Valeat Emptor in Graecia

by George Paganelis (paganelis@csus.edu)

The maxim that “all politics is local” can be said to apply on certain levels to collection development. In a country like Greece, with its enduring sense of regionalism, acquiring library materials on the ground in locales including, but also beyond, the major publishing centers of Athens and Thessaloniki is an excellent way to learn the landscape of the book market there and to obtain materials that may be slower in coming through regular channels. It is also an essential complement to an approval plan as part of a broad collection development policy that recognizes the diverse history and character of modern Greece, particularly its many islands. It is my hope that the following will be of interest to selectors in Hellenic studies or to those who can relate these experiences to their own areas of responsibility within Western Europe.

In my position as Curator of the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection I have had the opportunity to engage in book-buying in Greece four times, each of which was an add-on to a planned vacation or conference in Athens. During my first such buying trip in summer 2005, I came to learn quickly that the epicenter of Athens’ publishing quarter was situated in the neighborhoods between the University of Athens and Lycabettus Hill. Though many publishers have their own bookshops in this quadrangle, other bookstores effectively act as distributors for various numbers of publishers and organize their stock accordingly. For a librarian out shopping, this system had the advantage of allowing me to gather up quantities of books by the same publishers very easily in one stroke, but made it quite difficult to follow that up with finding more materials on a given subject, say, the Greek Enlightenment, without knowing who published them. Not far from this area is the well-known Stoa tou Vivliou, a cultural complex that includes an outlet mall for books of approximately a dozen well-known publishers. While there are other venues for obtaining books in Athens, such as at the National Hellenic Research Foundation and myriad museums located throughout the city, less well known are the various associations, fraternities, academies and sundry other groups whose publications are often unpublicized and irregular and must be acquired directly. I have yet to visit Thessaloniki, but hope to acquire materials there in future, preferably in conjunction with a visit to the Thessaloniki International Book Fair.

Collection development on the Greek islands has always been more interesting than in Athens (can you blame me?) because of the excitement of amassing local materials of especially short print runs that could not be found in Athens and that were positively not held by other North American institutions. Every island I have visited on these trips, thus far including Corfu, Zakynthos, Syros, Paros, Tinos, and Milos, had at least one bookshop in its main town. Invariably (and conveniently), each bookshop had a separate section on local subjects, which, combined with now-ubiquitous access to the Web on even the smallest islands, made it simple for me to compare our holdings via our OPAC to books available for purchase. Other sources of local publications on the islands include museums, churches, town halls, foundations, and local associations/academies. In the end, the legwork it sometimes takes to collect these local materials is worth the effort because when books go out of print in Greece, they can be next to impossible to acquire.

Collecting local publications has largely been a neglected topic of discussion among Hellenic studies librarians until recently; it may also be time for WESSies to reconsider the place of acquiring such materials in their own areas in the context of the growing EU and wider Europe.

WESSWeb > WESS Newsletter > Fall 2008 > Valeat Emptor in Graecia