Trash or Treasure?

What materials to consider acquiring or that may reside within your own stacks:

Vertical files – don’t throw them out! There is often valuable items contained therein including ephemera, original manuscripts, photographs, etc.

Trash or Treasure?

What materials to consider acquiring or that may reside within your own stacks:

Other special items such as graphic art prints, photographs and ephemera are also important to evaluate.

Trash or Treasure?

What materials to consider acquiring or that may reside within your own stacks:

Libraries also have neat and unusual collections:

Newark Public Library’s Shopping Bag Collectionhttp://www.npl.org/Pages/ProgramsExhibits/Exhibits/shop08.html

Bowling Green Univ. Library’s Games Collectionhttp://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/pcl/page39117.html

Trash or Treasure?

So what is in your stacks?

Trash or Treasure?

Example One

Walker Evans’s American Photographs, Museum of Modern Art, 1938.

Copy 1 in Special Collections; Copy 2, acquired in 1930s, rebound and worn, on shelves

Trash or Treasure?

Example Two

Some books may be important to save based on who donated the book, rather than the book itself.

Some libraries create collections solely of former book collections of donors.

Trash or Treasure?

Example Three

Some important works may not have a large monetary value, but could have an important research value.

Trash or Treasure?

Example Four

Some works may look rare but may have many copies in other libraries.

Trash or Treasure?

Example Five

Keep an eye open for new items that may increase in value.

Trash or Treasure?

The prints of the artist, whose book was in the former slide, are selling for a lot of money – it may be worth looking for or setting aside her books

Trash or Treasure?

Many of the images are examples of collection items from the Special Collections Division of the Newark Public Libraryhttp://www.npl.org/Pages/Collections/specialcollections1.html

©2008 Chad Leinaweaver

All rights reserved.