College and Research Libraries


The Glazier Collection 
Manuscripts from the William S. Glazier 

Collection. Compiled by John Plummer. 
New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 
1959. 34p., 57 plates, 6 in color. Cloth-
bound, $5.00; paperbound, $3.00. 

This catalog, compiled by the Curator of 
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the 
Morgan Library, and with a foreword by 
the director, Frederick B. Adams, Jr., has 
been issued on the occasion of a loan ex-
hibition of the Glazier manuscripts held at 
the Morgan Library. I t is a large and im-
portant collection; the exhibition includes 
fifty-one hand-written books, arranged chron-
ologically, dating from the eighth to the 
early sixteenth century, most of them with 
illuminations. T h e first was purchased by 
M r . Glazier in 1931; the latest was added to 
the collection—and to the catalog—in 
January 1959. Among the manuscripts are 
several really outstanding examples whose 
illustrations constitute significant contri-
butions to the art of illumination, among 
them the Hachette Psalter (no. 17), a thir-
teenth-century English exemplar containing 
six magnificent full-page miniatures, and the 
Salzburg Lectionary (no. 7), an Austrian 
manuscript with illuminations of top quality 
executed in mid-eleventh century. T h e tiny 
picture of God and Adam in Paradise 
painted within an initial A, exhibited (but 
not illustrated in the catalog) in MS no. 18, a 
thirteenth-century English Bible, is a superb 
example of the style of this period, and ob-
viously shows the hand of a master artist. 
T w o important fourteenth-century books are 
included—the English De Lisle Hours (no. 
27) and the French Voeux du Paon (no. 28), 
the latter significant for its text as well as 
for its artistic content. 

M r . Glazier, writing about his collection 
in The Book Collector (vol. 6, 1957), has 
said that he is "seeking coverage of Western 
Europe, both geographically and chron-
ologically, with the hope that eventually my 
collection may be representative of the 
history of manuscript books. I have de-
liberately avoided the . . . opportunity to 
concentrate on one country or one epoch." 
Nevertheless, it seems that the various 

French schools are best represented, from 
a collected volume of tracts and other docu-
ments primarily on the doctrine of the 
T r i n i t y made in northern France in the early 
ninth century to a late fifteenth-century 
Book of Hours, possibly from Rouen; all 
told, there are nineteen French manuscripts 
in the collection. England comes second with 
twelve examples, and ten items originate 
from some part of what is now Italy. Al-
though the early centuries of the Middle 
Ages are represented by several examples, all 
the manuscripts dating from the tenth cen-
tury or earlier are, with one ninth-century 
exception, fragmentary leaves. Beginning 
with the eleventh century, however, coverage 
is broad and most of the books are of high 
quality. 

T h e descriptive commentary, which does 
far more than simply "summarize the present 
knowledge and opinion of these manu-
scripts," attempts to place each manuscript 
in its proper historical and artistic context, 
and shows considerable study of the col-
lection. Since many of these volumes have 
never before been exhibited or published 
and are therefore relatively unknown (even 
so extraordinary a book as the Hachette 
Psalter was more or less "discovered" at the 
time it was purchased by M r . Glazier in 
1953), Dr. Plummer's work is a real con-
tribution of our knowledge of these manu-
scripts—and of manuscript history in gen-
eral. One regrets the absence of any biblio-
graphical references in these notes, for at 
least some of the manuscripts have been de-
scribed previously as parts of earlier col-
lections, or have appeared in various sales 
catalogs. 

