Concerns over Church Library Deaccessions

Some recent articles have brought the issue of church library deaccessions back to the surface (after the discussions last fall of the Truro sale things went quiet for a bit). Writing in the Church Times, ("The C of E is losing its own history") Jonathan Clark argues that recent sales of books and manuscripts from churches are a major and troubling symptom of the decline of the Church of England:

"Unremarked, Anglican institutions are selling the contents of their ancient libraries. A search on Abebooks.com shows a swath of volumes for sale from cathedral libraries: Bangor, Canterbury, Ely, Lincoln, Llandaff, Lichfield, Exeter, St Asaph, Wells. Even at Oxford, Pusey House, established as a think tank with a scholarly as well as a pastoral remit, in 2005 sold much of the ancient contents of its library for the years before the Tractarians. A friend, viewing this sale at Christie’s, and appalled at the rows of venerable volumes, described it as 'like a scene from the dissolution of the monasteries'. Yet that, in present-day form, is too close to the truth.

One can imagine it. Accountants add up the retail value of the collections, calculate the number of borrowers or readers, and advise that there is no option but liquidation. Senior clergy, who no longer read the books, are all too happy to accept expert advice. The auction houses promise a professional service, and the best prices (which are not always realised). The Charity Commissioners make no complaint. There is little publicity.

Such sales are more than minor inevitabilities: together, they become a historical phenomenon. They signify the Church of England losing the argument, and turning away from an attempt to sustain a heavyweight historical rationale for itself. One wonders whether the libraries of most Anglican clerics now consist not of formidable works of scholarship, but of paperbacks from the 1970s, already disintegrating."

David Shaw comments on Ex-Libris that "many of the cases reported are simply housekeeping operations. It is in no way true that the cathedral libraries listed have been sold (as opposed to disposal of some items)." Shaw adds that at Canterbury, for example, some modern duplicates and out-of-scope items have been sold in recent years, but not the whole library.

It's important not to be alarmist about all this. All libraries must weed their collections. I don't know enough about the non-Truro cases listed here to make much comment on them, but I do think it's important to be cautious before leaping to unfounded conclusions (just because there's a listing on ABE doesn't mean that the entire library is being sold off piecemeal).

Update from FB&C

I have a confession to make: I'm behind on the last couple issues of Fine Books & Collections. I've finally cracked open the November/December copy, and found an update to a story I posted about, as well as another item of note:

- Back in September we discussed the sale of the Bishop Phillpotts Library by the Diocese of Truro; among the items sold from the collection was Rev. Franke Parker's Macklin Bible, a 63-volume extra-illustrated behemoth. Auctioneer Dominic Winter sold the Bible to a dealer who cut out 300 of the illustrations and then left the rest of the set behind; the story then was that the remaining material went to an American university library. However, Ian McKay reports in FB&C "While the auctioneer initially said that the carcass, which included more than 8,000 remaining illustrations, went to an unnamed American university, the Bible dealer David Lachman actually purchased it on behalf of a very wealthy client who is having it repaired and rebound."

- The extended version of an interview with Sandie Tropper of the American Society of Appraisers is available on the FB&C website: Tropper discusses a recent law which tightens the rules governing appraisals of books and other property.

[Later: I'm now entirely caught up (whew!), and should note that the January/February issue is full of delightful pieces. It's worth reading just for Ronald Ravenburg's fascinating article on a printer's copy of Hawkesworth's Voyages alone.]

Big Story Updates

I can't remember the last time we had two major biblio-news stories occurring at the same time like this - between the Crockett Contretemps and the Truro Trouble there are many updates to report this morning.

Crockett first, I guess, and as usual Scott Brown's got the inside track on all the new developments there. Here's the Texas Historical Commission press release (now removed from their site, according to the Houston Chronicle) announcing the purchase of the letter, and here's Scott's take on the THC's announcement that an expert panel will be convened: "Once again, the state of Texas has it all backwards. First, the governor personally announces the purchase before anyone does even basic analysis and now that the document is questioned, Texas is hiring the experts."

