Das von Jerry Morris besprochene Buch von Rebecca Rego Barry (Auszüge bei Amazon, aber keine Volltextsuche möglich) erzählt von über 50 glücklichen Buchfunden in der Gegenwart. (Siehe auch die Besprechung in der Washington Post.)
“Of the 52 finds, three were found while clearing out houses, three were found on eBay, three were found at library sales, one was found in a dumpster, another was found in a trailer park, two were found at flea markets, two were found at book fairs, at least four were found in bookstores, and five were found at auctions.” (Hervorhebung von mir, KG)
2011 schrieb die Autorin von “Rare Books Uncovered” über ihr Unverständnis für die von Nicholson Baker in seinem Buch “Eckenknick” (so die deutsche Übersetzung) gegeißelten Aussonderungen aus öffentlichen Bibliotheken:
Then I experienced first hand what some libraries are (still) scrapping: An association copy (inscribed by the author to a friend) of a Victorian-era history of New York; an imprint from Ithaca, New York, in its original binding, four decades before Cornell put it on the map; but it was the French-language editions of Oeuvres Completes De Voltaire (1785) that really shocked me. Here are volumes of Voltaire, printed only seven years after his death, four years before the Revolution that his words helped to spark. Yes, some had been rebound, and yes, we were missing a few in the set, but these books had scholarly value. I made inquiries and found that Princeton also had that set in its rare book library, also incomplete. Why would we pitch something that Princeton was keeping in a vault? I emailed Princeton, and the curator there was grateful to take a few of the volumes and complete their set. I took three volumes home myself—vols. 1 & 2 on Theatre and vol. 12 Poemes et Discours en Vers, for no other reason than I couldn’t bear to send them to the guillotine (or, in this case, the landfill). And even though I was low man on the library ladder, I complained to the director about the deaccessioning. A sympathetic book lover, he nevertheless explained that a professional had done the weeding, and that was that.
Historische Buchfunde behandelte ich in “Codexmythen und Codexphantasien“.
Ein wichtiges Werk der städtischen Historiographie des Spätmittelalters, Jörg Kazmairs Münchner Denkschrift über die Unruhen um 1400, wurde von Anna Reitmor an einem “unzimlichen verworfen orth” (Latrine?) aufgefunden und 1563 durch Abschrift für die Nachwelt von ihr gerettet.
flickr photo shared by brewbooks under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license
Siehe auch “Bücher weggeben statt wegwerfen”
