I have always loved the concept of a scavenger hunt so I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon a book by Albert Mordell from the 1800s that contained an inscription by the author. After going through copious amounts of books-nearly 100-I landed on the Mordell book and to my surprise found it hand-inscribed by the author, Mordell, to his editor. I thought this was really interesting because it shows how the author communicated with his staff and how the book was created with the help of many.
In addition to the inscription by the author, I found an inscription by a friend/family member.
One of my favorite things while combing through the books was looking at the notes in the margin because they showed a lot about the reader and his/her thought process while reading. This enables me to get a glimpse of how people in the 1800s reacted to certain ideas/literature. The marginalia possess a rare ability to transport me back in time, right into the thoughts of the readers, and in the case of the inscription by Mordell, right into the thoughts of the author.
As for the event itself, I thoroughly enjoyed the hunt for the “prized” books and thought that it was organized very well. I think that these results/data should be used to show how readers in the 1800s interacted with literature. Then those results could be compared with how we interact with literature today. It would be interesting to extrapolate those results and see if we could pinpoint any events or rise of new technologies that might have affected the way readers interact with literature.
I think that these books are valuable and should be preserved in specific library sections. However, I do not think it is realistic, in this day and age, for people to keep them on the shelves in the place of newer, more relevant books. Therefore, I believe that there should be separate libraries for these books that the public can access readily. This way the older books wouldn’t be forced out into storage or thrown out.