Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque by Gabriel Naudé
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"Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque" by Gabriel Naudé is a practical treatise on library building written in the mid-17th century. It explains why and how to create a large, public‑minded, universal library, covering aims, selection principles, and methods for acquiring and organizing books and manuscripts. The work privileges systematic collecting for scholars and the common good over private display. The opening of the treatise begins with an editor’s preface portraying its author
as an energetic, public‑spirited organizer of great collections, praising his role in opening a library to the public and recalling the political turmoil that scattered books, to frame the work’s lasting value. At the start, a brief “To the Reader” notes the text grew from a dispute and is published to guide others; then, addressing his patron, the author justifies library‑building as honorable, useful, and intensely pleasurable, and promises clear rules. The first chapters teach how to learn the craft (consult experts; study and copy catalogues), argue for an ample, universal collection, and lay selection criteria: core authors and commentaries across disciplines; originals with translations; seminal and “first” treatments; sharp refutations and bold innovations; curious and even heterodox texts; comprehensive corpora; and practical tools like dictionaries and commonplace books—valuing moderns with ancients, small tracts with massive tomes, and neglected medieval writers. He also prefers substantive unpublished manuscripts over variant copies of classics and opens his acquisition advice with concrete tactics: preserve what you have, gather ephemera, publicize your zeal to attract gifts, exploit opportunities, and spend on books rather than bindings. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Naudé, Gabriel, 1600-1653 |
|---|---|
| Author of introduction, etc. | Bonneau, Alcide, 1836-1904 |
| LoC No. | 03008552 |
| Title | Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque |
| Original Publication | Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1876. |
| Credits | Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Polona digital library) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | Z: Bibliography, Library science |
| Subject | Library science -- Early works to 1800 |
| Subject | Book collecting -- Early works to 1800 |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 77822 |
| Release Date | Jan 31, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 251 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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