Collectors' knowledge

"Drawing on case studies from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, covering Europe and beyond, Collectors’ Knowledge: What is Kept, What is Discarded investigates how knowledge was acquired, organized and sometimes lost. It examines collections of texts and objects—libraries, textbooks, miscellanies, commonplace books, data collections pertaining to historical events, encyclopedias, royal and ducal treasures, curiosity cabinets, galleries and museums—to uncover the processes of accumulation, organization, selection and rejection that have shaped learning. The essays emphasize the complex relationship between the intentions of collectors and the limitations they encountered—issues of format, presentation, display and storage—as well as outside forces that disrupted their aims, including pillage and natural disasters"--