Unpacking the Personal Library: The Public and Private Life of Books

Unpacking the Personal Library explores the cultural meaning and significance of private book collections in relation to public libraries,through a collection of essays that examine libraries at different moments in their history.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 19 July 2022
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Unpacking the Personal Library: The Public and Private Life of Books is an edited collection of essays that delves into the profound cultural significance and meaning of private book collections in the context of public libraries. Contributors explore libraries at various historical junctures across a diverse range of cases, encompassing Alberto Manguel's account of the Library of Alexandria, as well as chapters on library collecting during the Middle Ages, the libraries of prime ministers and foreign embassies, protest libraries, and the gradual transformation of university libraries. The book showcases how the history of the library is, in essence, a history of collection, consolidation, migration, dispersal, and integration, where each story negotiates the boundaries between private and public spaces.

Furthermore, Unpacking the Personal Library expands upon and challenges theories and methodologies from library and archive studies, the history of the book, reading, authorship, and publishing. Collectively, the chapters articulate a critical poetics of the personal library within its broader social, aesthetic, and cultural contexts.

Weight: 606g
Dimension: 163 x 235 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781771125680