Re: Duplicate sales

[Wayne.G.Hammond@williams.edu (Wayne G. Hammond)]

Alan Pochi wrote:

>This thread brought me to a slightly different issue--continuing to collect
>when the discipline is no longer part of the research focus. I worked at an
>institution that continued to purchase materials for a particular area,
>basically because it was not a common course of study; although the doctoral
>program had ceased, they kept making significant purchases. Is this a common
>phenomenon?

The Chapin Library has a number of significant collections for which there 
is no directly corresponding course or program of study at Williams College, 
and which do not get a great deal of use.  But it does not lessen their 
potential value or historical importance just because there is less interest 
at the moment, at this school, in the subjects they cover.   (For example, 
we have one of the two major collections of Samuel "Erewhon" Butler, and 
continue to add to it selectively, even though there is not much interest 
here at present in late 19th-century British writers.)  Given that our 
budget, shelf space, etc. are finite, we will often base our buying 
decisions on what books and manuscripts will be most useful to our readers 
within the present curriculum.  But that curriculum is always changing, 
along with society and the fashions of scholarship, and a rare book library 
-- at least, one like ours, which has a wide scope and broad mission -- must 
also consider the bigger picture and the longer term.

Wayne Hammond
Chapin Library, Williams College
Wayne.G.Hammond@williams.edu