SFF Libraries – a shoutout

I’ve just read an article from Interstellar Flight Magazine “The Greatest Arsenal: SF Libraries and Archives“.

Libraries are the ultimate geek stuff for us readers. Jeremy Brett makes a fantastatic case of showing the many cases of libraries within SFF stories.

But wait, there is more: There are real libraries in our physical world dedicated to SFF, most prominent The Eaton Collection at UC-Riverside, a collection with more than 300,000 items. It’s supposed to be the largest SFF library. And there are a lot others dedicated to our small literary world.

The author makes a case of the trinity of libraries: the creators, the scientists, and of course we the nerds. As the curator of the SFF collection at Cushing, Texas, he takes care to include diversity – writers of color, women writers, LGBTQ writers etc. And they take care to conserve also the nerd world for later research, like fanzines, or filksongs.

I was very interested in learning about those U.S. libraries, as I only know of one specialized in SFF near my hometown, and that is in Germany: the “Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar“, which is not that little in comparison to the “world largest”, as it has 291,000 items. The collection not only has SF&F works, but everything from the broader spectrum of phantastic literature – horror, fairy tales, myths, saga, travel and adventure literature. The Grimm Brothers worked not that far away, so it’s no wonder that they have a lot of fairy tales. They started in 1987 and continued growing ever since. It is a center for culture, science and education – my Tolkien society organized a Tolkien Reading day for several years, but there are also full conventions like the European Jules Verne convention there.

I can assess, that sitting within those vast amounts of books of my interest is a huge joy. Sadly, the library is currently closed due to the Pandemic, but I’m sure it will open again once things look better. Til then, some fotos from this library might help.