The Literature of Collecting and Other Essays by Richard WendorfReview by: John KinkadeLibraries & the Cultural Record, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2010), pp. 369-370Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25750352 .

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369

expand their ideas and convey a richer sense of the historical periods and archi

tecture under study. Part 3 also devotes a chapter to the development of children's

libraries in Britain and provides a poignant history of this population of library users. A chapter entitled "The Library as Monument and Machine" details the

often conflicting priorities of function and beauty and describes instances where both have been accomplished successfully.

In "The Past in the Present," the fourth and final section of the book, the

authors describe the conflict surrounding the building of the new British Library in the 1980s and 1990s as an example of the conflict between modernism and

historicism that often arises when considering the fate of historic buildings. The authors take note of the fact that libraries are not being used in the same way as

in the past and that the principles of librarianship, principles that transcend any architectural space, should guide a practical assessment of public library build

ings and their ability to serve patrons. The authors present several examples of

newly constructed libraries as well as refurbished and extended older buildings that create a balance between the library as an historical institution and one that

must continue to stay relevant to users' changing needs.

Librarians, architects, and planners have, from the beginning, generally under

stood the importance of the library as "place" within the community. This book

deftly reminds us that early library planners were not blind to patrons' needs and

actually spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to design buildings that met those needs. As public libraries strive to effectively serve the changing needs

of their communities, discussions of modernization and renovation of historic

architecture undoubtedly will provoke an emotional response. For this reason, this attempt to document the history embedded in the creation and upkeep of these buildings serves as a wonderful reminder of what has come before and

that history is not simply a progression from ignorance to enlightenment. By understanding the rich history of the library buildings we use and work in, we can better understand how to adapt them to the continuously changing needs of their users.

Amanda Dinscore, California State University, Fresno

The Literature of Collecting and Other Essays. By Richard Wendorf. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2008. 300 pp. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-5845-623-06.

Richard Wendorf s The Literature of Collecting begins with questions about the purpose, rewards, and effects of collecting. Wendorf, an

eighteenth-century special ist and director of the Boston Athenaeum, tackles these questions by considering evidence from both fiction and theory, but he offers no answers in the title essay. Instead, he suggests only tentative ideas about the meaning of collecting and then

implies his answers through the rest of the essays. Wendorf addresses subjects as diverse as the history of the Boston Athenaeum, the friendship of Edmund Burke and Joshua Reynolds, and, in what is perhaps the key essay, his own experience as the subject of the photographer Thomas Kellner, whose trademark is fracturing images and putting them back together so that we see the subject anew. Key to his process is that he arranges physical pieces?contact sheets and photographs,

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370 L8cCR/Book Reviews

for example?and not digital images. This essay about an avant-garde photogra pher who manipulates old-fashioned images reveals what truly holds the book

together: Wendorf s unshakable belief in the importance of physical objects as sites of knowledge. Wendorf has written an elegant, extended love letter to libraries, museums, and the collection of physical artifacts.

When Wendorf examines the friendship of Lady Elizabeth Montague and Frances Reynolds, the youngest sister of Joshua Reynolds and a painter herself, he

makes use of a collection of letters at Princeton that has received little attention.

These physical objects teach us a great deal about the experience of a female art

ist in the eighteenth century and about the network of intellectual support that letters created for intellectual women in the period. In printing these letters in

the text, Wendorf reminds and demonstrates to us how the collection of histori

cal literary and artistic material helps us create knowledge. When Wendorf reads

Hester Thrale Piozzi's marginalia in a biography of Joshua Reynolds, he makes sense of an eighteenth-century mind through a method that only the preservation of that particular physical volume makes possible. For Wendorf, the collection is

an integral part of our understanding of the world; we know history through the accumulation of artistic artifacts. Wendorf reads paintings, novels, and letters with an eye toward explanation that critics rarely display, and he writes with a clarity and

an easy erudition that should be a model for academic writing. Appropriately for a

book that takes material items so seriously, the book itself is physically marvelous, an elegant production.

The great strength of the book is that Wendorf shows us how collections con

tribute to knowledge and demonstrates the wealth of understanding that comes

from an engagement with letters and portraits and primary documents. Oddly,

though, the book never engages the subject of digital media. Wendorf writes in an age in which one of the most important questions facing libraries seems to be

how to balance digital and physical collections, but Wendorf never addresses this

concern. Along the way we might not notice this absence, for Wendorf mounts an

offense on the part of physical collections that obviates the need for any defense.

In leaving out the question of digital collections, Wendorf provides us all the

answer that he seems to think we need, but however much readers may admire

and enjoy this excellent book, questions about how to handle the changing face

of information will linger.

John Kinkade, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky

Harry Huntt Ransom: Intellect in Motion. By Alan Gribben. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. 356 pp. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-292-71704-6.

Harry Huntt Ransom (1908-76) was long associated with the University of Texas, having joined its English faculty in 1935. He eventually advanced to the

post of chancellor of the University of Texas System, where he served until 1971.

An innovative and forward-thinking educator, Ransom's philosophy of education

strikes a familiar chord with many of the concepts current in the academy today: a focus on teachers' commitment to student success, the importance of achieving national and international ranking as a draw for the best faculty and scholars,

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