 So thank you for joining us today virtually at Mechanics Institutes for our online author talk with Spencer W. Stewart on the topic of contemporary issues in rare book and manuscript collecting. My name is Nico Chen and I am the program manager at Mechanics Institutes. For those of you who are new to Mechanics Institute, welcome. Mechanics Institute was founded in 1854 and is one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. Mechanics Institute features a general interest library, an international chess club, ongoing author and literary programs, and the Cinema Lit film series. A recent article in the San Francisco standard describes us as the coolest library in downtown San Francisco and the remote work sanctuary. Come see this for yourself by joining us for our free tour, which happens every Wednesday at noon, led by one of our librarians like Miles or someone from our program staff like me or Alyssa who is one of my colleagues. These author talks are often free, actually let me go back. We also have many exciting upcoming events both online and in person, including one that is happening later today on site in our beautiful building in downtown San Francisco. Come join us in person this evening at 6 p.m. for an author talk with Richard Brandy on his book, Garden Neighborhoods of San Francisco, the development of resident parks 1905 to 1924. These author talks are often free for our members and also open to nonmembers for a small nominal fee. For our Mechanics Institute members, we offer free recurring programs such as our book groups and writers groups. One example is our Writers Lunch, which is a casual and virtual brown bag lunch activity on the third Friday of each month. We look forward to craft discussion and formal presentations on all forms of writing and an excellent conversation. Our next Writers Lunch coming up on October 20th is a discussion on how to craft the coming of age story. You can also find these author talks, recurring programs and more by going to milibrary.org and by clicking on events on our top menu bar to begin searching and registering for the activity of your choice. Our presentation and discussion today will be facilitated by Miles Cooper, who is our librarian and the library manager here at Mechanics Institute. He has experience in collection development, archives, special collections, library programming and library instruction. Before transitioning to our program today with Spencer W. Stewart, I want to remind our audience to participate by popping questions into our Q&A section. We will go over these questions after Spencer's presentation, so please add your questions at any time and Miles and I will keep track of them during the presentation and discussion. So go ahead and take it away, Miles. Thank you, Nico. Today we will be joining Collections Advisor and author of Contemporary Issues and Rare Book and Manuscript Collecting, Spencer W. Stewart, as he discusses case studies from his professional practice as well as the past to chart the life cycle of collections and the collectors who build them. Spencer W. Stewart is an experience collections advisor. He works with new, expanding, mature and deaccessioning collections throughout the world, both in private and institutional contexts. Spencer's work is focused on aiding to facilitate collection development, cataloging and deacquisition strategies. In tandem with his advisory work, Spencer has delivered over 20 sessions on collecting management to more than 500 collectors from 12 collecting organizations. His articles have appeared through Rare Book Hub, The Book Collector, Amphora and Manuscripts. He also occasionally appears on CBC radio to present segments on book history. Spencer holds a master's degree in history of art from the Cork Tald Institute in London, England, where he was also the recipient of the Director's Award. Upon graduation, he took a position at Bonham's auctioneers where he worked closely with the North American Rare Books and Manuscripts Department in Toronto and New York. He is an alumnus of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminars and has completed coursework through Rare Book, the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. We'll pop a website in the chat and also in the description of this video for contemporary issues in Rare Book and Manuscript collecting, the website and book that you can purchase. So please help me give a warm welcome to our very special guest, Spencer W. Stewart to Mechanics Institute. Great. Miles Niko, thank you very much. The impetus for putting together this book came during the pandemic, but it was something that was coming together prior to it as well. What I noticed is that there was this interesting overlap taking place where people outside of the Rare Book and Antiquarian worlds were starting to take an interest in the sort of characters and people and the market of Rare Books and Manuscripts. But also within Rare Books and Manuscripts and within the market itself, there were massive changes taking place internally, not only in how booksellers were imagining themselves and what they were acquiring, but also for collectors in terms of the types of collections that were being that have been built. And I think this is a testament really to a shift that has happened with how technology has influenced identity and how that has ultimately changed the practice of collecting. So when we talk about collecting today, it's a general phrase, but we're really talking about sort of 19th century into the 21st century of book collecting and other facets of it. When I talk about a collection, a specific collection itself, I like to think of it along a spectrum, and this is something that is approached within the book in a couple of different ways. You know, we think on one end of something that is a relatable collection and on the other, an eclectic collection. What do I mean by that? With relatable collections, they're often connected to a bibliography or a list in which the collector, one of the objectives or motivations is to complete that list or reflect all of the different iterations of, say, a writer's work or a body of knowledge. And so in that sense, it has a terminus or some sort of ending point to it in which you can realize it. Now, on the other end, when we think of an eclectic collection, what I often talk about is that it's a collection in which the impetus to build the