Who has the best baseball library?

[Jason19th]

I think that it is nearly impossible to have a great "baseball" library. The topic is simply too broad. You could have 20,000 volumes and 90% of it could be junk. I think that the quality of a collection is defined by its focus. By collecting one topic i.e 19th Century or World Series or in my case Negro leagues you are able to collect the type of non-traditional material that really makes a collection and collecting interesting. In the Negro League area I have been able to "discover" material like a short bio of Rube Foster in "The Negro in Chicago" (1921) or a brief Negro League History in WPA books like "The Cavalcade of the Negro" (1940), or an amazing essay on Jackie Robinson by Langston Hughes that I never would have noticed if I was simply looking for baseball books in the broad sense.

I would also argue that condition is less important for books. While cards are most memorabilia are objects of art, books are more important for the information that they contain. In many instances I think that the flaw such are library markers, margin notes or book plates add to the piece. I often look at my 1964 Knoxville Tennessee Library Copy of "Great Negro Athletes" and wonder how the book was viewed in that time in that place.

[barrysloate]

A good baseball library needs a cut-off date, say pre-1970, or something like that. There are so many baseball books being written today it seems endless. It's great for scholarship, but nobody could collect them all.