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Politics & Government

Newark Public Library's Special Collections Has Rare Finds

Collection has ancient Sumerian clay tablets, other rare items

Tucked inside a modest building behind the Newark Public Library are some of the nation's most priceless treasures.

A leaf from the Gutenberg Bible. A box of 6,000-year-old Sumerian clay tablets. Fragments from an Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead dating from 1,500 BCE. A slim volume of prayers written in Medieval French and illustrated with brilliantly colored illuminations.

They make up the Special Collections Division, an impressive legacy of more than 100 years of dogged collecting from the beginning of the 20th century, through the infamous Newark riots, and today, when even now the rare cache is still growing.

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"There's just such amazing stuff here," said Jared Ash, 38, acting head librarian of Special Collections. "Every time I open a box, there's this awe."

The assortment of uncommon papers, artwork and memorabilia are approximately 40,000 to 50,000 in number and take up two large rooms in the third floor of the library's rear annex building and an off-site storage area, Ash said.

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"It's exciting and it's basically the greatest opportunity. It's definitely a little overwhelming," said Ash, who took over as sole head about a month ago.

Longtime librarian William J. Dane had been in charge of the division for more than 60 years and retired in 2009 after a career of nurturing up-and-coming artists and collecting their works before they became household names. Ash and another librarian, Chad Leinaweaver, both came on board several years ago and worked together to ease the transition from Dane's tenure until Leinaweaver recently left.

The collection was started in 1902 by John Cotton Dana, the library's director at the time, Ash said. Dana begin the seed of the division with illustrations and prints from all over Europe and America.

It has grown over the years with countless fine art prints, photographs, posters, illustrated books, postcards, sheet music, and even autographs. There are Japanese woodblock prints, Rembrandt, an anatomy book by Albrecht Dürer, an atlas by Claudius Ptolemy, and numerous contemporary avant garde art books.

Dane, who has a collection of fine prints and photographs named after him, augmented the treasure trove with prints by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Henri Matisse - all of which would not be out of place on the white walls of the Museum of Modern Art.

"There's a tradition of collecting ahead of the trend," Ash said, referring to Dane.

Right now, the division is working on getting more visibility beside the exhibits that are typically held in the main library building, according to Ash.

"This collection has the potential to make Newark a destination city," Ash said. "We are open to the public but we are still not really well known. People don't realize there's more to the collection than on exhibit."

Special Collections has done community outreach to higher learning institutions in the city and has had visiting artists and scholars from all over the world such as the Getty Institute and Japan, Ash said.

"We have a vision of getting this online," said Ash, who noted that only 5 percent of the collection is in the library's online catalog.

There was an opportunity to have the division get greater exposure. In 2006, the library was planning for a major expansion that would include a new, glass-walled addition, Ash said. Special Collections would have moved to the main library instead of the back annex and would have had a print study room, a rare book reading room, and other amenities open to the general public.

But when Mayor Cory Booker came to power, the addition was shelved due to the city's financial woes, Ash said.

That has not stopped the collection from growing. The division has a small stipend to spend on emerging artists and books. And Dane has been known to drop by with a new acquisition.

Meanwhile, Ash encourages the public to visit. "The value of a book is in its use," said Ash.

He cites the wording of a bookplate affixed inside some of the volumes: "They belong to the citizens of Newark. The more they are used intelligently, the better for the city."

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