collection is based on a question or an absence, based on not seeing something reflected within a history or feeling that there has not yet been a collection to imagine a particular moment in historical time. And so this often you can see this happening through exhibitions as well. Sometimes there'll be an exhibition of a private collector's collection, which realizes a very specific focus or a very, very specific niche. Now, what often happens with eclectic collections is that they are also multimedia based. They may not be necessarily books or photographic prints. They could have whole varieties of different elements connected into them. And so as we go through this discussion today, this is very much the kind of the bookends of what we're talking about in terms of how these collections start out, what are some of the ways they are informed in terms of the act of collecting and how that might impact the possible future of these collections moving forward. Now, specifically to do with relatable collections, a couple of examples I can think of of people that I've worked with. One that's very well established and one that can be discussed in a fairly general way is what's known as modern firsts. This could be connected to American writers or any other nationality. There are bibliographies connected to particular writers. There are notifications or marks or point issues with, say, a first edition, first issue of the book, which allows people to, as a collector, verify and make sure that they're in fact acquiring the first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird or Grapes of Wrath. And then we think of something like within the context of photography, the FSA photographers of the 1930s, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, in which this doesn't have, certainly there are lists connected with this collecting practice, but there's also certain indexical markers on the backs of these prints. So these may be original prints that were used within print media and newspapers at the time to raise awareness of the country itself, or they might be prints that were done later on. And then there's also, in some cases, photo books and exhibitions, most, you know, most notably, say, the Family of Man exhibition, which featured quite a few of these photographers. But again, it really does base itself on photographic prints to begin with, and then it branches out from there. When we think about eclectic collections, you know, back to this discussion of them being formed around questions, they're very often the path less taken by a collector. And in some cases, with people that I work with, who collect in this type of practice, it's something in which sometimes people don't even identify that what they're putting together is a collection initially. But in hindsight, it may be something that, you know, really does reflect a period of time in a very, in a very oppressive way. So one example I would discuss here is a collector I work with. And her collection started out particularly within the ecological movements from the 1960s onward, connected to Greenpeace and the like. But this collection has expanded on into discussions of communes and intentional communities in the 1960s. This collector is very much informed by her practice within a legal context and is interested in these discussions of communes in the 1960s of private property and some of these discussions that were happening at this time. What's interesting is that this is a collecting point that's really starting to pick up. It's a counter-cultural focus, which is something that institutions and private collectors are really interested in. And in the last decade, looking at the, you know, the appearance of this material, specifically through booksellers, you really do see a kind of increased interest in it. But looking at this collection when it was starting out is really a fascinating, you know, it provides a geographic layout of a network of different communities, both in North America and in Europe. And what is so surprising is that, you know, to think that these were quite remote or isolated groups of individuals were, in fact, connected to a much closer connected environment with a large amount of similar ideas at the same time. One of the major, of course, catalysts of this was, as you see on the right, the whole Earth catalog, which is a more well-known book within the collection. But it really comprises of mostly ephemera and various smaller pamphlet publications from that time. Often stuff that was used as a reference point for someone, if say they were a backpacker in an area, which allowed them to, you know, frog hop to various areas. Another collection that I think very much speaks to this time and some of the changes in the way collectors are approaching their practice is the most reaps and recipient of the 2023 Ruggles Collecting Prize, which is a young collector prize within generally based within North America. And this is Oscar Solguero's interspecies library. It's interesting, Oscar's collection is one in which it's based in his in his house. However, it has a website and the focus is really a sort of a curated library that people can actually visit. The sort of social element of it is really interesting. And it's one that kind of goes, it flies in the face of often an archetype of a collector as being someone somewhat isolated. This is very much a approach where it's open to sharing the collection as it's building. And it has ultimately led to the collection actually increasing as artists contribute more items to the collection. Although the format of the book is very much the focus of this collection, a lot of it is also art books or books that challenge the book format. And they all hinge around this discussion of the kind of murky, interconnected relationship that we have with ecology and the way in which these are sort of being disrupted at a point in time in relation to the climate crisis, but also research that's taking place within a biological world of discussions of habits of species, other forms of communication that species have, and indeed some of the cultures that they express. This is a collection that's ongoing and certainly one that I encourage you to, if you just type in interspecies library, it will come up and it's something that you can have a look at. It's one that is a really good example of a kind of foraging out a path that's not yet formed