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| LibraryThing |
Vampires and librarians. What's the connection? Ask Wayne and Melinda (left) who own the largest private collection of vampire books I've ever seen: their catalogue contains (wait for it) 7,254 titles. And counting.
There's the 'now defunct!' blog, The vampire librarian, which I presume morphed into The vampire librarian website.
Massimo Introvigne's Centro studi sulle nuove religioni (Center for Studies on New Religions) houses The Dracula Library, 'the largest public library in the world specialized in books on vampires.' It has its own classification scheme, distinct from the DDC/Library of Congress Subject Heading combo most of us are familiar with.
It's not even the only major vampire library. The Vampire Empire's Research Library—founded by Jeanne Keyes Youngson in 1969—'includes her personal collection of vampire, werewolf and Dracula books, and has been used by many famous authors and scholars unable to find relevant material elsewhere.'
I'm aware of at least two books which specifically concern libraries and vampire literature. Specifically, Becky Siegel Spratford's The horror readers' advisory: the librarian's guide to vampires, killer tomatoes, and haunted houses (2004) and Eric W. Steinhauer's Vampyrologie für Bibliothekare: Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüre des Vampirs (2011). Niels has reviewed the latter.
The link between the two is obvious. Despite the encroachment of online resources, libraries are still invaluable storing houses for multitudes of media, which we should never take for granted. I'm partial to using 'em, meself.
It's good to see the library 'insiders' make their own contributions to the field and here's hoping they continue to do so.
It's good to see the library 'insiders' make their own contributions to the field and here's hoping they continue to do so.
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