ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ A p ril 2004 / 795 C o l l e g e & R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s news Cookery academia Culinary collections in libraries grow up, and out by Jim M orris-K n o w er I n Ju n e 1999, a man named Robert Barth o f Salt Lake City contacted Cornell University’s Mann Library about the cookbook collection o f his friend Thomas Bass. Bass had recently died, and his will expressed his interest in donating his entire collection— nearly 2,000 volumes— to Mann. Would the library b e interested? That summer, a retired Mann librarian, now living in Utah, sifted through the collection and determined that it would indeed be a valuable addition to the library ’s holdings and worth the $600 to ship it to Cornell. Why would som eone with no connection to either Cornell or Mann bequeath his cookbooks, worth thousands o f dollars, to us? “During the last year of his life, Tom told me several times that Mann Library at Cornell University was the only library he knew that had a specific interest in his­ toric American cookbooks,” Barth explained. “He wished to give the library his collection should anything happen to him. He dreaded the idea of his collection falling into the hands o f profes­ sional dealers and being sold piecemeal to the high­ est bidder.” A year after the Thomas Bass Cookbook Col­ lection was established at Mann Library, I set out to write a brief profile o f this collector and his c o o k b o o k collection. As I started to do a little background research for the article, I quickly real­ ized several things. O ne was that Tom Bass was wrong in believing that Mann was the only library with a historical interest in cookbooks. Another was that he was right in wanting to preserve his collection by donating it w hole to a library; the market for vintage cookbooks, I found out, is hot. And the third was that I was wrong in thinking this article could be simply about one man and his cookbooks. My “brief profile” idea was shot as soon as I stumbled on “A Selective Guide to Culinary Li­ brary Collections,” an 81-page document prepared for the International Association of Culinary Pro­ fessionals.1 The guide identifies 60 institutions “with significant library collections related to the culi­ nary field.” There are 15 public libraries in the guide, 9 historical associations, 31 academic li­ braries, 4 culinary school libraries, and 4 federal government libraries. Not only are there a lot o f excellent culinary collections out there, but most o f them have grown significantly or been formed in the past 15 years. What w e were experiencing at Mann— an acqui­ sition significantly expanding our holdings in cook­ ery and gastronomy— was going on around the country. Here is a sampling of what I discovered: • In D ecem ber 1990, Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library announced that Julia Child had donated to them her collection o f French and American cookbooks, tapes of her TV series The French Chef, and her papers. Today, Radcliffe’s culinary collec­ tion is on e o f the w orld’s largest at more than 22,000 volumes. • In 1991, the American Institute o f Wine and Food, a national organization founded by Child and vintner Robert Mondavi, divided its rare book A b o u t th e a u th o r Jim M orris-Knower is public services librarian at Cornell University's A lb ert R. Mann Library, e-mail: jp k 15@cornell. edu © 2004 Jim Morris-Knower 196 / C&RL News ■ A p ril 2004 collection betw een Radcliffe and the University o f California-San D iego (UCSD). The initial gift to UCSD of 364 volumes established their collec­ tion. • In April 1996, 200 people gathered at the University o f Pennsylvania’s Van-Pelt Dietrich Library to celebrate the opening o f the Esther B. Aresty Collection o f Rare Books in the Culinary Arts. The 576 books and 13 manuscripts include a Venetian manuscript from 1475, reputed to b e the first cookbook ever printed. • In 2002, New York University acquired the library of Cecily Brownstone, the Associated Press’s food writer for 40 years and a close friend o fJ o y o f C ooking author Irma Rombauer. The collection, with 8,000 volumes and 50,00 pamphlets, con ­ tains 15 different editions o f the Jo y o f C ookin g and the entire correspondence between Brown- stone and Rombauer. W h y c o o k b o o k c o lle c t io n s are in Obviously, Mann was not alone in cooking up a major culinary collection in the late 20th century. But the more interesting question remains— why? Why are these cookbook collections