and is based very much on questions. And one that could seemingly continue to increase, depending on Oscar's impetus and his focus and interests. Now, when talking about the act of collecting, you know, and some of the changes that have taken place for specifically collectors, I like to think of it in waves. And this is something that's discussed in the book in various parts, the idea of the layered opportunities for collectors at this point. Initially, the the market itself and the relationship of collectors was primarily to booksellers and connected to printed catalogs. And in some cases, booksellers would already have intended buyers for items, so items may not have even been listed in catalogs or in some cases they may have been, but already notified as being sold or called for. This is very much a sort of a hierarchical relationship in which it's it's it's monodirectional, in which the the bookseller is oftentimes, especially in the 19th century, were acquiring this material through estate sales and then offering it on to booksellers. This then moves into, I think, one of the major transformations that happens in the 1990s and 2000s, in which the kind of advent of the Internet really changes some of the retail models and adjusted some of the stock and pricing of books at that point in time. So I'll give you an example of books that were, in some cases, perceived to be extremely rare. Once the the Internet provided opportunities for booksellers to offer material with relatively no overhead or expenses to do so, there were often cases of books that you realize that there were more issues of that book than previously believed or understood, which obviously impacts the the pricing of those books. In other cases, it really did reveal the rarity of other items. So it was kind of a mix of a mix of things. But really, this this was still very much a situation where these were set up. These were websites set up by booksellers. So it was incumbent upon the booksellers to provide some form of online storefront to offer this material. What we're seeing now, and the shift really into sort of collector-centric collecting practice is with the sort of involvement of third-party platforms and aggregated searches of bookseller listings. So you see this through the creation of A-Books, which happened in and around Victoria, ultimately was sold to Amazon in the 2000s. But other opportunities, Biblio, which has connected more to antiquarian book associations, as well as the ABAA, the antiquarian bookseller association, has its own listing opportunity or third-party platform, as well as iLab. These create scenarios in which collectors can start to compare and contrast items. They can start thinking about what is the nature of the collection they're trying to put together? Am I collecting items with fine quality to them? Or am I trying to collect maybe all of the different iterations of an author's writing? You know, it really allows for that kind of granular detail and the agency of the collector is elevated in that process. To that point, when I deal with collectors now and when we talk about the various opportunities out there, the collector's disposal is an interesting survey of these multi-layers that I mentioned. So, you know, when you're offered an item or you're looking at an item, let's say those modern firsts that we talked about initially, you know, you have at your disposal the auction results of the past to provide you with a comparable of the asking price of the item that you're looking at. You have the opportunity through Excel and other and cataloging softwares that you can set up on your personal computer, access to your personal inventory, which allows you to search it really easily to see how it relates to the collection that you already have. And then you can, within the present through third-party trade aggregators you can have a look at what are the other items that are presently offered? What's the rarity of this item? What's the likelihood of this happening again, really? That's a major change in collecting practice. Whenever you read book collector memoirs or bookseller memoirs leading up to the 21st century, there's always this sort of theme within them of the one that got away, this idea that there's these items that were offered and they're total unicorns that would never be seen again. We live in a time in which you can, with fairly good accuracy, get a sense of is an item, how truly rare is an item. Now, on top of that presence of what's offered now, you also have this at your disposal huge amounts of research through, say, JSTOR or the like that allow you to get a sense of, okay, what's the research on any given topic at this point in time? What's the thinking? How is that changing our interpretations of these items and how might that change my practice as a collector? And then finally, with third-party auction aggregators, you get a sense of, okay, is this item going to be offered in the future in that context? So that's just to give you a sense of, at any given time as a collector right now, really the kind of extraordinary change that's happened, especially in the last, you know, I think it's the last 10 years, certainly, but last five years, you really get a sense that the data is getting much more precise. Now, how is this changing collecting? You know, within the work that I do with collectors, but also instances I'm seeing within exhibitions and other examples, this is changing certain relationships to even established collecting practices. You know, what we see now, what I'm finding with collectors, particularly in the demographic of in the 30s and 40s, is kind of a reassessment of pretty established narratives of collecting. You know, there are oftentimes people that are connected, they have a kind of academic interest within the collecting that they do, or they took some courses within their education. They often have adjacent interests through their professional fields, and this very much motivates their collecting. So for instance, you know, a collecting focus that may have been, say, Arctic exploration through the 19th century, collection that I'm working with right now, focuses on similar material within the established line of Arctic exploration, but has it in and around contemporary discussions of the climate crisis and how the Arctic is used and reimagined over the course of history, how it's initially used as a kind of