Old Guides as Maps to the Future

He knows he has something that’s very interesting but may be like Apples in June, all promise but little immediate prospect. He insists his client judge the market realistically and he has secured Mr. Gerstel’s agreement that the collection can be paid for over a period of two to three years. Their hope is to place the collection with a research library. The depth of local information promises to be the bedrock of what many believe will be the next frontier in historical analysis, the reconstruction of the details in daily life in those disparate places lucky enough to have had directories published during their emergence from agrarian backwaters to 20^th century cities. Such material will be the essential building blocks of such research.

But so far, inquiries to a handful of the important research libraries have been met with protestations of no budget. The real culprit seems to be the intensifying interest in very local research while the Gerstel collection is unabashedly national.

The answer of course may be to send the material into the auction rooms. That would realize a quicker payment of a market-determined amount that will be subject to cataloguing, promotion, timing and fate. In other words, the only important fact Mr. Gerstel wants to know is the one fact he won’t know: the price. To him it sounds like a Sunday stroll on death row.

There is another possibility and it’s that another collector will come forward to acquire the collection and carry it on. Such a commitment may fit for an entirely traditional collector but this collection is also particularly well suited to a younger collector looking over the next horizon. Such a collection will, at least in part, be needed in the digitization of local life and thereby contribute to the rewriting of American history. Collectors, looking for a ten year project with the potential to bridge local and digital history should find this appealing because it’s not just collecting, its collecting with impact.

Rare Book Monthly

Old Guides as Maps to the Future

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Old Guides as Maps to the Future

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