On Tue, 31 Jul 2007, Nelson, Mary A wrote:
> Our Law Library has been offered a testamentary gift of extremely
> valuable rare books. These books are not directly law related. We
> could direct the donor to the General Library but the donor is a
> Professor of Law at our Law School and would really like his collection
> housed at the Law Library. Has anyone else accepted a substantial
> collection of rare books that are not law related and made them a part
> of their collection?
A few years ago one of our professors offered to give us about 3000 books
that had formerly belonged to Harold Lasswell, a Yale Law School professor
who was also one of the leading political scientists of all time. The
books were largely mildly interesting social science books from the 20th
century, with a few very rare items such as a first edition of Hobbes's
Leviathan and a first edition of Rousseau's Confessions. We decided to
add all of them to our collection, even the ones we already had, in order
to preserve Lasswell's books as a collection that would be of interest to
future researchers interested in Lasswell. I am sure that 95% of the
books were already in our University Library's collection.
Fred Shapiro
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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press
Yale Law School ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro@yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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