frontier that has not been explored through to core samples and how that tells us or allows us to monitor both, you know, sea ice levels as well as air quality levels. Another example, a more recent recipient of a collecting prize is the involvement of women in science. So this is particularly to do with Maria Mitchell, who is a U.S. astronomer, a computer that allowed for different measurements of star distances, which were so integral to our understanding of the galaxy, but often not discussed within the established history of science around that field. And then another collection that I'm working with of someone who's focused particularly on urban development is the focus of looking back at antiquarian maps of cities for various changes in redrawing of maps for development, but also through the electoral process. So these are items in which they are antiquarian materials, but are being looked at from a very sort of contemporary lens. Another emergence that I'm seeing, which really speaks to the kind of interesting period we live in in terms of how we imagine the historical and how physical objects are created by movements and ideas that are maybe being transmitted both in real time on the street, but also through the online atmosphere. And there's really a sense of urgency to this collecting, and I talk about it in terms of being activist collecting or witness collecting. One I think of is one I'm working on to document the various, the rave culture within the UK through the 90s, which was one in which the physical remnants of that period is posters, it's pamphlets, it's stickers, but there's also some written accounts and some discussion about the really informal culture that it was, the way in which the locations would change on any given night as say an event was being broken up by the police, people would get in their car, tuned to a pirate radio station to get the coordinates to get to the next music performance, usually blocking up the London orbital at that same time. So trying to figure out what are the physical traces of that collection. Another one, the Occupy movement, the variety of different pamphlets and instances that happen there is another one that is being collected both by institutions and individuals. The myriad of different expressions of Black Lives Matter movement in various US cities, but also internationally. And especially in Canada and North America's indigenous rights, collections are being very much put together by people within those communities. And there is a unique interest within institutions at this time to make sure that there are items to try and track the various movements and attempts at recognition, not only human rights, but land rights and resource rights through the 20th century. And in some cases, even earlier, just to kind of finish off, I think there's an interesting sort of scenario here that I found in a client that I've worked with that I think really tracks some of these changes that in an interesting way. So the collection that I initially started out with was an individual who was in his 60s, he'd been collecting even prior to the internet, mostly through catalogs of American firsts. And you see the sound in the fury copy here. He had a very specific interest in fine conditions. So the dust jacket had to be in very good condition. And it had to be really the best example at that point in time. During the building of that collection, his daughter actually developed an interest in collecting as well. And at one point he started to sort of downsize and decided that he was no longer interested in engaging in the collecting of firsts. And he passed on the collection to his daughter. Now, what's interesting is that she took the seeds of that collection and really transformed it into what I would talk about as this eclectic collecting practice. One that I would, you know, we're going to continue to have people who are interested in relatable collections, completist list collections. But there's also very much a hybrid that's going on. And I think that also speaks to the way people kind of piece together these moments in time and the way in which they relate to culture. So one of the things she really focused on within the collection that he had was books that were translated into films. And particularly she really took an interest in the 1960s, some of the counterculture books that were then transferred into films. The other items she deaccessioned through auction and through the trade, but ultimately provided, it provided her with the financial resources to imagine the collection in terms of stepping back into the historical period of what prepared human culture for consuming film. Her background and her profession is in the film industry. And it was something that she was always interested in. And so started with storyboarding, scripts, all the different elements that make up the film. It was something that developed this collection. And she has since really started to focus on how there were various forms of optics or certain types of scenes or ways of telling stories that prepare people for motion picture. So you think of some of the flip books from the 1800s or some of the telescopic viewings, these kind of diagrams that people could peer through to get a sense of a scene going on. These were, this is very much connected to this idea of creating a collection through absence or through a question. And back to this discussion, the interspecies library I mentioned before is very much starts from the focus of the collector's vision and moves outward, trying to really show a world that has not yet been understood or imagined by other people. And so this is very much, I think, an interesting example of moving through from someone who built a collection that was very much influenced by the publishing of catalogs, bibliographies, the establishment of the book trade, through to a collector who is now has questions, has ideas about the way that they're creating their collection and are actually using that as the motivation to go out and source material through a variety of different channels. And what's interesting is that the inspiration for this kind of precursor to cinema was the advent of having children and starting to think about how they see things and how to tell stories to kids and how to kind of engage them with some of these items. And I know that there is a continued interest in the family with this