Show us your library

Okay I guess I am old school. I like books and I have a few. Most of what is on my shelves are books on coins as well as some auction cats that i have saved for reasons best known to me. As usual this room is a mess but that is more or less normal. Here are a few pics of my library and work area. Hopefully I will see a few others.

 

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Do not have much of library except for coins...... Lol

 

I share my bookshelves with my wife so many are a mix of numismatic and non-numismatic books but this is my dedicated shelf for books I use often or that I'm currently reading or plan to read soon. I also have a large digital library of auction catalogs and papers that supplements all this:

 

I have more in the garage. I have been selling off and giving away my coin books. These are the ones in my office. Some are scattered about. For instance, the John J. Ford and Henry Clifford auction catalogs and the 1960s Red Books are in with some of my criminology books because of the crimes associated with them. Obsolete Paper Money Vol 7 does not belong in there, but I could not jam it in with the other coin books.

My Red Book is the Professional Edition on a different reference shelf with language dictionaries.

 

I've actually been reorganising my books over the weekend - some family coming to visit soon and I need to make space for them! I ran and took a few photos this morning of the current confusion.

Mostly CGB catalogues, plus a few old Spink Circulars and Chris Rudd's lists:


A few more CGB:


HJB and other catalogues (there are many more in other piles, to be sorted, recycled or whatever soon);


Roman Republican, Byzantine and other stuff:


Mostly modern and a pile of birthday cards from last year


Greek, RCV, NC and ANS journals:


Banti (I need the full Republican set, but found a 1913 provenance for a coin in the only volume I have, Celtic, American, random volume of Cohen, etc.):

HCRI, BMCRR, a few SNGs, Admiral Smyth, etc:


Festschrifts, etc.:


RIC, Sear:


Greek:


BMCRE:


Duplicate stuff I pulled out:


A few Leus, history stuff and two copies of Microdisney's seminal 1988 album "The Clock Comes Down The Stairs"


Random history:


More random history:


More random history (the Irish Texts Society's "Leabhar Gabhála Éireann"/"The Book Of Invasions" is pseudo-history/mythology)


More:


Roll on retirement for the chance to read more...

ATB,
Aidan.

 

Aidan,
You will have to explain the TLAs.
"A few more CGB..." (no idea)
HJB (Harlan J. Berk)
Greek, RCV, NC and ANS (Roman Coins and their Values, Numismatic Chronicle, American Numismatic Society)
Banti (no idea)
HCRI (pass)
BMCRR (British Museum Catalog of Roman Republican coins)
SNGs (Sylloge Numorum Graecorum)
RIC (Sear, Roman Imperial Coins)
Leus, (the firm Leu Numismatik)
Microdisney's (No idea)
ATB All These Books?

 

All The Best

Aidan.

 

You folks have some great numismatic libraries. Mine is pretty meagre, but I did luck into some bound British Numismatic Journals 1903-1917 a while back - a local used book store was practically giving them away - mostly dealing with UK stuff:

 

I like the way you used the space between main shelves and wall (above the heater) for taller shelves to accommodate folio-sized books. No wasted space!

 

Very messy but that is most of my coin books except bottom shelf, most of those are my wifes, ( Eros in Pompeii is mine.) lol

 

This shelf is solely for my numismatic books:

The rest of my book collection did not want to be photographed, but I can tell you that it includes an original guide to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, several publications from the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and a book called "Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia".

 

Very nice, indeed! Thanks for sharing. Lovely home...

 

As long as we are showing off...

It is in with my science fiction books. I spoke to the ANA and also our local ArmadilloCon sci fi gathering on the life and work of Riddell.

On the farthest right a Waite Raymond catalog from 1937. Moving left a first edition second printing Red Book. The History of American Currency by William Graham Sumner could go with my sociology books. Moving left (ahem), American Government and Politics by Charles Beard was radical for its time. The biography of Alexander Hamilton by Henry Cabot Lodge (senior) is another classic.

(Not shown, two editions of Newton's Principia and the recent biography Newton Versus the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson. At one time I owned every significant modern telling of Newton's life. Most historians ignore his 30 years as master and warden of the British Royal Mint. One called it "uninteresting.")

 

I was kind of surprised at the small array of numismatic titles given your deep knowledge. Did you get rid of very many or is there some other story?

Like you - and I suspect most us here in this discussion, if not CT at large - we have seriously wide libraries. I still have 16 feet five shelves high and I have been getting rid of books for the last 10 years. (I gave all of my Loeb Classic Library books to the University of Texas Classics department, though I kept Diogenes Laertius for reference.)

Sociology; writing and language; six cases with military and emergency response; mathematics and cryptology; science in general; astronomy in particular... I like Dover editions and I have Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, and Gilbert; and Euclid. The list goes on... I mention it because I expect that we could all fill CT with Title, Author, Publisher lists.

I wonder if it is the pursuit of knowledge alone or the extent to which the collector's ethic compels us.

 

Not all my books but heres a few I was very lucky to get.

 

My library is a hot mess, in dire need of reorganization which will require additional shelves to properly accomplish. The focus is Roman Republican coinage, but I've previously dabbled in Roman Imperial, Greek, and English Hammered coins.

 

Excellent libraries
Here's my modest one



Q

 

Here is my current “to read” pile:


Here are the two shelves at the home library dedicated to Numismatics (well, one is the oversized shelf which is mostly numismatics...)



My work library (desks wouldn’t normally be that close to the books, but it is exam time and they need to be more spread out...)



And since I am sick of how unorganized the books are, I have started the process of assigning LLC numbers on the spines of the books. Here is the first batch (culled mainly from the empty shelf above)

 

Fascinating topic. Its very interesting to see what people have. In my younger days as a dealer I had many hundreds of references but as time went on I decided I had to pare the whole thing down and now have maybe 100? I figured I had some books I never even opened, others I would only use every few years, etc. I got rid of a lot of really good books. You may notice SNGCop is now bottom shelf. I dont use them much any more. Not sure if I will keep them. I also have a run of old printed catalogs of mine from the 80's and 90's. But those I have kept are the ones I use regularly, still intend to read or are sentimental to me.