Friday, October 6, 2023

How many books is enough?

 Recent notes mentioned Roy Bearden-White, a professor at South Plains College in Texas who loved chapbooks.

He was a member of LibraryThing, an app used by book lovers to catalog their libraries. In a note about his own library, Professor Bearden-White said that when the Vatican Library was built under Pope Sixtus IV in 1473, Bartolomeo Platina listed 2,527 volumes.

Bearden-White said he hoped to exceed that number.

I hope not to exceed it. I have been trying to whittle down my collection but have demonstrated a shocking lack of discipline when it comes to books. Some friends said 1,000 would be a good number. One puritan (who is still a friend) said 100.

So this bit of history was refreshing: 2,527 seems like a reasonable number to me.

Source: https://www.librarything.com/profile/roybeardenwhite

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