On ExLibris, Kevin MacDonnell posted yesterday that he sent a statement on the letter to several Texas papers, "and suggested that in the interest of public trust and transparency that they [the Texas Historical Commission] make the names and qualifications of their 'team of experts' known, including full disclosure of any connections, past or present, that those experts might have to the buyer or seller, as well as any court or state agency complaints ever registered against any expert on their team." I certainly hope they take his advice.

Scott also questions the dealer's story about finding the letter in a folder "tucked away in a desk." Does seem a bit fishy, doesn't it?

Switching gears, things are also moving quite quickly with the story I wrote about on Monday regarding the sale of the Phillpott Library by the Truro diocese. Local papers and the BBC are reporting that the diocese is "seeking legal advice to see if it has any cause for redress after losing out from the sale."

Pulling double-duty here - and doing so incredibly well - Scott has some important updates for us on this story too, as well as an important question that I've been trying to answer since December and will cast upon the waters now. He reports that the collection was originally appraised by a representative of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 2002 for £20,000 (making Thornton's later £36,000 offer seem pretty decent).

The comment that's drawn the most responses is Scott's final paragraph: "An interesting point not mentioned in the Times article is that the Macklin Bible - the massive extra-illustrated Bible that was the first item sold - went to a dealer who showed up at the auction house, razor
blade in hand, and cut out the 300 best drawings and prints, leaving the rest. The auction house, Dominic Winter, subsequently placed the remainder with an American university library. Anyone know where it ended up?"

That bible is the one I've posted about here (the post includes some new comments as this story has grown); since I first read about it in December I've been trying to figure out which American library it was that accepted the book after that wretched dealer (who has thus far managed to remain anonymous) took his razor blade to it. If anyone knows and can share, please do.

Truro Book Sale: More Info

Everett Wilkie passes along an Ian McKay article [PDF] from the Bookdealer on the sale of the Phillpotts collection.

Church Undersells Book Collection

In a classic case of "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone," an English diocese is regretting the 2006 sale of its collection of pre-1800 books and manuscripts for £36,000, since auction sales alone have brought the purchasing dealer up to £500,000, The Times reports. The diocese of Truro decided in 2004 to sell off its holdings, solicited a few bids, and eventually accepted that of John Thornton, who put some of the items up for auction and made a hefty profit at it. Thornton "has now closed his shop in Chelsea, West London, and has told The Times that he is planning to retire to the country."

Diocese spokesman Jeremy Dowling told the paper "Those on the management committee had no idea of the value of the material they were dealing with. The decision was made in principle that the pre-1800 collection be disposed of simply because in the past ten years no one had inquired about any book in it at all. Therefore, the library management committee felt that the space was being taken up in a way that was not productive. What Mr Thornton bought, he bought in good faith. The difficulty arises as to whether or not the trustees were sufficiently aware of what was going on."

One wonders how exactly the collection was catalogued so that people knew the books were even there to be inquired about.

I've written about one of the books in question before: an extra-illustrated Macklin Bible sold in December by Dominic Winter for £47,000 (purely for the Old Master prints within, which the buyer then removed for further - more lucrative, if less ethically kosher - sale). Yes, you read that right - a single book from the collection sold for £11,000 more than the dealer paid for the whole lot, as the report notes.

Auctioneers and rare book dealers agreed that the diocese ought to have shopped around. Dominic Winter told the paper "The fault, if there is a fault, lies with the people looking after the library because they did not cast around. We do not think that they went to any auctioneers in the first place or get any more quotes for the job." Alan Shelley, president of the ABA, said "No one knows what happened down in Truro. Clearly, some great error has been made somewhere along the way, at what stage and by whom I do not know."

For his part, Thornton told The Times "I was invited to make an offer to clear the books and two years later I took them away. It was difficult to give an accurate evaluation of the collection when we were asked to do so in 2004 because of the dimly lit and confined conditions in which they were held."

I'd like to think that this case would make institutions like the diocese think more carefully about decisions taken to deaccession important collections like this, but of course in these days of budget-crunches it probably won't. To a larger point, if the collection was gotten rid of purely for space management reasons, the diocese ought to have considered donating it to a repository where it could have been kept intact, rather than having it sold off piecemeal. Unfortunately, that's all water under the bridge.