>> From the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> Deanna Marcum: I'm Deanna Marcum, the Associate Librarian for Library Services, and I am so pleased to see all of you here. I have been at the National Archives all day for a planary [phonetic] meeting of a new initiative that's called the Digital Public Library of America. And person after person stood up and talked about how young people would never read books as we know them, and, you know, it's just -- it's just the way it is. And I kept thinking about this event this afternoon. And I thought I'd like to bring all of you over to the Library of Congress and see what young people are doing with books. It might be a good lesson for you all. It is a great pleasure for the Library of Congress to host this awards ceremony. This is the second year we've done this, and not only has it been inspirational for all of us to learn about college students who are thinking about books, and more importantly about knowledge and the transmission of knowledge, which is really what books are about, and thinking too about how collections are built. Because at the Library of Congress, while we get a lot of materials through copyright deposit, many of our wonderful collections come from those who have collected, not knowing they were collecting on our behalf, but as it turns out, they were. And Jay and Gene Kislak are examples of people who have built collections, thought very deeply about what goes into them, and very generously gave the Mesoamerican collection to the Library of Congress. I hope you've had a chance to see it in the exhibit area. It's really a lovely exhibit, and it's a great credit to the Kislaks for the work they did, and we appreciate it very much. This -- this award -- this contest was established in 2005 by Fine Books and Collections magazine. And it turned over the leadership of this program to new collaboration of partners that you see listed in the program. There are so many people to thank for this initiative. I'm going to talk about the organizations that are involved, but I'd also like you to look at the list of supporters in your program, because it's very impressive to see how many people are supporting this program. But our organizational partners of the Library of Congress, of course you're sitting here, you know that, but particularly the Center for the Book. John Cole has done a wonderful job of organizing this -- this event, and working with our other partners. And Mark Dimunation from the Rare Book, and special collections, I think you've had an opportunity to see a few things over in our jewel case of the library. The American -- the Antiquarian Books Sellers Association of America is a long-time reading promotion partner with the Center for the Book, and the Fellowship of American Bibliographic Societies. The J. I. Kislak Foundation has played an incredibly important support role in all of this, and their enthusiasm, and their willingness to work with us on this program has been very much appreciated. So let me offer my congratulations to our winners. We have two of the three winners with us this evening. One seemed to think that her wedding may take priority over being here. But we do have two of them, we're delighted. I'm so happy to see all of you here. So I'm going to get out of the way, turn the program over to John Cole, and we'll proceed. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Thank you, Deanna. And I'm pleased to welcome you, and to follow up just a little bit while Deanna is stressing the cooperative nature of what we have before us. You are going to hear from me a little more, and from Mark Dimunation, so I really would like to specifically acknowledge by name and by face some of the other sponsors that Deanna mentioned. I'd like to hold applause though until my people I'm introducing are on their feet. Representing -- and I'm gonna give you a little lingo now that we do when we cooperate in the government. You know, we're LOC -- Library of Congress. But representing the Antiquarian Book Sellers Association of America -- ABAA -- are Susan Benny [phonetic], the Executive Director, and Sarah Baldwin [phonetic], the current President. I'd like to have them stand. Sarah has made this project a priority during her presidency, and has really given us guidance and great help. The -- a president of the Fellowship of the American Bibliographic Society -- Bibliophilic Society it should be -- is FABS. F. A. B. S. is the acronym. David, do you -- Dave Comfort [phonetic] is -- there you are Dave, thank you so much. And finally, I would like the delegation from the Kislak Foundation to stand. Jay Kislak, his wife Gene, and Arthur Dunkleman [phonetic]. Arthur has been a guide -- guiding force on this project, and is the Director of the Kislak Gallery. Would the three of you stand as well? And let's give them all a round of applause. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: We've made a slight change in the program's order. We are going to have the presentation of the awards first, and have the enjoyment of listening to Michael Durda [phonetic] after we have finished the presentations. Today's program is being videotaped for broadcast on the Library of Congress' website, so I would like to ask you to turn off all things electronic. Deanna already has mentioned that we are not at the full roster of winners today, but we're pretty close. And you are going to be able to hear from one of our missing people, who as Deanna's already spilled the beans about the reason she isn't here. But we have a charming message from her. That will be Sarah McCormick from the University of California, Riverside. And her collection -- and I want to talk just for a second about the variety of the collections that were submitted, and the variety that have joined the winner's circle today. Sarah's collection is Desert Dreams: A history