material. It's something that's kind of exciting to see that transfer. Oftentimes there is a discussion of concern with the health of collecting, but once one is aware of the different facets or different ways in which you can research items online and understand where your collecting practice is in relation to say the market and who has collected and what the future of your collection is, it really, it transforms your approach and how you set out. Stepping back and thinking about this book and where I see, you know, what are some of the questions and some of the things that I see emerging through my practice and through the discussions in the book, is that the eclectic collecting practice, it remains compelling at this point for us because it's very much a hybrid of the digital and the physical. These are collectors that are continuing to scour bookshops, but they're also looking online to reaffirm or understand, you know, what is the offering or what is the rarity of the material that they're being presented with. They are collectors that are quite aware that there's a change happening, especially in terms of algorithms online and how those might influence or actually obstruct one's sense of free play and how they create their collections. The happenstance that happens when one is trying to put together a collection. You know, the item that you hadn't really thought about is being considered, but now that it's there, it's something to think about. And this is something I think it's going to be really important to keep an eye on as we continue into more anticipatory softwares online and especially in the marketplace online, how that might impact the direction of collecting and some of these really eclectic, interesting representations of history that I've been working with. Another thing that I think is going to be really important at this point in time, which I'm referencing, is the challenge towards collecting communities. And I think of this in terms of bibliophilic organizations, collecting organizations. There are a number of them within North America as well as in Europe. And these are ones in which there's a demographic shift going on and there are some that are doing an active job in terms of passing on the organization to younger collectors. But there are some that are not doing that. And I think that in terms of fostering a sense of community and encouraging collecting is something that really works well when you do have this community and especially if you have a site from which people can visit and get together and exchange their stories and discuss the way that they go about collecting. Another thing that I'm seeing right now, similarly about organizational memory, is to do with institutions. There is, again, a demographic shift that's happening within special collections as well as museums. And what we're finding here is that there is a growing concern by new librarians and curators of, you know, through various census figures that have been done of our archives and special collections is this issue of funding for special collections. Storage is a huge portion of it. And growing awareness within the public of special collections and its importance. These are things that are going to need to be addressed in the not so distant future as there are some considerable challenges to especially accommodating space for these collections that speak to our period of time and some of these collections that I've spoken about. And then finally, there's this very much a pivot that's happening right now that's touched on in the book but is continuing as we go of pivot in the rare book trade. You know, a real folk, you know, a focus of booksellers to try and reckon with some of the issues of, let's say you're an actual physical space within a city. How do you, how do you survive in that context with also trying to lessen overheads? How do you continue to offer stock that reflects this change in collecting practice? You know, there are situations in which there are booksellers that were acquiring huge amounts of material connected to say a more relatable collecting practice that I'd mentioned earlier. However, there is this kind of shift that's going on or kind of a more of a collector centric practice that's going on, which changes that. So, you know, this is something that I continue to write on and continue to think about. I urge you to stay in touch and keep visiting my website as well as other forums where I'll be writing about the change in the book trade as well as this ongoing shift in collecting. But with that, I will open it up for questions and I know Miles has some questions and thank you all for your attention and interest. Thank you, Spencer. In your book, you have profiles on different types of collectors and there's a section on Iceland's last rare bookstore. And I found this especially fascinating because of the culture of bookstores and used bookstores in Iceland and how they're decreasing and also the institutional commitment to really only, you know, keep two copies of an author's work despite their, you know, relevance or spread throughout the world. You give an example of Halador laxness and how 200 of his books were deaccessioned, I guess you could say. So I'm really interested in the work that collectors and booksellers and dealers do to really make up for the lack of the lack of support that institutions are giving to certain materials and in this story you have people who are actually going out to different communities of people who lived in Iceland who are abroad and bringing back materials. So can you talk a little bit about that, about collectors who are really doing the work that's kind of lacking maybe in libraries and archives? Yeah, you know, institutions are always, they're always split in terms of their focus, right? They're thinking about the planning for today in terms of the administrative pressures that they have. How does their collections serve researchers within that institution? How do they reflect those requests and interests for primary documents? That's really influencing a lot of their development policies. They're also trying to look ahead or in some sense get a sense of anticipating what might be some of the research focuses moving into the future. And that's really where you do see private collectors have a certain passion and time and often times resources to dedicate themselves to some of those questions