National Chess Library closure

Debate directly related to English Chess Federation matters.
Roger de Coverly
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:19 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: For a really good quality catalogue, you still need to check the details yourself, and add details on the condition the book is in. For pre-ISBN books, the process is still somewhat laborious.
If you go back up the thread, there's a list posted by Angus French. I suspect this may be a report generated from a database assembled whilst the collection was in the hand of the University at Hastings. If correct and complete, the job of cataloguing has already been done.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:25 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Probably uncertainty over the differences between editions.
The catalogue does not appear to have any difficulty distinguishing between editions. Ray Keene's Flank Openings ran to four editions which are separately identified as are a handful of Openings Batsfords that had a second edition. The Penguin book "Chess Treasury of the Air" is still in print under the Harding Simpole series, but being cheap and widely available as a paperback, everybody had one, as witnessed by the ten or so copies in the ECF's possession.

Mike Truran
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Mike Truran » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:28 pm

Julie will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the cataloguing job has been completed yet.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:30 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: For a really good quality catalogue, you still need to check the details yourself, and add details on the condition the book is in. For pre-ISBN books, the process is still somewhat laborious.
If you go back up the thread, there's a list posted by Angus French. I suspect this may be a report generated from a database assembled whilst the collection was in the hand of the University at Hastings. If correct and complete, the job of cataloguing has already been done.
Yes, I looked at that.

Link:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 60#p196734

That is what I meant when I said "the spreadsheet from 2011 is a start, but only a start".

It needs to be brought up-to-date from the past 5 years or so.

There are some bits missing as well. If you sort by publication date, there are 39 publications with no publication date and 76 with partial dates (they look like decades). There are two 18th-century books, and 138 19th-century books. The total number of listed items is around 6580. Let's call it 7000. There are, I think, more books than that.

Many of the boxes mentioned by Julie apparently contain bound and unbound magazine series. There are also boxes containing archival materials (not sure exactly what that consists of). Even if the 7000 books are dealt with, there are more boxes than just that.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:30 pm

Brian Towers wrote: Do you have contact details for a medium with a proven track record?
I would not have thought that necessary. The Executors of the Estates whose books were given or lent to the BCF/ECF should know the terms on which the are in the ECF's possession.

David Sedgwick mentioned that he believed the late Bob Wade had sold his collection before his death. The Wade collection might then only be on loan to the ECF.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:31 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
Probably uncertainty over the differences between editions.
The catalogue does not appear to have any difficulty distinguishing between editions. Ray Keene's Flank Openings ran to four editions which are separately identified as are a handful of Openings Batsfords that had a second edition. The Penguin book "Chess Treasury of the Air" is still in print under the Harding Simpole series, but being cheap and widely available as a paperback, everybody had one, as witnessed by the ten or so copies in the ECF's possession.
My point was that a library curating the collection would need to be able to make decisions on which editions to keep and which to dispose of. That requires expertise the Hastings University Library probably didn't have.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:34 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: There are also boxes containing archival materials (not sure exactly what that consists of).
That's almost certainly the unique stuff worthy of retention. Records of forgotten chess clubs and their officers is of interest to historians and researchers and if the ECF doesn't keep it, nobody else will.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:35 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Brian Towers wrote: Do you have contact details for a medium with a proven track record?
I would not have thought that necessary. The Executors of the Estates whose books were given or lent to the BCF/ECF should know the terms on which the are in the ECF's possession.

David Sedgwick mentioned that he believed the late Bob Wade had sold his collection before his death. The Wade collection might then only be on loan to the ECF.
That catalogue from 2011 lists 657 items as "WAD".

The catalogue appears to only list items from the named collections. The "core" of the ECF National Library.

There are also, I think this was mentioned at some point, boxes of uncatalogued bequests that have just been sitting around boxed up at the Hastings University Library and then in storage, and these still need to be sorted. No idea how many books that will be, but presumably more duplication there.