of California's Coachella Valley. And you will be hearing a message directly from her. She was the third prize winner. Another person who couldn't join us is Emily Brodman of Stanford University, who won our essay contest for an essay that -- about the assembling of her collection which was submitted to the contest. And her collection is on the sanctuary movement in Central America in the 1980s. And you will hear more about the collections chosen by our winners tonight as part of the event. Again, the people who were the judges this year were impressed by the scope, diversity, and the creativity demonstrated by our young collectors and their collections. As in the past, the winners -- the three winners plus the essay contest winners -- winner were chosen from people who were entered into the contest, and already top prize winners at book collecting contests around the country. And when we at the library took this on, I was both delighted and surprised to learn about these -- many of these contests, and it is our intention through this cooperative effort to beat the [inaudible] for increasing and helping other book collecting contests in other schools. And I will point out that in addition to the awards generously -- the awards generously provided by the Kislak Foundation consist of both an award for the winner, but there also is an award for the library of the winner that supports the student. So this is something that we want to encourage as part of this whole project. It's my pleasure now to get the ball rolling, by presenting our first prize winner, who is Mitch Fraas from Duke University. Mitch was a winner when he was a graduate student at Duke. What he won is called the Jeremy North Book Collectors contest, which is co-sponsored -- again, each university does it differently -- by the Friends of the Duke University Libraries, and the Gothic Bookshop. And my understanding is that the name of the contest -- Mitch is -- Jeremy North who was a former head of the Gothic Bookshop. So again, we have the kind of inter-reaction that the Center for the Book loves to both encourage and be part of. We get book collectors, we get book sellers, we get book publishers, but most of all our goal is to promote reading, and to use these different elements of the book community to do so. And Deanna's already mentioned that the Antiquate -- the AAB -- ABAA is a partner as one of our 80 national reading promotion partners. We also work in every state, and have inspired a state Center for the Book, which in -- really works mostly to encourage local writers. I'd like to invite Mitch to come up, and -- for a minute. And I would like to ask Mitch a little bit about his collection. And I did a little bit of research, and did figure out that his collection seemed to me to be related in part to a dissertation that you'd done at Duke, or at least it must have been helpful. But we'd really appreciate learning a little bit about the origins of that collection, and its uses maybe by its proprietor, but also its -- what it has meant to you to develop this collection, and where it has taken you. Okay? >> Mitch Fraas: Sure. >> John Cole: Okay. >> Mitch Fraas: I don't actually have remarks prepared right now, I'll try to keep it relatively brief. But as you were saying, my collection did originate from a dissertation. I -- I'd just finished a PhD in history at Duke back in April on legal history of British India in the 18th century. And while I was doing research for that, I was in London for a while, and kept running across, you know, I was -- we were doing a lot of work in court cases, and kept running across these sort of ephemeral briefs of the cases. And everyone sort of comes up when they think of cases in legal history with case reports, you know, the opinion of Justice So and So said this, and they're all printed out nicely, and you get the record of the -- the case. But what I kept seeing were these briefs submitted by lawyers to the judges, formerly printed up and submitted with the arguments ahead of time. And they weren't cataloged, they weren't well preserved, and I began wondering, trying to track these down for my own research, and then began looking wider into the bookselling community, and sort of got hooked on that and began buying first 18th century briefs for English courts that largely the -- are not represented elsewhere. Most of the collections in the 18th century [inaudible] is not in the British Library or any other holding library. You know, these were printed in 8 or 9 sheets, you know, just -- that's how many copies were job printed out, and handed out to the lawyers who largely threw them away afterward. And -- and for me it was really a great opportunity to delve into the arguments they were making that aren't preserved anywhere else. They also have great manuscript notes on them by the judges, who would sort of scribble on them during the case. And they're -- they're really important records. And I branched out to the -- the US too, and have some Supreme Court briefs, and -- and things in the 19th and 20th century, and just sort of got interested in this entire world of very particular kind of printing that you don't see that often. It's not books, it's not other stuff, it's these sort of small ephemeral job printing that I've just got fascinated in. And I definitely used it in the dissertation. I'm trying to put the text online to make it available for other scholars, and, you know, it's been a lot of fun doing so. >> John Cole: And you now have a new job. Do you want to tell people where you're working? Is it new? Is it -- how new is it? >> Mitch Fraas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just started in July at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm -- I'm a post-doc fellow there, and just sort of a new thing. I'm the volunteer fellow in library innovation, which sounds sort of -- sort