NEWS INDEX Archives 2006 January

U. of I. renames rare collection library, creates book-collectors' club

Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu

1/17/06

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The New Year has brought two changes for the Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – a name change and the creation of a bibliophiles’ club.

The name change involves a venerable specialty library, the one that houses the rarest treasures of the entire U. of I. Library. As of Jan. 1, 2006, the former Rare Book and Special Collections Library will be known as The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RB&ML).

One of 38 departmental libraries within the University Library, The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is the principal repository for early manuscripts, rare books and literary archives in the broad fields of art, education, history, literature, the natural sciences, technology and theology. The University Library, with more than 10 million volumes, is the largest public university collection in the world.

The name change better reflects the RB&ML’s collections and allows the university to use the term “special collections” for a wider variety of collections on campus, such as those in the Map Library, the University Archives and the Sousa Collection.

“Our mission and vision remain the same,” said Valerie Hotchkiss, the new head of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, “but the name change describes us better.”

According to Hotchkiss, who also is a professor of medieval studies, more than 300,000 rare books, manuscripts and special collections are housed in the RB&ML.

“From the establishment of printing with Gutenberg to the earliest stirrings of Google, the university has collected books and manuscripts for their intellectual content and worthiness as cultural objects,” Hotchkiss said, adding that particular strengths lie in early printing, especially the Elizabethan and Stuart periods in England reflected in works by Shakespeare; various important editions of the Bible; and renaissance schoolbooks.

“The Library is renowned for its outstanding collections of emblem books and incunabula – books printed before 1501 – and is, in fact, the third-largest university collection of 15th-century imprints in America,” she said.

Also noteworthy are collections in the history of economics, natural history and science; Mark Twain and his age; and the papers of notable figures such as Benjamin Disraeli, W.S. Merwin, Marcel Proust, Carl Sandburg, Anthony Trollope and H.G. Wells.

Hotchkiss, who joined the Rare Book Library last August, said she hopes that the name change is “only the beginning of changes and improvements” to the Library.

She is working on improving access to the collection, more public programming and “the even-larger goal of securing a new building with proper environmental and security controls to house these treasures.”

The collections in the library under her supervision are, she said, “perhaps the most valuable physical asset on campus and certainly the most valuable cultural collection in the state, outside of Chicago. The books and manuscripts – and the people of Illinois – deserve a proper home for these important cultural artifacts.”

Hotchkiss’ own publications are wide-ranging, including “Clothes Make the Man: Female Transvestism in Medieval Europe” and “The Reformation of the Bible/the Bible of Reformation,” the latter co-written with Jaroslav Pelikan and David Price. Her most recent publication is the multi-volume “Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition,” which she edited with Pelikan. Her expertise on medieval transvestism recently was on display in a special program on the legend of the female pope on ABC-TV’s “Primetime With Diane Sawyer.”

Before coming to Illinois, Hotchkiss was the J.S. Bridwell Foundation Endowed Librarian and professor of medieval studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She directed the Bridwell Library at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology for 12 years.

Acting on one of her long-standing passions, Hotchkiss has conceived a second change for the U. of I. Library: the establishment of a book collectors’ club for “acquisitive book lovers who either have a collection or would like to begin one,” she said.

Hotchkiss has dubbed the club “The No. 44 Society,” taking its name, she said, from the hero of Mark Twain’s last novel, “No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger” – a “fantastical, but little-known Twain story set in a 15th-century print shop.” The only requirements for membership to the club are “to have read Twain’s novel (in the definitive University of California edition based on the original manuscript) and to love books.”

According to Hotchkiss, the book-club name was inspired by the U. of I. Library’s exemplary collection of American wit and humor, including its broad Twain holdings.

“We hope to attract a lively mixture of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members and local and regional collectors to the club.”

Hotchkiss said activities will include offering advice to beginning collectors; sharing information about dealers and collectors; regaling one another with tales of “the chase”; and formal presentations on members’ collections.

She also envisions the goal of establishing a university-sponsored book collectors’ prize and perhaps even a members’ exhibition program.

“In short, it shall be a convivial club for mysterious strangers united by a shared affliction called bibliophilia.”

The first meeting of the No. 44 Society will be at 4 p.m. Feb. 8 in The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Room 346 Library, 1408 W. Gregory Drive, Urbana; all subsequent meetings will be on the first Wednesday of the month at the same time and place. For more information about the club, contact Hotchkiss at 217-333-3777.