Book collecting
Book Collecting
Book collecting (/bʊk kəˈlɛktɪŋ/) is the practice of collecting books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given individual collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and collect books is a bibliophile.
Etymology
The term "book collecting" comes from the English words "book" (from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate with "beech") and "collecting" (from Latin collectus, past participle of colligere which means "to gather together").
History
Book collecting can be easy and inexpensive: there are millions of new and used books, and thousands of bookstores, including online booksellers like Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon, and Biblio.com. Only the wealthiest book collectors pursue the great rarities: the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare's First Folio, the Bay Psalm Book, the Velvet Elvis, and the like.
Types of Book Collecting
There are millions of books, so collectors necessarily specialize in one or more genres or sub-genres of literature. A reader of fiction, who enjoys Westerns, might decide to start collecting first editions of Zane Grey's novels. A lover of modern English poetry might collect the works of W.H. Auden. A Californian who prefers non-fiction might look for books about the history of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Related Terms
- Bibliophilia: The love of books. As a bibliophile, you're an avid reader or collector of books.
- Bibliomania: An obsessive–compulsive disorder involving the collecting or hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged.
- Bibliography: A list of the books of a specific author or publisher, or on a specific subject.
- Bibliometrics: The use of statistical methods to analyze books, articles, and other publications.
- Bibliotherapy: An expressive therapy that uses an individual's relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy.
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