of grand, but a little scary also. I go to meetings, people begin wondering do I need to innovate more? >> John Cole: Books can take you anywhere. >> Mitch Fraas: But -- so it's really a joy to work in a library every day. >> John Cole: Well, before we actually present you with your award, I want to say that I hope -- I also have a -- a reception cocktail time partner for you, Mitch. And this is a special guest from the Law Library, who's Dave Mau [phonetic], who is visiting. I asked him to come because I suddenly realized that there was a conversation topic here. And David is the Deputy Law Librarian of Congress. And I had met him for the first time, and I'm very pleased he's staying for the reception. And -- >> Mitch Fraas: And they have the -- the greatest collection of British privy council briefs anywhere, even -- >> [Inaudible]. >> Mitch Fraas: Yeah. >> John Cole: And that's an unsolicited testimony. [ Laughter ] >> John Cole: What we'd like now to do is to have Gene Kislak come forward, and we are going to present you both with your certificate, and with an award from the Kislak Foundation. And Abby [phonetic] will take photos of each award, and then a quick little group photo. And then we will move ahead. But congratulations. >> Mitch Fraas: No, thank you. >> John Cole: Okay. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Gene, we're gonna do the photo right here. And perhaps you could do the check first. [ Laughter ] >> Oh, not yet. Thank you so much. >> You're very welcome, and you're well-deserved. >> John Cole: And -- >> Oh, thank you. >> John Cole: -- a real certificate from the Library of Congress and our coalition. >> Mitch Fraas: Well thank you. >> John Cole: Thank you. That'll do it? Thank you very much. >> Mitch Fraas: Thank you. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: I now would like to turn the microphone over to Mark Dimunation. You've already learned that Mark is the Chief of our rare book division, and some of you were privileged to be able to hear Mark give a little -- a demonstration from the rare book division earlier. And I should say that that's going to be one of two special presentations. There also is an opportunity tomorrow -- and this was mentioned indirectly by Deanna -- for those who would like a tour -- are still here and would like a tour of both the Jefferson collection and the Kislak collection tomorrow. I'm going to be meeting people, and we're gonna have help at 9:45. The tour will be from 10:00 to 10:30 -- 10:00 'til 11:30, excuse me, tomorrow, and I will remind people of that later tonight. But what Mark talked about is the -- as Deanna said, the collections of the Library of Congress are based on these wonderful private collections. And you got a good sampling of that now, and now Mark himself is going to present the second major award. Let's give Mark a hand for the job that he also did. [ Applause ] >> Mark Dimunation: It's lovely to see so many people, and -- people here today, especially familiar faces from all aspects of our world -- libraries and collecting, and book dealers, and future potential donors. [ Laughter ] >> Mark Dimunation: Those of us who had the opportunity to actually sit on the judging committee for this competition can testify to the -- the lively and passionate discussions we had around these applications. It was very much in a way what we imagined the young collectors were going through in the process as we took on each of the applications and discussed them. And certainly that's the case with our next person. This is Margaret Murray -- Maggie Murray -- from Johns Hopkins University. Still a masters candidate? >> [Inaudible]. >> Mark Dimunation: She just finished. I knew she had, at Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. This was a proposal that was intriguing for many reasons, not the least of which is as you've just heard, people come around to collecting for different reasons, whether it be source material that's discovered in the midst of -- of research, or in -- I think more in the case of Maggie of throwing a pebble in the pond and watching those ripples extend out. Her -- her collecting essay was entitled Literature of the Little Review, in which Margaret Anderson enters an antiquarian bookstore. So I'd like to have Maggie come up. She's had the unfair advantage of already practicing her unsolicited endorsement of the Library of Congress, and we'll expect a little of that. But first of all, congratulations. >> Maggie Murray: Thank you. >> Mark Dimunation: This is a provocative title, it's one that captured my imagination immediately. Could you talk a little bit about what the collection holds, and specifically the story of Margaret Anderson entering a bookstore? >> Maggie Murray: Sure. I guess I -- I kind of entered book collecting or books just from the neighborhood I grew up in in Hyde Park, in Chicago. >> [Inaudible]. >> Maggie Murray: In Chicago, it's kind of a neighborhood of bookstores. And there's one bookstore there -- Garrin Wilsons [phonetic] -- it's a dequarian [phonetic] bookstore, and I would go there in high school, just kind of walk around and kind of see what they had and buy books. And that's where I found this edition of a magazine called Little Review. And it was this kind of intriguing, you know, kind of falling apart tattered copy. And picking that up, I learned more about it from the clerks working there that it was founded in Chicago by a woman named Margaret Anderson. And she was -- ended up just -- I learned so much about her, she's really fascinating, kind of funny woman who -- she started this review just because she loves art, and she loves living for art, and she wanted to start a review that was all about that basically. And that moved to New York eventually, I think it was especially famous for publishing Ulysses, first time in America. And from there I just, you know, was