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Bookplate Index by Library or Collector
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The Wade Hall Collection of Southern History & Culture, University of Alabama Wade H. Hall (1934- ) has described himself as having a “consuming passion” for collecting, a passion that has resulted in the Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture held in the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama. This collection, which began modestly as a gift of fourteen books in 1990, has evolved over the past five years into one of the largest gifts ever made to the Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama. The Wade Hall Collection currently includes over nine thousand cataloged monographs and serials (with almost four thousand volumes still awaiting cataloging), over three thousand pieces of sheet music, and over one thousand two hundred sound recordings. The Wade Hall Collection has become an important resource for scholars at the University of Alabama and is frequently consulted by researchers at the University and from many other institutions as well. Hall, currently a faculty member of the English department at Bellarmine College, in Louisville, Kentucky, is a native of Alabama, who grew up in Bullock County, near the city of Union Springs. He received his Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and history from Troy State University, and Master of Arts degrees in English from the University of Alabama, before going on to receive a Ph.D. in English and American history from the University of Illinois. His research on aspects of Southern history and culture resulted in a number of publications, including Reflections on the Civil War in Southern Humor (University of Florida Press, 1962) and The Smiling Phoenix: Reflections of Southern Life in Southern Humor (University of Florida Press, 1965). Hall began to collect material about Southern history and culture a number of years ago, and has found items for his collection in a variety of locations, including flea markets, estate sales, and auctions, as well as traditional bookstores. The decision to give his collection to the University of Alabama came about for a number of reasons, including Hall’s being a native Alabamian and an alumnus of the University of Alabama. He also credits his decision, in some measure, to his interest in the Center for Southern History and Culture at the University of Alabama. According to Hall, however, the most significant factor in making this donation was his interaction with the staff of the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections and, in particular, with Joyce Lamont, who was until her recent retirement the assistant dean for Special Collections at the University of Alabama. The six by nine centimeters bookplate for the Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture was designed by Joseph Moudry, then technical archivist in the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama. The main portion of the design of this bookplate represents a cotton boll, which was selected because it is an object commonly associated with the South. The boll is set apart from the plate’s text by a row of highly stylized flowers above and below it. The bookplate is still in use while the collection is being cataloged and as Wade Hall adds more items to the collection on a regularly basis.
The Special Collections at the University of Alabama began in 1945
under the direction of William Stanley Hoole (1903-
), who was university librarian from 1945 to 1971. The Special
Collections was opened to the public as a full-time library department
only in 1976, with Joyce Lamont as the first curator. In 1977 the
collection was renamed The William Stanley Hoole Special Collections
Library in honor of the founder. The Special Collections Library at the
University of Alabama, housed in a new building completed in the fall of
1993, contains several important historical and literary collections.
Among these are the Alabama Collection, a comprehensive collection of
books about Alabama, or books published in Alabama; the Rare Book
Collection, which includes several discrete collections including
Confederate Imprints, the Robinson Jeffers Collections, and the Lafcadio
Hearn Collection; the Charles Summersell Maritime Collection, a collection
of rare materials dealing with maritime history; and the Alabama and Rare
Pamphlet Collection, a very large collection of smaller imprints dealing
with Alabama. In addition to the book collections, the Hoole Collection
holds large numbers of newspapers, manuscripts, personal papers,
correspondence, photographs, maps, audio and video tapes, pamphlets, and
various historical artifacts. Anne E. Moss University of Alabama [Originally published in Libraries & Culture, vol. 31, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 11-13.]
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| Last updated June 8, 2001 |