expanding faster than a soufflé in a convection oven? There seem to be three major social forces con­ nected to this expansion. While I’m still not abso­ lutely certain which is cause and which is effect, it’s clear that the rise of academic culinary collec­ tions is tied to a growth in our culture’s obsession with food, a growth in the antiquarian market for vintage cookbooks, and a growth in academia’s scholarly interest in food. O f these phenomena, the most obvious is that w e have gon e food crazy. You can see this on television, where once there were scattered food programs like the Galloping Gourmet and today there is an entire cable channel, the Food Network, serving up nothing but food programming 24 hours a day. You can also see this on magazine racks offering a spread o f glossy food periodicals; the once elite foodie magazine G ourm et is now posi­ tively mass-market with over a million subscrib­ ers, and its rival F ood a n d Win e is even bigger. Our fascination with all things bon appetite is not simply with the craft o f creating, either, but also with the politics o f eating. The big surprise in the publishing world in 2002 was the runaway popularity o f F ast F o o d N ation, journalist Eric Schlosser’s indictment o f our country’s love o f fried, supersized meals. The Slow Food movement, started in 1985 in Italy as a protest against a proposed installation of a McDonald’s in Rome, has grown to 65,000 mem­ bers across 42 countries dedicated to preserving traditional, slower ways o f preparing and enjoy­ ing food. And a recent poll by the Center for Sci­ ence in the Public Interest showed that two-thirds of Americans support the labeling o f genetically modified food and more than three quarters want food sprayed with pesticides to be labeled accord­ ingly. Clearly w e’re becoming more interested in what goes in our mouths. Not surprisingly, this growing concern with what we eat is also seen in an increased interest in buying and collecting books on the topic. The market for vintage cookbooks, for example, has grown rapidly during the same period that cook­ book collections in libraries have expanded. I n l999, a Wall StreetJ o u rn a l article noted that “antique cookbooks are soaring in value, perhaps the hottest sector in the rare b o o k field.” How hot? A 1796 edition o f Amelia Simmons’ A m eri­ ca n Cookery, considered the first truly American cookbook with recipes for things like pumpkin pie and Johnny Cake, fetched $22,000 at an auc­ tion in the 1990s. A first edition o f the kitchen staple Jo y o f Cooking, published in 1931, is today worth more than $3,000. And even Jell-O book­ lets, which came free with boxes o f Jell-O in the early 20th century, can go for $100 a pop. Th e r is e o f fo o d s tu d ie s If coo k b o o k s are the hottest sector in the rare b ook field, food studies is the hottest subject in academia. More art and less science than you find in a traditional food science or nutrition program, and not really concerned with learning to cook either, food studies instead focuses on the cul­ tural, symbolic, and ideological meanings of what w e cook and eat. And now, it seems, everyone in academia wants a piece o f it. “I ’m thrilled [with the rise o f food studies], because I’ve b een teaching food and culture for 30 years and have always had to struggle with people saying ‘but it’s just food,”’ says University o f Pennsylvania folklorist Janet Theophano, who curated an exhibit from the Aresty Collection when it first came to Penn. “Now, even the most eso­ teric and elite o f disciplines— like literary stud­ ies- are involved.” Food studies departments and programs are sprouting up everywhere. In 1997, New York University’s Department o f Nutrition changed its name to the Department o f Nutrition and Food Studies. Boston University and Georg e Washing­ ton University have also started such programs C&RL News ■ A p ril 2004 / 197 recently, and many other colleges and universities are offering classes on food. Witness too the spawning o f scholarly food studies journals and university press series. Jour­ nals like F ooda n d F oodways, The Journ al o f t he Asso­ c ia tio n f o r th e Study o f F o o d a n d Society, and Gastronom ica: The Jo u rm l ofF ooda n d C ulture were all launched in the last 15 years. For the b o o k minded, both the University of Illinois Press and the University o f California Press now have food studies series with monographs on everything from food rationing in World War II to humans eating great apes in Africa. As all these examples