fascinated by her, got a bunch of books about her, all her -- she has many autobiographies and they're all really funny. She moved on to Paris, she has hilarious stories about Paris, and just kind of turned me on to the literature that Little Review was interested in, and all very avante garde, you know, modernist kind of works, and also just the, you know, pioneering works of feminist and female authors of that time, and kind of beyond. So that's kind of how it started. And, you know, for me I just feel like those kind of rare used bookstores, I love the atmosphere of them, and that's kind of how it all started for me, so. >> Mark Dimunation: And now you're -- you're collecting all authors who are somehow or another associated with the Little Review. >> Maggie Murray: Yeah, yeah. That's, you know -- and from there I, you know, it's kind of -- it is kind of like a pebble being in a pond and rippling out, just anything that kind of interests me that -- involved in that, so. >> Mark Dimunation: I -- what I -- what I was most struck with -- and I know this was discussed on the review panel as well -- is the repeat of the story. That is that this begins as story of a -- a young woman walking into a bookstore and discovering something, that's then told by a collector who has wandered into a bookstore and has discovered something. And for that reason this rose up to a very well earned award. John mentioned that institutions handle this competition differently. Johns Hopkins had a revival of this competition a few years back. Is Winston Tab [phonetic] here? Winston Tab is Dean of the Johns Hopkins University Library, and isn't present. However, the individuals who were responsible for helping revive this -- Doctor Edgar [phonetic] and Betty Swerin [phonetic] -- are here, collectors in their own right, and clearly motivated to encourage young people to grow collections as well. Could you stand so we could acknowledge you as well, please? These are people who -- [ Applause ] >> Mark Dimunation: And so could we have a round of applause for Maggie Murray and her award, and if we could have Gene come up and make the presentation? >> Maggie Murray: Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Laughter ] >> Yeah, it's hard [inaudible]. >> Thank you. >> Mark Dimunation: And on behalf of the Library of Congress, as well as the other representative partners, a certificate as well. >> Maggie Murray: Thank you. >> Mark Dimunation: Congratulations. >> We're very happy for you. [ Applause ] >> Mark Dimunation: John do you want to introduce the other representative from Riverside who's here? >> John Cole: Yes. [Inaudible] would like to -- >> Mark Dimunation: Okay. Well, you now -- you now know the dramatic moment behind the letter I'm about to read, but nonetheless, it's pretty terrific. >> John Cole: I'm sorry, do you want to [inaudible]. >> Mark Dimunation: Wanda -- >> John Cole: Wanda Scruggs. >> Mark Dimunation: Where is Wanda Scruggs? There you are, Wanda. Would you like to come up and read the letter that we -- this is Wanda Scruggs from UC Riverside. Wanda is representing Sarah McCormick, who is our third prize winner. >> John Cole: Wanda is the Director of Development, Mark. >> Mark Dimunation: Thank you, John. Sorry about that. >> It's okay. >> Mark Dimunation: My first chance to meet you. I was busy doing a presentation. I'll give you a quick background, and then we'll turn this over. Sarah McCormick won for a collection -- a very provocative collection, and one that captured the imagination of all of us who were reading it. She's from the University of California, Riverside. Her collection is entitled Desert Dreams: The history of California's Coachella Valley, which was a documentary of Palm Springs, both from the luxury side of Palm Springs, but more importantly from the working side of Palm Springs, and the voyage of discovery that she makes about her own life in the process of doing that. It's lovely you're here to read this letter. It's a -- your -- it's a lovely letter that we received from her, and a very charming one at that. So I'll turn this over to you. >> Wanda Scruggs: Thank you. I do appreciate it. And representing Sarah from the University of California, Riverside, I am Wanda Scruggs. And I'll read her statement, it's very powerful and [inaudible]. Sarah states, I am so honored to receive this award today. I'm sorry I could not be there in person, but I have to miss an awards ceremony at the Library of Congress, the mecca of book collectors nationwide. My own wedding is a pretty good consolation prize. [ Laughter ] >> Wanda Scruggs: Though I'm not able to make it there today, I do want to express my heartfelt thanks. I'm especially grateful that you saw a local history collection on the deserts of southern California as something of national importance. My collection of books about the Coachella Valley and its history has allowed me to return home, wherever I am in the world. It's allowed me to learn so much about the place I came from, the people I've met along the way, the landscape I grew up loving, and my own family's history, and even myself. When I think of my collection, I often remember what my grandmother loves to say. It's for those who came before us, and for those who come after. That's why each of us do this. We come -- collect books to remember the authors of yesterday, our ancestors' world views, the history of the written word. But we also do it for those who come after us, for our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren. We do it for our future, so that they too can remember, this is the joy of collecting. It's remembering the past, and preserving it for the future. I am truly honored and blessed to accept this award from so many fellow collectors, who have encouraged me to remember the books that came before, and look to the future for those that are yet to be. It has been a joy sharing my collection with you. