College and Research Libraries


By AUDREY NORTH 

Buying Books on a Budget 

T HE building of personal libraries has long been encouraged at Rockford Col-
lege. The college is always looking for new 
ideas to develop student interest in books. 
A flexible book program has led to many 
interesting projects. 1 The Maddox Book 
House, with its old book room containing 
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English 
and French books, brought profitable pleas-
ure to students for twelve years, to terminate 
only because a depleted stock could not be 
replaced during the war. A browsing book-
store delighted campus booklovers and gave 
many students an informal but new ap-
proach to reading. When crowded campus 
conditions are relieved it will be re-
established. Book prizes awarded for out-
standing performances, curricular and extra-
curricular, were selected by the students 
from the browsing bookstore. Inglenook, 
the dormitory collection selected by the stu-
dent library committee, offers opportunity 
for recreational reading in informal sur-
roundings. A new college bookstore, 
specializing in reprints and special press 
books, is now rapidly developing in new and 
attractive quarters. 

The newest project to encourage the 
1 The following articles have been published on book 

projects at Rockford College. 
"From London to Midwest Campus Each Autumn 

Comes a Shipment of Rare Old Books." Christian 
Science Monitor, Nov. II, 1941. 

Frost, Lesley. "Maddox House Bookshop." Pub-
lishers' Weekly 126:I742-44, Nov. IO, 1934. 

Sharpe, Jean MacNeill. "The Book Program of 
Rockford College." Illinois Libraries 18:217-19, Au-
gust 1938. . 

Sharpe, Jean MacNeill. "Reading for Rec·reation at 
Rockford College." Library Journal 62:576-77, August 
I938. 

Thompson, Margaret S. "The Book House at Rock-
ford College." School and Society 46:87-89, July I7, 
1937· 

Wilde, Louise K. "The Old Book Room at Rock-
ford College." Journal of Higher Education II :320·2'2, 
June I940. 

OCTOBER~ 1947 

building of personal libraries was a contest 
sponsored by the college library. There 
were only two rules for the contest. The 
personal library had to be built around, 
first, a core idea or central theme, and, sec-
ond, no more than fifteen dollars could be 
spent on the collection. 

The first rule of the contest in no way 
limited the student's choice of subject. The 
theme could be broad or narrow, it could 
be in a special field of study, it could be of 
general or specific interest, but each book 
had to have a purpose, each book had to 
have its place with the others. Stress was 
placed on a core idea that truly expressed 
the individual's interest. The collections 
resulted in personal libraries the partici-
pants want to keep, to read, to reread. 
Whether the collections were scholarly in 
content or naive in an amateur approach to 
a simple hobby was unimportant if the 
collection was of sincere interest to its 
owner. 

As the contest progressed it developed 
some of the entrants already had sizable 
collections. Their challenge became a 
rounding out of what they already had. For 
most of the entrants the contest was the 
opening of new vistas in the world of books. 

The second rule of the contest was that 
not more than fifteen dollars could be spent 
on the collection. Benjamin Franklin once 
wrote a triend: "I am not rich enough to 
afford much in good works, and so am 
obliged to be cunning and to make the most 
of a little." By setting the amount at fifteen 
dollars thriftiness was encouraged. Many 
asked, "How can I collect a personal li-

443 



brary for only fifteen dollars?" but with so 
small a sum all students could afford to enter 
the contest. 

Because the contestants were unaware of 
ways to buy inexpensive books, it was neces-
sary to show them how to buy books, good 
books, inexpensively and easily. No attempt 
was made to deal with rare or scarce items 
on the book market, but with books that 
cost little. Two types of books were 
stressed in the gathering of the libraries, 
reprint editions and secondhand books. 

Recently publishers have realized there is 
a market for inexpensive books. Everyman's 
Library, World's Classics, and Modern Li-
brary have brought out reprints with good 
format which may be procured for little 
more than a dollar. Sometimes a good re-
print can be picked up at the corner drug-

. store in the twenty-five-cent paper-covered 
editions. 

Secondhand bookstores are exciting places, 
yet few students had discovered them. 
Small groups of students visited some of the 
larger general Chicago secondhand book-
stores. They had an opportunity to browse 
and purchase under informal professional 
guidance. They all went with open minds 
about selecting books, though were fore-
warned that a specific title is often difficult 
to find, and came back enthusiastic about 
the trip. They had discovered the fascina-
tion of selecting and purchasing used books 
in old bookstores. 

Spring Book Fair 

A spring book fair was held soon after 
the announcement of the book contest. The 
books sold were remainders from Maddox 
collections purchased in England and France 
before the war. The volumes, sorted ac-
cording to price, were placed on tabJes 
marked with names of English bookshops. 
For two days the whole college community 
had an opportunity to browse and purchase. 

The proceeds of the sale went for a new 
order of secondhand books purchased from 
Hardings in London for a second book fair. 

