A Library‐Keeper’s Business: Essays by Roger E. Stoddard

Citation

James, S. (2003), "A Library‐Keeper’s Business: Essays by Roger E. Stoddard", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 2, pp. 89-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310462161

Rightly or wrongly the impression persists that the scholar librarian is a dying breed: on this side of the Atlantic almost an endangered species. Things seem different in North America where the species still lives, and in some places thrives. Evidence for that is to be found implicit in this volume: not just the collected essays of Roger E. Stoddard himself, but those about whom he writes and for whom he writes. Despite our electronic services, our mission statements and performance indicators, many libraries are still very much about acquiring and preserving books for the future: and studying them.

Prominent among such bibliographic scholars must stand Roger E. Stoddard, Curator of Rare Books in the Harvard College Library. His mission is not just to acquire materials for his library and maintain the library of them, but to study them and, pre‐eminently to communicate that study. The contents of this appropriately handsome volume comprise lectures as well as published essays, and remind us too of another dimension for the scholar‐librarian: to teach. So, an opening autobiographical essay on “a New England boyhood among booksellers” is followed by another on “Teaching the history of books at Harvard”. Both are elegant reminders of the civilizing and educating roles of rare book collections and their custodians.

Thereafter we are treated to sections on “The librarian as an historian”, “The librarian as a bibliographer” and “The librarian as a collector … for others”. These present a wide range of essays on books, librarians, bibliographers and bibliographical topics, most of them naturally on North American themes and some of them more technical than others; but all of them reproduced here erudite, accessible and often entertaining. His most technical work is excluded from this volume, by reason of its length and complexity. A 12‐page bibliography of Stoddard’s writings will take those who wish into that work. In these pages, both forgotten names of the past, booksellers and librarians, and the famous, come alive from the page, as do different aspects of the history of the book. The final two sections reprint Stoddard’s Winship and other lectures (“The librarian at the lectern”) and “The librarian … after the rare book” presents three essays which combine into an authoritative and entertaining discourse on the nature and importance of the rare book.

Quite apart from his lightly worn but very obvious scholarly abilities, Stoddard knows how to communicate, not just with other scholars but especially with younger students: these essays and lectures are highly readable and often as entertaining as they are informative or thought‐provoking. They are more than a fitting tribute to their author: a reminder too of what much of librarianship is still about, even (or especially) in the online twenty‐first century. Rare book librarians themselves and bibliographers will read these essays with appreciation and enjoyment: but they have much to say to the rest of our community as well, and they say it beautifully.