Auction catalogues preserved professional libraries, a critical collecting moment

Evidence

It is only thanks to the printed auction catalogues that so many collections can now be reconstructed; collections, it must be said, much more heavily used than the inherited library of many a noble house. … Yet what these printed catalogues, themselves often extremely rare, reveal to us is a critical moment in the history of collecting, when private individuals of less than extraordinary wealth assembled libraries that were bigger than many of the institutional collections of their day. — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 317

Categorization

• XREF: The professional/bourgeois libraries echo the chapter’s theme of how non-elite collections reshaped the book world — connects to modern data on professional knowledge spaces. — connects to: The Dutch book auction revolutionized book collecting almost as much as printing itself — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 287
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 317

Broader Connections

• The Dutch book auction revolutionized book collecting almost as much as printing itself #expands (0.75) — Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, The Library- A Fragile History, 287