People often ask how and why it is that the Marriott Library has the rare books that it does. For a public university in a sparsely populated state in the middle of the country to have a collection such as ours seems an anomaly to Utahns and visitors alike. The sixty thousand strong and growing rare book collections began with the Mormon pioneers who brought books with them and donated them to the Utah territorial library which in turn became the library for Deseret University, the precursor to the University of Utah. We still have many of those books.

Through the Utah legislature, we have a small but helpful acquisitions budget. Books are often donated to us from family estates and by friends of the library. Some donors give us money to buy what they would like us to have or for us to buy what we think we need. We make a concerted effort to acquire in whatever way we can books that support faculty and their research, and students and their research. Nothing pleases us more that to have our collections used.

The books used for the “Dramatis personae” project were obtained in several different ways. Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (PR2883 B6) has been in the library’s collection since at least 1963. Our set of the first edition of Diderot’s Encyclopedie (AE25 E53) was acquired in 1970. Our set of the Amsterdam edition of the Journal des Scavans (AP25 J7) was acquired in 1971. These were kept in what was then called “The Treasure Room.”

La Vie de Scaramouche (PQ1971 C36 V5 1699) and the other books used in this project were acquired as part of an effort to build into a larger collection the few rare books we had in support of the University’s Ballet department. Between 2000 and 2004 we added to this collection a few books at a time. Little did we guess that they would be used for a French class!

The students who worked on this project showed great care and respect for the age and fragility of the books, even though it meant that the books were not easy to work with – an added challenge to the project but with great rewards. The students were as enthusiastic about the books as historical objects as they were about the texts contained within. In the twenty-first century, books held in hands still provoke the mind and enchant the senses in a way that those read on a computer screen never can. That said, the digitization of these books means that people all over the world are able to study them at their convenience.