Julie wrote a good summary here:

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 30#p157968

"My estimate of 6 tonnes includes additional material to that from the University. I think much of it might be duplicates that had already been sorted out. In addition to books, there are large quantities of magazines, some loose and some bound. I suspect there are many duplicates, but again time didn't permit paying a lot of attention to this. [...] The material from the University filled about 160 boxes [...] To summarise, a lot of cataloguing has been done but to take this further I consider it essential that it is all moved again to a more appropriate, and spacious, location."

(Sorry, I see Julie has said this below as well.)
Last edited by Christopher Kreuzer on Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Julie Denning
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Julie Denning » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:39 pm

Mike Truran wrote:Julie will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the cataloguing job has been completed yet.
That's as I remember the situation. The University had catalogued the majority of the material they had, but not all of it. Being professional librarians, we can assume their work is of high quality.

In addition, there was quite a large quantity of material that never reached the University, but is now also in the Eastbourne storage. As far as I recall, none of that had been catalogued, although some of it may have been duplicates that had been taken from other collections.

Basically, a lot of cataloguing has been done, but there's still quite a bit of confusion and no scope to do any further significant work in the current location.

Mike Gunn
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Mike Gunn » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:41 pm

When some of us went to look at some of the (later) donated material, stored in a Hastings council building it was in cardboard boxes that had never been opened. This was about 5 years ago(?).

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:42 pm

Julie Denning wrote:
Mike Truran wrote:Julie will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the cataloguing job has been completed yet.
That's as I remember the situation. The University had catalogued the majority of the material they had, but not all of it. Being professional librarians, we can assume their work is of high quality.

In addition, there was quite a large quantity of material that never reached the University, but is now also in the Eastbourne storage. As far as I recall, none of that had been catalogued, although some of it may have been duplicates that had been taken from other collections.

Basically, a lot of cataloguing has been done, but there's still quite a bit of confusion and no scope to do any further significant work in the current location.
Is this "University catalogue" different from the 2011 catalogue (of around 6580 items) that accompanied David Anderton's report of October 2014, mentioned here?

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 60#p196734

Roger de Coverly
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:44 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: My point was that a library curating the collection would need to be able to make decisions on which editions to keep and which to dispose of. That requires expertise the Hastings University Library probably didn't have.
The problem is the number of duplicates. That's multiple copies of the same edition of the same book. The Hastings University Library didn't appear to have a disposal policy other than to preserve the book collections as inherited by the BCF or ECF intact .

It's relatively rare for chess books to go through to second editions. Publishers gave up doing second editions of openings books in favour of updating the material with a new title. Game collections are usually frozen as originally written. If there's more material, there's another book written. There's descriptive and algebraic editions, the catalogue appears to treat them as distinct entities. There are a few, but not so many. I don't think that many old descriptive books have been reissued in algebraic.

Julie Denning
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Julie Denning » Mon Mar 13, 2017 3:44 pm

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: There are also, I think this was mentioned at some point, boxes of uncatalogued bequests that have just been sitting around boxed up at the Hastings University Library and then in storage, and these still need to be sorted. No idea how many books that will be, but presumably more duplication there.
Christopher,

Basically, yes, except that the additional material never made it to the University. It was in a separate store in Hastings but was also transferred to Eastbourne along with the University material

David Sedgwick
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by David Sedgwick » Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:58 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:David Sedgwick mentioned that he believed the late Bob Wade had sold his collection before his death. The Wade collection might then only be on loan to the ECF.
I could well be wrong. The people who would know are those whom I mentioned.

Mike Gunn
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Re: National Chess Library closure

Post by Mike Gunn » Mon Mar 13, 2017 6:40 pm

Following David's suggestion above I contacted David Anderton and he confirmed that he bought Bob Wade's library when Bob was still alive. He has part of it in his possession and the rest went directly to the ECF when Bob died (it's clearly the part in the catalogue). Some of the part he retained will go to the ECF if/when the library is on display again.

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