A book auction held in the fall gave the 
entrants of the book contest another oppor-
tunity to purchase secondhand volumes. 
The books in the browsing bookstore col-
lection at Maddox House were sorted by 
a student committee, arranged by a broad 
subject classification, placed on exhibit for 
several days, then auctioned to the highest 
bidder. 

A permanent book contest exhibit placed 
in a prominent spot in the college library 
consisted of representative copies of reprint 
series ordered from the publishers, with 
publishers' reprint sales lists and pub-
lishers' catalogs. With these editions was 
the Catalog of Reprints in Series. Several 
articles on reprints by Kelsey Guilfoil 
which appeared in the Chicago Tribune 
Books were clipped and mounted. A few 
of the books on the gathering of a personal 
library placed on exhibit were: 

A. Edward Newton's The Amenities of Book 
Collecting 

A. Edward Newton's Bibliography and 
Pseudo-Bibliography 

A. Edward Newton's End Papers 
H. F. West's Modern Book Collecting for 

the Impecunious Amateur 
A. S. W. Rosenbach's A Book Hunter's 

Holiday 
Holbrook Jackson's The Anatomy of Bibli-

omania 
]. T. Winterich's A Primer of Book-collecting 
Christopher Morley's Ex Libris Carissimis 
Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop 
Christopher Morley's Parnassus on Wheels 

This exhibit aroused much interest. Here 
the students browsed, read the books on 
book collecting, looked at and checked 
secondhand sales catalogs, checked books 
in reprint lists, and looked at the samples 
·Of reprint series. 

For the final judging of the contest the 
contestants placed their collections on 

444 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



tables in the college library. Varied ideas, 
showing personal interests, were displayed. 
The winner of the contest, whose hobby 
is horses, chose "Corralling a Hobby Horse 
in a Book Stall" as her topic. She made 
use of government documents, both federal 
and state, reprint editions, new and 
secondhand books. Her written comments 
handed in at the time of the judging sug-
gest what one student gained from joining 
the contest. 

Considered as a whole experience, begin-
ning this library has been an exciting under-
taking, surprisingly related to many of our 
activities at Rockford. Since the amount of 
money to be spent was limited, we were 
forced to use more discretion in selecting 
entries. What's more, learning to use 
"search-savers" in tracking down appropriate 
books has been invaluable. Handy aids like 
the Cumulative Book Index, The Book Re-
view Digest, and the government printing 
catalogs saved much time and guesswork. 
Visiting secondhand book stores was a picnic; 
making it a habit should certainly simplify 
"corralling" other topics. 

All these angles, so new to me, have made 
book collecting more than just worth while; 
it's a whale of a lot of fun besides; fun that 
can last a lifetime ! 

Not only did the winner have a good col-
lection of books but displayed them attrac-
tively, placing all the books in a ·paddock 
and using riding boots for book ends. 

One already impressive personal library 
was supplemented for the contest by a 
senior whose subject field, philosophy, was 
the basis for her collection, "A Beginner's 
Library of Contemporary Philosophy." 
She shared the second prize with another 
senior who selected the simple idea, "Books 
I Like." Being an art major her library 
included books on art, philosophy, and 
poetry. The freshman prize went to a 
collection entitled "Verses: Best and 
Brightest, From Ancient Muse to Modern 
Miss." Honorable mention was given to 

OCTOBER_, 1947 

a sophomore whose collection showed an 
exceptionally wide range around her core 
idea, "Drama." 

Some core ideas were scholarly and fol-
lowed closely major fields of study, as 
"Literature of the Spanish Language," 
"Beginnings of a History of English 
Poetry," "English Drama," "A Beginner's 
Study of the Bible," and "The Evolution 
of British · Drama." Others were based 
on hobbies as "Books I Have Read During 
the School Year,". "Stories that Never 
Grow Old," "Listening to Music," "What 
I Enjoy Reading in American Literature," 
"A . Coll~ction of Anthologies of Art, 
Music, and Literature," and "Science 
Fiction." 

Results 

This project has been well worth the 
time and energy exerted by the library 
staff. The students have demanded that 
the contest become an annual event. 
Many desirable book objectives, im-
portant to the lives of those who are being 
served in the college community, are being 
fulfilled through this program. Books are 
becoming more pleasurable and profitable, 
books are becoming a more integral part 
of the students' life, books are awakening 
the love of reading. The students have 
learned to think in terms of collecting a 
good personal library around a central 
theme. They have expressed their pleas-
ure in gathering their libraries. They 
have learned the art of bargain hunting 
for good inexpensive reprint and second-
hand books. 

To hear the students avidly discussing 
their collections, telling about their book 
trips and their "finds," advising each other 
on authors and books, over a cup of coffee 
at the campus tea-house shows that many 
of the students have been inoculated with 
the virus of bibliomania. 

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