or anticipate some of those interests. And it is really, it's important. I often talk with people who are interested in placing collections that it's so important to understand how your collection will relate to the institution's collection because once it's placed in that context, it still certainly will have record of being in your library. However, it also starts to orbit all sorts of other items and all sorts of other ideas. And it's important to come to terms with that understanding that it changes in that transformative process but also to set up relationships with the librarians who are working in these institutions to understand that they can start to think about your collection within that context and build off of that as well and get the support of faculty who are researching that material as well. It's really a network of different people who start to be engaged with the private collector. But that passion that private collectors have is one that they are afforded time and focus that often times institutions they can't afford to have that. So that's a great question and it's connected to that. You have a profile on Bunny Mellon who's a legacy collector, an incredible horticulturalist and landscape designer and designer who had really the resources to collect whatever she wanted and she collected the finest art, furniture, rare books and manuscripts. And in reading this profile you talk about how she offered her horticulture book and manuscript collection to the Smithsonian which I'm sure was near priceless and probably the most incredible collection of its kind and they actually turned it down because they didn't have the funds to support the collection in terms of describing it, arranging it, keeping it, housing it and providing it with a sense of opportunity. And this is something that comes up here at Mechanics Institute sometimes people have incredible collections and they offer it to us either during their lifetime or it's their state and it's not always coupled with the funds to really support that collection of perpetuity and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what Bunny Mellon did to support to make sure that that collection remains in perpetuity and what happened and what can collectors do if they wish to give their collection to an institution someday. Yeah, so specifically with her case it's the best possible outcome with as you said with the resources she had available she ultimately I don't know the exact details but she set up basically a nonprofit organization which became the Oak Springs Garden Library or that was a facet within it and it sets up itself as an institution I don't think that it would have come into that manifestation had it not been the decline by the Smithsonian there's very much a before and after those talks and I think that's when she kicked it into high gear and understood okay I'm going to make my own organization so she's certainly an exception there was a scenario too that upon her passing and I think they'd already been doing this but there was the the Sotheby's sale it was a sort of a variety of different sales that happened over a period of couple of nights including her portions of her art collection as well and proceeds of which went back into the fund for the endowment for that for that organization so she'd been advised in a way that helped it really set up it could make it it could survive and sustain itself into the future and certainly if you take a look at their site now and all their initiatives they've continued to be really dedicated to that with regards to context of placing collections that are maybe smaller or more focused within an institution this is something that that I work with with institutions about is to really set up first of all starting from an understanding of what is your collection made up of the moment what are the focuses of the institution and what are some of the mandates and motivations specifically at that time a lot of the confusion within the discussion by a private collector into an institution is that oftentimes a private collector will come in with the thought they have the strong sense of the value of their collection because of the dedication that they've connected with it and it's in this transference it's in this transformation of it into the institution that process has not yet been considered by a collector and so as the discussions start with institutions librarians and curators sometimes don't they will not communicate how this could be a mutually beneficial relationship they may not know what is in the holdings or how it can tie together and that's really where that some of those talks can break down so I think it's often important for collectors to understand the nature of the collections they want to place their collections into so that they can at least start that process of understanding how they can reach a mutually beneficial agreement and then on top of that understand what is the contents of their collection how many items is it and how does that that's useful for the librarians to understand okay what are the labor what are the resources required to process this collection and communicating potential projected timelines for it and be honest with them about how long it will take for us to process material I think that that kind of transparency right off the bat helps that process along and understand that it's it's a long term it's a long commitment but it's ultimately for another time right it's for it's for a period beyond both people who are speaking about it great thank you Spencer we have a question here about the UK rave collection wondering if it's visible anywhere and also somebody has a collection of us rave flyers and they're starting to digitize them they're not sure the person's not sure if you cover that in your book but are those UK rave flyers visible anywhere online or in person they aren't at the moment and they may be it's still the collection still being developed and it's very much in its infancy and it isn't included in my book those those discussions and assisting with that client happened kind of in the process of the books basically the book had been written and it was being kind of designed at that point but is a yeah so that it's it possibly and I will I will keep updating people if it does become you know go live as it were mm-hmm libraries often have a big gap in our collection in certain areas