Unpacking the Personal Library: Key Takeaways and the Evolution of Collection Development

Sponsored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Recorded on 10/31/2022
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 288

Unpacking the Personal Library book cover. Wooden sculpture of open book with paper lines, some missing. White background and black text.

In the final episode of this four-part series, Jason Camlot and Jeffrey Weingarten, coeditors of Unpacking the Personal Library: The Public and Private Life of Books, share key takeaways on collection practices and the value of personal libraries. First, Jeffrey parses out the library’s complexity as a research tool, and the need to suspend all assumptions on which parts of a personal collection carry the most meaning. Jason also shares thoughts on what personal libraries can offer in terms of acting as a window into the holder’s intellectual development and interests. Last, our guests examine how collection development strategies evolve and differ between public and private collections—what a library chooses to preserve can depend on bandwidth, budgetary constraints, and the collection holder’s level of fame or prestige.

About the guests:

Jason Camlot
Professor of English and Research Chair in Literature and Sound Studies
Concordia University

Jason Camlot is Professor of English and Research Chair in Literature and Sound Studies at Concordia University. Recent books include Phonopoetics (Stanford, 2019), CanLit Across Media (MQUP, 2019) and Vlarf (MQUP 2021). He is director of the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb research partnership that focuses on literary audio collections.

J.A. Weingarten headshot

J.A. Weingarten
Professor in the School of Language and Liberal Studies
Fanshawe College

J.A. Weingarten is a Professor in the School of Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College. He is also the author of Sharing the Past (UTP, 2019), as well as more than three dozen articles, book reviews, and papers on Canadian arts and culture.

Enjoy the conversation? Listen to the rest of the series:

Check out our previous series with Wilfrid Laurier University Press:
– Cultivating Indigenous Studies
– Michelle Porter and the Métis Way
– Looking at Community Music
– The Making of DisPlace
– Prison Life Writing

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