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Mark Dimunation: If you have -- we were not prepared for that. I think we're gonna have a photograph of us just shaking hands. >> Wanda Scruggs: Okay. [ Laughter ] >> Mark Dimunation: Thank you. >> Wanda Scruggs: You're welcome. [ Applause ] >> Mark Dimunation: I'm gonna turn the program back over to John. But before I do, I couldn't help but be struck by this lovely letter that we had received from Riverside, in part because there's a very famous quote from one of the early founders of the rare book and special collections division, Frederick Goth [phonetic], who talks about our responsibility as collectors -- here he means library collectors -- as our personal destiny with those of the past, and for the generations to -- to follow, and that this is our responsibility to salvage culture in a way that's meaningful for individuals, both collectors and users of the institution. So I was very struck by the fact that this young collector had arrived at the same sentiment, it was very moving for all of us. John. [ Silence ] >> John Cole: Well thank you, Wanda. It was a pleasure to meet you. It was another surprise. We had put this together informally, and wonderful informal surprises happen. And thank you, Mark. It is now my pleasure to introduce our speaker, Michael Dirda. Michael is a long-time friend of the Library of Congress. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning critic, and for many years was a book columnist for the Washington Post. Michael is the author of four collections of essays, as well as the memoir An Open Book. He was a featured speaker at the 2003 national -- Library of Congress National Book Festival, and has done yeoman [phonetic] work for us as a book festival introducer and interviewer ever since -- just this past September for example, interviewing Toni Morrison, the winner of our 2011 National Book Festival award for creative achievement. He is a passionate life-long fan of Sherlock -- of the Sherlock Holmes adventures. In his most recent book, on cue, is titled On Conan Doyle, or the whole art of storytelling. It is a small but charming book, filled with critical insights, and entertaining personal observation. It was published by Princeton University Press, and I hope that you can pick up ordering information on the -- the table where we've stocked a lot of free publications from the Center for the Book. Not that we're overstocked or we're trying to get rid of anything, but we're trying to share some of our past collections with other people. And please help yourselves to items on the table, including the ordering information for Michael's book. Michael has chosen a somewhat -- somewhat Sherlock Holme'ish title for his talk -- The Thrill of the Hunt: the serendipitous pleasures of book collecting. Michael Dirda. [ Applause ] >> John Cole: Thank you, Mike. [ Silence ] >> Michael Dirda: Thank you, John. First of all, can you all hear me? Is this -- this good? If not, signal wildly. >> It's this mic on this side? >> Michael Dirda: It's this mic? >> Yes, that's it. >> Michael Dirda: Is that better? >> Yes. >> Michael Dirda: Ah, okay. Normally I'm an extemporaneous speaker, but I have some prepared remarks so that I don't drift off and digress endlessly, as is my usual wont. So I'm a little more focused than usual, and I hope that you'll appreciate that effort on my part. So thank you, John, for that generous introduction. Let me begin by saying how intimidated I feel in the presence of tonight's winners, and book men and book women. Compared to the focus collections you have assembled, Mitch and Maggie if I may, on subjects like Margaret Anderson and Anglo-American legal printing, and California's Coachella Valley, I'm hardly a true collector at all. My own library does reveal areas of particular interest such as [inaudible] fiction from the 1880s to the present, but it has been assembled mainly as a source of pleasure, and to some degree as a resource for my literary journalism. But your collections are by contrast true additions to our historical understanding. I congratulate you -- both of you, and all those who are not here who entered the competition. That said, I wonder if you have had as much fun in building your formidable collections as I had in creating what one might call -- to use an old-fashioned term -- a gentleman's library. While the Internet has allowed people to search the world for the titles they need for a particular project, it has undoubtedly taken away some of what I call the serendipitous pleasure of book collecting. In a view widely held by those over 50, it's made the whole process too cut and dried, a mere matter of typing in your wants, skimming through the copies available at [inaudible], and then hitting the Paypal button. According to Terry Ballinger [phonetic], the recent retired head of rare books school at the University of Virginia, that's not collecting, that's shopping. [ Laughter ] >> Michael Dirda: I don't entirely agree with that, and I don't think Terry does either. I think back to an essay I once read by the great textual scholar Tom Tanselle. He was describing the difficulties he found in collecting non-firsts. He was trying to gather together all the printings of I think Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, so that he might study and speak with authority about the novel's printing history. He said -- and I've never forgotten this -- it's easy to find a first printing of Babbitt, but you may have to pay a premium for it. All the later printings will cost you almost nothing. But just try finding the 13th printing, or the 23rd. That might take years. Not any more, you just need to add that information to your search, and bingo, up pops the right book. Or if that's not quite possible, you can e-mail the dealers offering copies