In the spring of 2019, LSU Libraries’ Special Collections revived its long-dormant Purchasing Committee to help to advise the Curator of Books on book acquisitions and collection development policies.  

Last active some twenty years ago, the reborn committee is made up of six active library supporters, bibliophiles, and donors: Jim Bishop, Gresdna Doty, Lake Douglas, Carolyn Hargrave, Doug Jehle, and Faye Phillips. The group met with John Miles, the new Curator of Books, to make some of the more striking additions of the past year to the rare book collection, as well as to consider how to best direct future purchases.

Using funds generated by the Friends of the LSU Libraries’ annual book bazaar, the committee selected a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the first illustrated edition of Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein (1831), as well as a number of artists’ books by Julie Chen, Jule Mahn, Jeanine Michna-Bales, Kara Walker, and Sara White. The group directed funds from the E. A. McIlhenny Collection’s endowment toward the purchase of Henry Dewhurst’s The Natural History of the Order Cetacea (1834), Lorenzo Legati’s Museo Cospiano (1677), Constantine Rafinesque’s Monograph of the Fluviatile Bivalve Shells of the River Ohio (1832), and two artists’ books by Charles Hobson and Ian von Coller.