Oberlin College Library Perspectives

A Newsletter of the Oberlin College

Number 12, May 1995

Lucy Marks

Special Cataloger for a Special Collection

The Frederick B. Artz Collection in the History of Printing is one of the Library's finest special collections. Assembled by former Professor of History Frederick Artz over several decades beginning in the 1920s, the collection includes over two-hundred fifty rare books and manuscripts that illustrate the history of Western printing. This superb collection contains fine examples of illuminated manuscripts and incunabula as well as representative volumes from virtually all of the great printers in the Western tradition up to the early twentieth century.

While the collection was bequeathed to the library in 1983 upon Professor Artz' death, access to its riches has been limited because it has been cataloged only in abbreviated form. Since the library does not have a rare book cataloger on the staff, it was previously impossible to provide proper bibliographic access to the collection. That situation has now changed as a result of a unique cooperative arrangement that has drawn on the skill and generosity of two alumni and the assistance of a peer college.

During the past twelve months Lucy Marks '73, a librarian at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, has cataloged the rare books in the Artz Collection under a special arrangement with the Drew Library. Ms. Marks is a professional rare book cataloger who worked previously at the Beinecke Library at Yale and at the Pierpont Morgan Library. During the course of the project volumes in the Artz collection were shipped to her in installments. She did descriptive cataloging work on them in her home, relying at times on the expert knowledge of her neighbor and friend Paul Needham, Curator of Rare Books at Sotheby's. She also used the Drew Library cataloging facilities for access to national bibliographic databases as well as OBIS, Oberlin's online library system. The result of her work, completed one full year after she began the project, is complete cataloging for all rare books in the Artz collection.

This special project was made possible through the generous financial support of Wallace Sprague '38. Mr. Sprague has a strong interest in printing history that was kindled in large part by his studies at Oberlin with Professor Artz. Harold Jantz '29, one of Oberlin's most eminent scholars and bibliophiles, said of the Artz collection:

"Most fortunate is the college library that is destined to inherit such a collection, for it will present and represent in tangible symbolic form the continuity of the human mind confronting the world in all its aspects, seeing the present far better from its perspectives out of the past and, perhaps also, into the future."

Most fortunate as well is the college library that has the assistance and support of such alumni as Lucy Marks and Wallace Sprague. The Library wishes to express publicly its thanks and appreciation to them and to the Drew University Library for making this project possible.

Table of Contents Library Perspectives, no. 12

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Last updated: 18 May 1995