of their website and further correspondence with the proprietor disclosed that these little treasures are chapbooks from their Solstice line.  As their website explains, each title is a short story written especially for this series.  Format features have been designed and crafted by the proprietors or those commissioned to work for them to enhance esthetic quality.  When I sent my thanks to the donor, he offered to send me six more by two other authors.   What a shame this fine press (how it describes itself) will no longer exist!

Several weeks ago the ultimate in miniature books came to my attention:  Het Onze Vader, an eenie weenie of 6 mm x 6 mm that is a Dutch translation of the Lord’s Prayer.  It was published by the Gutenberg Museum in a plexiglass case with a magnifying glass set into a swiveling lid and made its way here with a box of archives!  Henry McCurley learned that the State Library of Queensland in Australia has a website devoted to this genre:  http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/scd/arts/rbshelf1.htm.  More edification.