of Babbitt, and ask them to check the printing numbers. With the Internet, this kind of patient scholarship has been made plausible, rather than the next to impossible work of a lifetime. Certainly in the case of the collections you have assembled, a great -- a great deal of thought, care, and hard work have gone into them. Figuring out -- figuring out what you need is a large part of serious collecting, especially when the area's unexplored, or the topic freshly imagined. Insofar as most collectors wish to acquire the finest copies they can afford of the books they want, the Internet has been a great help. You can compare offerings, e-mail dealers for further information, look at scans of the book itself. Still, you are dealing with a book secondhand. You aren't holding it in your hand, or discovering it on a dusty shelf. And you aren't likely to find any bargains. The dealers have cross-checked their titles online and know roughly what their books are worth. There are of course exceptions -- the fisherman who chargeoutrageously high prices for relatively common titles, or the dealer who undervalues an odd book or pamphlet because it only gains value from being part of a greater whole. So I really do want to stress that scholarly collecting could only benefit from the Internet, and its wide availability of books. Nevertheless, if we turn to the hedonistic level, I still think that collecting today has lost some of its fun, some of the thrill of the hunt. I say that, however, with a dozen caveats. For instance, one could only experience the thrill of the hunt if you are looking for a large number, or a wide variety of books, and of those books, only some of them can be exceptionally scarce. If you are say, assembling a collection of science fiction novels published in the United States between 1939 and the present, you are liable to find one or more of the titles you need at almost any good or sizeable book shop. But if you're looking for material about Coachella County, California, you're going to have to look in very specific places, and probably be very lucky as well. In this respect, my own dilettantes kind of collecting allows me to visit almost any kind of used book shop, from a paperback exchange to a high-end dealer in modern firsts, and find books that I want. I should be a little more specific in what -- about what I do collect. I must have somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 volumes. That's an unconscionably large number of books. And I have a long suffering wife, and a very crowded house. When I was younger, I thought that collecting was all about finding the books. I now know it's about finding the shelf space. [ Laughter ] >> Michael Dirda: When I go to a thrift store or a library sale room, or to a professional dealer, I'm usually looking out for modern firsts going back to the late 19th century, classics of intellectual history, vintage science fiction and mystery paperbacks, and the works of several dozen favorite authors. I will often collect a writer's books over several years, intending to write about his or her work when I find the right news peg -- sometimes a new edition of a famous work, or a new biography of the author. Thus I've recently been collecting the Historical Swashbucklers of Stanley Wayman [phonetic], the fantasies of F. Anstein [phonetic], best known for Vice Versa -- the original of the Freaky Friday plot -- exchanging of minds, he work of literary journalist Vincent Sterett [phonetic], and the fiction of Sylvia Townsend Warner [phonetic]. I'm not sure when I'll actually write about any of them. But if you look at my various collections of essays, especially those readings Bound to Please and Classics for Pleasure, you will see on those pages some of the fruits of my eclectic interests. Up until the advent of the Internet, the bookman's motto was anything can be anywhere. For many years, on Saturdays my friend David Streitfeld, now a reporter for the New York Times -- and I would set out for a day of booking. We might stop at half a dozen shops in the greater Washington area, or even make an excursion into Virginia or Pennsylvania. There are few more durable pleasures in life than that of walking into an unfamiliar used book shop, or an out of the way book barn, and feeling the yes, here there are treasures to be had. In those ancient days, no dealer could know everything, and so there was also a good chance of finding a real bargain. Of course at the heart of bargain hunting is knowledge. The picker who recognizes the old antique, the book scout who realizes that at Beaton's [phonetic] Christmas Annual for 1887 is worth more than 10 dollars, as exercised -- as by the way was the -- Sherlock Holmes first appears in Sign of the Four -- is exercising his or her conocertia [phonetic] -- the slightly egotistical pleasure of simply knowing things, and often knowing things that other people don't know. That's what Sherlock Holmes used to say, my -- my job's to know things that other people don't know. I've always admired the old book scouts who live by their wits and the knowledge they carried in their heads. By contrast, I have nothing but disdain for the people you see today who go through bookstores with those handheld digital devices, scanning ISBN numbers, or checking prices online. They've driven the old-time book scouts out of business. It's like the coming of civilization to the wide-open west of the gun fighters. Still, anything can be anywhere. Once I was giving a talk about children's books in Winchester, Virginia, home as some of you may recall of the immortal country-western singer Patsy Cline. After my afternoon talk, I asked my hosts if there were any book shops in town that I might visit before my drive back to DC. There was one used bookstore. It was small, but it had the great advantage, increasingly rare, of stocking mostly older books. Too many