like law for example and also medical information we don't collect it because it goes out of date and we don't want dangerous materials that will harm people so I'm just curious with your knowledge of the market and collectors are there people who seek out those areas where libraries and archives kind of stay away from some I think that type of you know legal precedent collecting is certainly still something that takes place it's one that requires great deal of space and it's very focused in terms of the collectors that I've worked with who work in precedent or I'm thinking also of the American Psychiatric Association's different reports that's another one that is something that people collect from a sort of social history perspective you know a lot of that material institutions are kind of staying away from it too because in some cases it's it's within best efforts it's digitally accessible it's something that was understood to have take up a lot of space and so was something of a priority in terms of digitizing in terms of the collections sort of younger demographic of collectors that I work with they're not so much focused on these kinds of reference collections because of again the space considerations but also because there's maybe more of an interest in like the niche or the of an offshoot of an established form of knowledge so a reference collection is one that might not be something that they that they focus on but yeah it's interesting the avoiding so the avoiding of it is this because someone might seek might consult it as an actual authoritative resource or what's the okay yeah I see and your book you touch on briefly NFTs and we don't have time to describe or explain what NFTs are but I'm just wondering from your perspective with your experience in auctions and in the market is that something younger collectors are going after and also does it mirror the crypto coin market or the art market or the book market is or is this something entirely it's on beast yeah so I don't work with anyone that is collecting NFTs and the article that you're talking about it's it's very much kind of a thought experiment of born digital material and this discussion of what happens to particularly manuscript collecting at a time in which writers are composing everything like we're talking drafts onwards through their computers and so in thinking through this it started with a collector that I was working with who's collecting a variety of different things but really focuses on Nobel Prize winners and we were just sort of joking about this idea of like these collectors or writers that we will not know of because they wrote everything on the computers they tried to pitch it to various publishers that didn't catch on and then they kind of just went their own way or they were writing through blogs which no longer supported by browsers you know so that there's this like huge amount of material that when you write in paper the byproduct is just paper that's written on you know and barring any kind of disaster some of that material can actually make it through and so I was thinking about this idea well okay the issue with an archive you know the archives that are composing in the digital right now are starting to be you know held mostly by the publishers or their literary agents once they have become popular and that's a bit of an issue you know so I was thinking about how could a writer who say has huge readership online but doesn't yet have a publishing deal how could they you know fix their material or have it in a format that has a certain veracity to it and NFTs the modeling of the blockchain kind of dating format is one that you could possibly use to fix that item to ensure that it came from an initial source so it wasn't so much the market of NFTs but the method of confirming cryptocurrency or that blockchain format could be one that we could possibly use to assure the veracity of a digital file for the future because I mean you know the literary historians and academics and just the general public I think it's fascinating looking at process you know looking at how someone writes a book and all the different iterations and how they change their words and that's inspiring material you know I wrote that a bit because it was something that concerns me like that's not really being explored as much but at a time where we're fascinated with it right how do we reconcile that but in terms of the NFT market I mean there was an article that was written there's been a number of articles recently of like just the reassessment of the visual portions of it and it's a fraught place I don't entirely understand how the value propositions are being generated and I have not I haven't worked with anyone who collects that material Thank you Spencer and I have just one more question for you so you talked a lot about other collectors I also see a beautiful collection of books right behind you and so my question is do you consider yourself a book collector and if so what is one of your favorite books in your collection I collect most of the books for reference material it's like it's a lot of it is kind of a working library in terms of in terms of my favorite book in the collection I've had a couple that have been gifted to me by various bookmakers that have done presentations through the Alcune Society which I'm the chair of and those are just kind of those are near to me because we did a lot of virtual talks during the COVID period and it was a feeling where like everyone was so distant and there was so much unknown going on and so to be able to facilitate someone talking about their process of making books and then have as a token of appreciation a book sent to me during that time it just that's been really nice to receive those so I think that little there are just a couple but those I think have certain resonance to me that I like Thank you so much for sharing that Spencer almost at one we have just a few seconds left so I am popping the links to your websites and also your book in the chat for people to reference in their own time once again I think we should all give a raw raw for Spencer Stewart for coming in today to share with us his expertise in book collecting Is there anything else that you would like to say as a final word before we hop off today? I just thank you both for your time and efforts this was a lot of fun Thank you very much for also spending your time here too