T h e excellent reproductions are a notable 
feature of the catalog. T h e photographs for 
the six color plates and the thirty-one black-
and-white plates (the latter illustrating 
forty-five pages or fragments) were made by 
Mark D. Brewer of the Morgan Library staff. 
One might wish, especially after seeing the 
brilliant colors and vivid hues of the orig-
inals, that a larger number of the plates 
could have been in color, but in fact the 
black-and-white collotypes are remarkably 
well done; many are full-page in size, and 
all the illustrations are large enough to be 
clearly seen. Although of course meant to 

MAY 1959 257 



be used in conjunction with the exhibition, 
this catalog stands by itself as a fine descrip-
tion, in word and picture, of what is surely 
one of the best privately-owned collections of 
manuscripts, and as such, it will retain its 
meaningfulness and usefulness long after 
the manuscripts have been removed from the 
exhibition cases.—Joan H. Baum, Depart-
ment of Special Collections, Columbia 
University Libraries. 

Library Resources 

Studies in Library Resources. By William 
Vernon Jackson. Distributed by T h e 
Illini Union Bookstore, Champaign, 
Illinois, 1958. 62p. (Photolithoprint-
ed). $1.75. 

Six papers are published in this booklet, 
four of them for the first time. They present 
the results of research in a variety of tech-
niques, applied to individual institutions, 
and then to a specific subject area. T h e au-
thor is assistant professor of library science 
at the University of Illinois Library School. 

A review article, "Four Aspects of Library 
Cooperation," is a summary of available 
studies on interlibrary services. I t discusses 
in turn union lists, union catalogs, guides to 
collections, and interlibrary loans; and con-
cludes with a statement of the principles 
which have made for success in recent co-
operative ventures. 

T w o papers report on an examination of 
library resources at Northwestern Universi-
ty. T h e first, " T h e Development of Library 
Resources at Northwestern University," is 
reprinted from University of Illinois Library 
School Occasional Papers, No. 26 (February 
1952). I t surveys the historical development 
of the collections, emphasizing their rapid 
growth since 1920 and describing briefly 
certain outstanding collections. 

A statistical analysis of the collections of 
the University Library at Northwestern Uni-
versity is summarized in "A Case Study of 
Growth in Library Resources by Subject." 
T h e Library has maintained since 1918-19 
statistics showing the number of cataloged 
volumes by classes. Using these and other 

data, mainly unpublished, D r . Jackson has 
examined all subject classes to determine 
patterns of growth. H e finds that most sub-
jects did appear to follow definite patterns, 
that certain subjects have regularly shown 
growth superior to the general rate of incre-
ment, and that others have regularly lagged 
behind. T h e factors which have influenced 
this growth are reviewed in concluding para-
graphs. 

A n experiment using the shelf list of the 
library is described in the paper, "Subject 
Distribution of the University of Illinois Li-
brary." T h e result of this investigation is a 
tabular presentation for twenty-nine subjects, 
showing the number of volumes and the per-
centages of the total. Comparison of this ta-
ble with tables for the Harvard University 
Library and the libraries of Northwestern 
University, reproduced here, show certain 
"striking similarities." However, "the small 
sample makes further investigation necessary 
to determine whether they represent a pat-
tern characteristic of university libraries." 

"Resources of Midwestern Research Li-
braries in the Hispanic Literatures" is re-
printed from Hispania, X X X V I I I (1955), 
476-80. Data furnished by nine university li-
braries and the Newberry Library, and by 
the appropriate faculty members, were used 
for a statement of specific strengths and 
weaknesses in peninsular Spanish literature 
and in Spanish-American literature. For the 
latter subject, a test was also made of the 
extent to which acquisitions programs were 
bringing currrent books to the area. Titles 
of 169 monographic items from the 1949 
Handbook of Latin American Studies were 
checked against holdings. This check showed 
that the libraries as a group held ninety-five 
titles. 

T h e same list of current books was also 
the basis of an experiment reported in 
"Spanish American Literature in Five Euro-
pean National Libraries." A check of the 
catalogs of Libraries in Madrid, Paris, Brus-
sels, London, and T h e Hague showed that 
these libraries as a group held only a third 
of the titles, fewer than the research libraries 
of the Midwest. 

T h e Studies make several contributions to 
the understanding of library resources. They 
are informative in new ways about the col-

258 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES