KENNESAW, Ga. | Sep 18, 2025

How do archivists and curators find books in a rare book collection that exceeds 10,000 items? Every book has a unique identifier, and signs in the stacks guide staff members toward general areas where collections are housed based on provenance, theme, or by a specific identification number. However, currently, no list exists with the exact location of every book in the collection. Over the past couple of months, fellow student assistant Addi McDowell and I have been working to create such a list. For this project, we have been examining every book in the collection, providing a unique look at all that KSU’s rare book collection has to offer. Once this shelf list is completed, it will be an invaluable aid to staff as they make rare books more accessible to students and faculty. 

Books in the stacks are sorted in various ways. Some have a unique special collection identifier that relates to its provenance, or origin. An example is the identifier SC#L28. The “L” in this ID indicates that it was donated by Robert deTreville Lawrence III and is housed near other books given by Lawrence. Some books are organized by Library of Congress categories, similar to the books in the main library stacks. Other books are organized by accession numbers, which are the unique identifiers given to collections when they are first acquired by the museum. While these identification rules may seem confusing, patrons do not have to worry about understanding them. Instead, archival and museum staff know how to interpret these identification numbers and retrieve books for patrons to use during research appointments.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on inventorying a shelf in the rare book stacks that houses authors of the Western canon. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rudyard Kipling, and many other notable names can be found here. Often, their most prominent works can be found. Mark Twain is a great example. One shelf alone contains four copies of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and two copies of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, not all works on these shelves are household names. Also in Twain’s section are more unusual works like Is 

Shakespeare Dead? (where Twain supports the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s works) and Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, Twain’s final story published while he was alive. For every Jungle Book or Oliver Twist, there are books with titles on the spine like The Courting of Dinah Shadd and The Chimes: A Goblin Story. 

Other books on these shelves were written by lesser-known authors. One book that piqued my interest was A Touch of the Fine Arts by Henry Alken, published in 1824. The book is nominally about painting composition, but it is actually a satire featuring twelve hand-colored humorous plates. Alken was best known for his paintings and engravings of sports and horses. Another book I was particularly happy to see was a “canvassing book” for Orange Blossoms by T. S. Arthur (1871). In the nineteenth century, individuals would sell books by traveling door-to-door using something called a canvassing book, which contained only a portion of the entire book, some binding samples, and sales materials. Canvassing books are a valuable way to see how books have been marketed to consumers over time. 

So far, almost 2,000 books have been inventoried on the shelf list, each with its own unique story. However, that represents just a small fraction of the books in KSU’s rare book collection. As we continue to work on the spreadsheet, I look forward to discovering other unique and rare items.