make clear, the growth o f academic cookery collections is not occurring in a vacuum, but is directly connected to a grow­ ing interest in both the contents and meaning of what w e eat. Som e o f the directors o f culinary collections I spoke to were quite aware of these connections; one of the more perspicacious (and ambitious) is Peter Berg, head o f special collec­ tions at Michigan State University (MSU). Berg has taken what was originally a small hom e eco­ nomics collection and transformed it into a 7,000- volume culinary repository with its own endow­ ment. In 2002, he partnered with MSU’s museum to create “Feeding A m erica,” an IMLS-funded online collection o f the most important 19th and early 20th century American cookbooks.2 B erg understands both the con text o f the growth o f culinary library collections and the im­ plications o f that growth for libraries. “More than a few (o f these collections) seem to b e the result o f major gifts, and these gifts are being accepted and other collections are being built because the study o f food and food culture has b ecom e ac­ cep table, ev en desired, am ong scholars in academ ia,” he says. “O f course, foodways and cookbooks have always had a special place among people outside the university who provide sup­ port through donations and use.” N e w o p p o r tu n it ie s Thus not only are college and university libraries building and expanding culinary collections to serve academics with a new appetite for food stud­ ies, but they are also using these collections to create opportunities to reach new patrons outside the ivory tower while increasing financial sup­ port. The area o f keen interest here for libraries is the intersection o f collection development, pa­ tron development and, well, development devel­ opment. At the University o f Pennsylvania, the Aresty collection is serving as the focus for publicity- generating food programs, such as the 2002 ex­ hibit o f som e o f Philadelphia ch ef Fritz Blank’s 10,000 cook books, launched in tandem with a series o f talks tied to the exhibit. T he opening night gala had hundreds of people eating German potato salad and Viennese pickled herring while listening to Blank discuss how to make old recipes work. The exhibit and program series attracted a large and very mixed audience of gourmands from both the city and the university. “The Aresty collection gave us something we could use to build new constituencies, and w e have b e e n trying to take advantage o f it,” says Special Collections head Michael Ryan. “Cook­ books are one o f those useful bridges that span the academic and the lay sides o f our world.” Radcliffe’s Barbara Haber also knows about such dances, the win-win relationships that gen­ erate publicity and support for the library. Haber, recently retired as Schlezinger’s director, started the Radcliffe Culinary Friends the same year Julia Child gave her cookbooks to the library. The Friends put on culinary programs featuring Boston-area food writers and scholars, publish a newsletter, and throw an annual Christmas b o o k sale that generates $4,000 for the library in one day. All o f this raises the profile of both the library and Haber (“I’m in a lot o f Rolodexes,” she says), while gen­ erating funding for the collection. Haber is also on the foundation o f the IACP, the group responsible for the guide to culinary library collections I found so useful. In fact, she wrote the first edition o f the guide, the first com­ ponent o f a broader plan to teach people how to do culinary research. “I didn’t want to simply be on a board to raise money to send kids to cooking school,” says Haber, explaining her work. The sec­ ond part is a national campaign to preserve cook­ books, something that got off the ground last year when KitchenAid donated $25,000 to the cause, know formally as “Endangered Treasures.” The first cookbook scheduled for preservation is a copy of A m erican C ookery, held at UCSD. Tom Bass would, I’m sure, be happy about all o f this growing interest in coo k b o o k s and the way libraries are using them in programs and projects that attract lots o f p eop le and lots o f attention. And he certainly would b e pleasantly surprised that so many libraries across the country are building up their collections in response to an increased recognition o f the social and historical importance o f these books. (c o n tin u ed o n p a g e 2 0 1 ) C&RL News ■ A p ril 2004 / 201 c o v e rs to p ic s r e la te d to b o o k b in d in g . T h e W eb site in clu d es su b scrip