of the remaining used book shops, in an effort to cater to the common reader, focused on crisp new fiction and non-fiction of the past 20 or 30 years, or on paperbacks. With a few exception, these books are fairly boring. You might have bought them new. You -- you've seen one copy, you've seen a hundred. Know what a real collector wants to see, at least in a book shop, is lots of old book cloth, a shelf of muted blues and burgundies. As it happens, at that shop I found a copy of the -- the disinheriting party, the first novel of John Clute, best known as the leading science fiction and fantasy critic in the world, co-author and editor of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It was a couple of dollars. John's also a friend of mine, so I was happy to find his scarce first -- his scarce first book. But there was a greater treasure in that store. On one of the open shelves, quite in plain view, was a handsome copy of Richard Garnett's The Twilight of the Gods. It was the first printing from 1888, in good shape, priced at 5 dollars. The book itself is a collection of raw and ironic fantasy stories, some with an Oriental or Arabian Knights-like character. Garnett, as some of you -- well probably many of you here know -- was the keeper of rare books at the British Museum. The father of Edward Garnett, who was the Editor of [inaudible] Conrad and D.H. Lawrence, and was also the husband of the Russian trendsetter [phonetic] Constance Garnett, thereby sexual son David Garnett was a leading member of the younger Bloomsburys, once part of a menage a trois with painter -- painters Vanessa Bell [phonetic] and Duncan Grant [phonetic]. He actually assisted at the birth of Vanessa's daughter, Angelica, fathered by the primarily gay Grant, and 20 years later married her. But I digress. [ Laughter ] >> Michael Dirda: When I opened this copy of the Twilight of the Gods, I noticed an inscription. It was from the author to Ford Maddox Brown, the pre-raphaelite painter and grandfather of the novelist Ford Madox Ford, and I happen to know Richard Garnett's best friend. A year or two later, I was writing a profile of the great contemporary collector Mark Samuels Lasner, who owns the -- the finest private library of late 19th century books I know, as well as a considerable collection of Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm art. I noticed that Mark naturally owned the Twilight of the Gods, inscribed by Garnett to his publisher. I told him about my copy, and he offered to buy it from me on the spot. I said no, adding that I'd like to think that I had one book that was more desirable than any of those in Mark's fabulous collection. Still -- >> Will you sell it? [ Laughter ] >> Michael Dirda: Still, I have often wondered, how did this book ever make it -- its way to Winchester, Virginia, for that too is part of the romance of book collecting. I recently a comment online by someone identified only as James at Swamp Rabbit Books. He said a book lives through -- a book lives through time. It doesn't just exist the way an appliance might. And it collects readers the way a reader might collect books. It keeps a piece of every reader with it, a book play to signature of ownership, a dogeared page or underlying passage, a hint of wear on the jacket. This -- that patina counts for something, however intangible. Of course there are association copies. There is, for instance, the famous story -- no doubt apocryphal, but as we in journalism like to say, too good to check -- of the 19th century Parisian book dealer who acquired a magnificent set of Saint-Simon's [phonetic] memoirs of the court of Louis the 14th. Alas, the margins were marred by pencil scribblings and comments. So with a sigh, the dealer laboriously erased them all, going through a dozen or more volumes, until he reached the last one, where the owner had written his name, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve [phonetic], the most famous of all French literary critics, and a specialist on Saint-Simon and the 17th century. Think you'd look twice before you meddle with the book. A book collection to me is a reflection of its creator. Here on my shelves, and also on boxes in the basement, alas, is an outward image of my cluttered mind, my personal history, my passions. My books are a part of who I am. Another story. When I first came to Washington, I was finishing up my dissertation in teaching for peanuts, a couple of classes as an adjunct at American University. Here where -- where I then lived in Cleveland Park, there was a Connecticut in Calvert, just about the worst used bookstore I've ever seen. Some of you probably remember it. The owner took anything in trade, including Readers Digest condensed books, and high school yearbooks, and lots of dilapidated paperbacks. Naturally I took a job there, working three hours each Sunday afternoon in return for credit. It was sometimes hard for me to locate titles I actually wanted to use the credit on. One day however, a couple came in with four or five boxes of crisp jacketed new novels. Allan and Pat O'Hearn [phonetic], as I later learned, owned Quill and Brush, and specialized in fine modern firsts. But they hadn't sold these hundred or so books, and had decided to offer them in trade, essentially to give them to the book market. I doubt whether they ever used their credit, given the quality of the stock at Book Market. As the Sunday flunkey, I was eventually given the task of shelving these books. Naturally I looked them over as I did, so -- and discovered that one novel was by an author from my home town of Lorraine, Ohio. The book was priced at a few dollars, and I used my credit to acquire it, simply because of the personal association. As it happens, I eventually got the author to sign that copy for me, and just a few weeks ago conducted a public conversation with her to help launch this