The Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana consists of some 10,000 books, manuscripts, maps, pamphlets, broadsides, broadsheets, and photographs, of which about half are described in the present catalogue. The Graff Collection displays the remarkable breadth of interest, knowledge, and taste of a great bibliophile and student of Western American history. From this rich collection, now in The Newberry Library, Chicago, its former Curator, Colton Storm, has compiled a discriminating and representative Catalogue of the rarer and more unusual materials. Collectors, bibliographers, librarians, historians, and book dealers specializing in Americana will find the Graff Catalogue an interesting and essential tool. Detailed collations and binding descriptions are cited, and many of the more important works have been annotated by Mr. Graff and Mr. Storm. An extensive index of persons and subjects makes the book useful to the scholar as well as to the collector and dealer. The book is not a bibliography but rather a guide to rare or unique source materials now enriching The Newberry Library's outstanding holdings in American history.

An unlikely bookseller in New York City became the leading dealer in rare Western Americana for most of the twentieth century. After working in western-U.S. and South American gold mines at the turn of the twentieth century, Edward Eberstadt (1883–1958) returned to his home in New York City in 1907. Through luck and happenstance, he purchased an old book for fifty cents that turned out to be a rare sixteenth-century Mexican imprint. From this bit of serendipity, Eberstadt quickly became one of the leading western Americana rare book dealers. In this book Michael Vinson tells the story of how Edward Eberstadt & Sons developed its legendary book collection, which formed the backbone of many of today’s top western Americana archives. Although the firm’s business records have not survived, Edward and his sons, Charles and Lindley, were all prodigious letter writers, and nearly every collector kept his or her correspondence. Drawing upon these letters and on his own extensive experience in the rare book trade, Vinson gives the reader a vivid sense of how the commerce in rare books and manuscripts unfolded during the era of the Eberstadts, particularly in the relationships between dealers and customers. He explores the backstory that scholars of art history and museology have pursued in recent decades: the assembling of cultural treasures, their organization for use, and the establishment of institutions to support that use. His work describes the important role this key bookselling firm played in the western Americana trade from the early 1900s to Eberstadt & Sons’ dissolution in 1975. From Yale University and the American Antiquarian Society to the Newberry Library and the Huntington Library, the firm of Edward Eberstadt & Sons has left its mark in western Americana repositories across the nation. Told here for the first time, the Eberstadt story reveals how one family’s business and legacy have shaped the study of the American West.

Geography is a wide-ranging discipline and the number of information sources available is truly enormous. These include printed books and journal articles, maps, satellite photographs, archives, statistical information, and much else. One particular problem facing geographers is that when one studies a foreign country, information may be available only in the foreign country and difficult to obtain. This book discusses the information sources available to geographers.

This important book explores the many questions challenging librarians who work with gifts and exchanges (G&E) as part of their daily responsibilities. Too often, because of shrinking library budgets, library gifts are considered burdensome and unprofitable drains on both financial and personnel resources. However, Gifts and Exchanges: Problems, Frustrations, . . . and Triumphs gives you solutions that will allow you to embrace your library’s gifts as rewards. In this book, you will discover the latest ways of disposing unwanted materials, planning and holding book sales and auctions, and operating a full-time bookstore with Friends of the Library. Gifts and Exchanges covers the many questions that are currently challenging librarians who work with gifts and exchanges--the problems, such as limited space and an understaffed team, frustrations, and triumphs that make up your daily routine in book donations. The many chapters in Gifts and Exchanges will assist you in solving your worst gift and exchange nightmares as you explore research and solutions on: the importance of a gift policy and its interpretation a template for drafting a gift policy G&E procedures in libraries not affiliated with the Association for Research Libraries answers to todays G&E problems disposing and profiting from unwanted gifts encouraging the gifts you want Gifts and Exchanges is a valuable reference that will help you swim through your department’s sea of gifts and exchanges. As a library profesional, you will benefit from this book’s current and well-researched answers to the problems that flood your G&E department.