Chess libraries

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chess libraries are library collections of books and periodicals on the game of chess. Chess has a very extensive literature, probably exceeding that of all other games combined. In 1913, preeminent chess historian H.J.R. Murray estimated the total number of books, magazines, and newspaper columns pertaining to chess to be about 5,000 at that time.[1][2] B.H. Wood estimated that number, as of 1949, to be about 20,000.[2] David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld write that, "Since then there has been a steady increase year by year of the number of new chess publications. No one knows how many have been printed..."[2]

Due to mergers and acquisitions in recent years there are only two chess libraries of major significance and only a few other specialist collections. They are,

  • The John G. White Chess and Checkers Collection at Cleveland Public Library.
    • Largest chess and draughts library in the world, with over 32,000 chess books and over 6,000 bound volumes of ches periodicals.[3]
    • Built on the donation of quarter of a million dollars and 11,000 books from John G. White's private library upon his death.
  • The Chess & Draughts collection at the Bibliotheca Van der Linde-Niemeijeriana (part of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands).
    • Second largest chess and draughts library in the world.
    • Built on the donations of from the private chess libraries of Antonius van der Linde, Meindert Niemeijer and G.L. Gortmans.
    • Contain 30,000 works.

The most significant publicly acknowledged private chess library is currently that of Paolo Ciancarini. However, Mr. Ciancarini states that several people own larger libraries, including Lothar Schmid in Germany and Mr. DeLucia in Connecticut. Also, the former World Champion Anatoly Karpov is known to have a large chess stamp collection. Mr. Ciancarini's is the only one which has a catalog publicly available on the Web, and periodically updated.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Murray, H.J.R. (1913), A History of Chess, Oxford University Press, pp. 782–784, ISBN 0-19-827403-3 
  2. ^ a b c Hooper, David & Whyld, Kenneth (1984), The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, p. 189, ISBN 0-19-217540-8. 
  3. ^ Special Chess Records (Susan Polgar)

[edit] External links