Ebb and Flow: The Migration of Collections to American Libraries: A Report

Abstract

The 45th Annual Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries took place at Yale University from 21 June through 24 June 2004. It focused on the international origins of special collections in U.S. repositories as well as current ethical and management issues surrounding these materials. The plenary sessions began with Alice Prochaska (Yale Univer sity) presenting a paper entitled "Some Issues Relating to the Own ership of Manuscripts." Taking her cue from similar remarks she made at the conclusion of the 2003 RBMS Preconference, Prochaska noted that many special collections have a complex history of ownership and therefore might be said to belong to more than one country. In effect, they "contain the DNA of our shared past," and ownership thus implies a responsibility to share them with the citizens of other lands. The consideration of ethical issues deriving from the owner ship of foreign collections first came to the fore after World War II, and since then many countries as well as UNESCO have developed policies on the proper exportation of national cultural treasures. James Raven (Essex University) took an historical overview in his paper, "Transatlantic Migrations in the Colonial Period." He reviewed the principal sources of statistical data (most notably, customs records, which include information on the weight of books arriving in America) on exports from London, the origin of most of the books that reached North America. By the beginning of the eighteenth century New En gland alone accounted for about of a third of English book exports. Colonial readers wanted to acquire the same books that were fashion able in the mother country, and by 1773 the export trade accounted for 182,000 volumes, or 5 percent of the total British book trade. The second day's plenary sessions began with a talk by Robert Parks (Pierpont Morgan Library) on the outsized role played by J. P. Morgan in the migration of rare books and manuscripts from