tio n in form ation . A lso lis te d a re b a c k is s u e s (fro m 1 9 7 8 - 0 1 ) a v a i l a b l e f o r p u r c h a s e . A ccess : http:// www.bindersguild.org. • Dog E ared M agazine: A J o u r n a l o f Book Arts. This magazine’s site provides a helpful online resource guide o f fur­ ther inform a­ tion and Web links for ea ch published issue. Although the full text of articles is not available online, the site does feature listings o f article topics, tables o f contents for issues, and b ack issue and sub­ scrip tion inform ation. A ccess: http://www. dogearedmagazine.com. • L etter Arts Review. This publication is a magazine for calligraphers and letter artists. Its W eb site does not offer full text o f articles. How­ ever, the site d oes offer a cumulative article in­ dex, summaries and images from current issues, subscription information, and details for order­ ing b a c k issues. In addition, the site features m any colo r p hotos o f calligraphy in its “Pic o f th e W e e k ” s e c tio n . A ccess : http://w w w . johnnealbooks.com /lar/index.htm . • The Microbibliophile. This journal “fea­ tures articles about miniature books new and old, reviews o f newly published miniature books, as well as announcem ents about events relating to the w orld o f the little b o o k .” T he journal’s Web site does not provide full text o f articles, but does offer con tact and subscription information. A c­ cess: http://www.microbibliopliile.com/. • Um brella. T h e articles in this publication focus on news about and reviews of artists’ books. T h e com p an io n W eb site to the journal offers archived articles in Adobe PDF format available from 1997 to 2001. More recen t articles from 2 0 0 2 -0 3 are available selectively. A ccess: http:// colophon.com/umbrella/index.html. E le c t r o n ic lis t s / d is c u s s io n g r o u p s • BOOKARTS-L. Sponsored by the B ook Arts Web, this discussion group focuses on all book arts topics. To join this group, send the message “sub­ s c rib e B o o k _ A rts-L Y o u r REAL N am e” to listserv@ listserv.syr.edu. D etails available at: http://www.philobiblon.com/. • Cyberscribes: The Prem ier Internet Cal­ lig rap h y D iscussion G roup. A round sin ce 1995, this electronic list concentrates o n callig­ raphy-related topics. The list’s Web site includes a history o f the list and instructions o n h o w to jo in . A ccess: http :/ / w w w .callig rap h .co m / cyberscribes/. • GBW Listserv. This list is sponsored by the Guild o f Bookworkers (GBW) and is open to GBW members only. An FAQ, archives, and instructions for joining are available at: http://palimpsest. stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/gbwlist/. • LETPRESS. This group discusses issues re­ lated to letterpress printers and printing. To join this group, fill out th e su b scrip tio n fo rm at http ://hermes.c s d .u n b . ca/bin/wa?SUBED 1= letpress& A =l. • Y ah o o ! Groups— B o o k A rts. Yahoo! Groups presents a diverse group o f approximately 85 b o o k arts d iscu ssion groups ranging from “alteredbooks” to “PPLetterpress.” Each group’s listing provides a summary and rules and instruc­ tion s fo r jo in in g . A ccess: http://dir.groups. y a h o o .c o m / d ir/ E n te rta in m e n t_ A rts / F in e _ Arts/Design_Arts/Book_Arts. N o tes 1. See the follow ing discu ssions from the Book_Arts-L discu ssion list: “D efinition o f the Artist’s Book; What is a Book; BSO’s (Book Shaped O b je cts); Art vs. Craft” at w w w .p h ilob ib lo n . com /w hatisabook.htm and “T h e W hatness o f Bookness, or What is a Book” at www.philobiblon. com/bookness.htm. 2. Alisa Golden, C reatin g H a n d m a d e B ooks (N ew York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1998), ( “Cookery academ ia" continued rf o mp a g e 197) O f course, it w as to Cornell’s benefit that he didn’t know too much; after all, all those Jello-O pamphlets w e got might have ended up at som e­ place like University o f Pennsylvania instead. N o tes 1. S e e w w w .iacp fo u n d atio n .co m / d o cs/ culdir.pdf for the IACP document “T he Selective Guide to Culinary Library Collections in the United States.” 2. S e e d ig ital.lib.m su .ed u/cookbooks for MSU’s “Feeding America: The Historic American C ookbook Project.” ■ http://www.bindersguild.org http://www http://www http://www.microbibliopliile.com/ mailto:listserv@listserv.syr.edu http://www.philobiblon.com/ http://www.calligraph.com/ http://palimpsest http://dir.groups http://www.philobiblon http://www.philobiblon http://www.iacpfoundation.com/docs/