year's National Book Festival -- the celebration sponsored by the Library of Congress, and largely organized by our host, John Cole, and the Center for the Book. This is how it happens that I own a signed, mint first of the Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's extremely valuable first novel. I wish I could say I'd bought it because of my well-honed critical skills. [ Laughter ] >> Michael Dirda: But in fact, no. She was from Lorraine, I was from Lorraine. Serendipity. Of course today a Toni Morrison collector can go online and find the Bluest Eye. It's probably available for 4 or 5,000 dollars. I haven't looked recently. You could just write a check, and three days later it would be yours. But where's the fun? Where's the thrill? Long ago, I was reading through E.F. Bleiler's Magisterial Guide to Supernatural Fiction -- this is the sort of thing book people do. And I came across the name Claude Houghton. Bleiler described him as the quote, British author of psychological romance that's often embodied personal mysticism in a remote allegory. Best known work, the fine psychological mystical mystery story, I am Jonathan Scrivener. Later in summarizing one of Houghton's supernatural novels, This was Ivor Trent, he added that it was like I am Jonathan Scrivener in being a description of the hollow man of the 1930s, a person who was seemingly a successful, well-adjusted person, but is internally empty, shattered, and abysmally lonely. Houghton sounded better and better. So I decided to look for I am Jonathan Scrivener. Years passed. I would always glance through the H's in the fiction sections of various used book shops, with no luck. Finally, in a ratty used bookstore in Philadelphia, just on my way out, I spun a revolving wire rack near the front door, and there it was, right on the top. I plunked down my 2.95, and went home and read the book. I won't say any more about the novel itself. I write about it in my collection of essays readings. But I do want to mention one postscript. My friend David Streitfeld was then the publishing correspondent of the Post, covering the book industry and doing author interviews and the like. He was even then interested in the online book world. A week after my column about my quest for Scrivener appeared, he ran an item about it in his column, Book Report. In essence he said that Dirda had spent six years looking for this book, but that he had typed I am Jonathan Scrivener into a search engine, and turned up four or five copies in about six seconds. There, I could see, was the future of book collecting. It didn't and doesn't appeal to me. It was looking for Jonathan Scrivener that was half the fun. For a while doing so, I discovered dozens of other books that looked interesting, and that I wouldn't have otherwise known about. My mind was expanded by that search in a way that simply acquiring the book online wouldn't have allowed. To this day I haven't bought more than a dozen books off the Internet, and those only purchased because I had deadlines that required access to those titles right away. There are those who like having a collection, and those who like to collect, to be among books, to see what might turn up on the shelves. I'm in no rush. The journey, not the arrival matters. All of which said, I recognize that my attitudes are those of a reader, a bookman, a literary journalist, not those of a true scholar. Mine is a dilitantist [phonetic] attitude, my collecting eclectic to the point of madness. But that's me, as the very nature of my bookshelves reveals. Nonetheless, I respect and envy my better focused friends, those who collect only Lewis Carroll, or just photoplay editions, or nothing but Big Little books. These are the kind of collections that add to our knowledge, that are real tools to the understanding of the past. The individual titles might not matter on their own, but on mass they add to our understanding. What is it that Marx says about the transformation of quantity into quality? Before I close, I want to thank you again for this chance to ramble on a bit about my favorite subject. I've found, as perhaps some of you have found, that book dealers and book collectors are the best company in the world. I look forward to talking further to some of you tonight. I also want to honor all of you for keeping the faith, for showing that the physical book, the material artifact possesses a significance that its mere digital representation on a screen can never have. There is that aura of the original, famously described by Walter Benjamin in his essay on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. But there is also invaluable information to be had, from the binding, the paper, the type, the marginalia, the very wear and tear of the book. And these can only be found in the physical thing itself. Books possess a reality that a screen image could only aspire to. Everything else is just pixels. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Well thank you, Michael. That was everything we hoped it would be. It really summed up what we are all about, and what we've been talking about today, and we will continue to talk about at the reception next door, to which you are all invited. As I said before, tomorrow morning at 9:45 in the Jefferson building across the street, between 9:45 and 10:00 I'll meet those of you who would like to be -- participate in an hour and a half tour, first at the Jefferson Library, and then we will go right over to look at the Kislak collection, and the Early America's exhibit, and Barbara Tanenbaum [phonetic] will be our guide. And that will bring to an end our wonderful collectors weekend. Thanks so much to everybody who's helped organize this, and the conversations will continue next door right away. Let's conclude with a hand for our winners, and for our organizers. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.