EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
CONFERENCES
Conference information
Collectors and Collecting: Private Collections and their Role in Libraries
19-20 July 2024
This conference will be held at Chawton House Library on 19 and 20 July 2024. The event is jointly organised by Chawton House Library, the University of Southampton English Department, and Goucher College, Baltimore.
There are many examples of collections put together by individuals that are now valuable assets of the libraries to which they have been donated and to the wider cultural heritage. Such collections include the Henry and Alberta Hirshheimer Burke collection of rare editions of Jane Austen's novels and related materials at Goucher College, and the John Charles Hardy collection of eighteenth-century novels, a substantial part of which now forms a part of Chawton House Library.
This conference will focus on individual collectors of books and manuscripts and their collections. Topics include:
- the role of such collections within the context of the libraries where they may now be accommodated
- the way in which libraries manage an individual's collection
- the act and process of private collecting
- the motivation of the individual collector.
Plenary speakers are Reg Carr (Director of University Library Services and Bodley's Librarian at the University of Oxford), Robert H. Jackson (Collector, author, and lecturer on literature, rare books, and collecting; founding member of the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies), James Raven (Professor of History, University of Essex) and Bruce Whiteman (Head Librarian, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, University of California – Los Angeles).
The call for papers closed on 31 January 2024.
Registration enquiries: please contact Chawton House Library on 01420 541010 or .
The list of confirmed speakers and their topics can be viewed here in PDF (last updated 10 May 2024); please note that at this stage this list is provisional and may be subject to change. The list will be replaced by the full conference programme once it has been finalised.
