Monash Rare Books’ Librarian – over and out

OVERALL HE HAS BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS AND LEFT A GREAT LEGACY.

Richard Overell, the Monash University Library Rare Books’ Librarian, has retired; giving up a dream job of adding books and other printed material including ephemera to the Louis Matheson Library.

Richard was appointed 26 years ago and the collection has grown from about 10,000-12, 000 items to about 170,000. These new items include much of interest to historians, bibliophiles, ephemerists and the curious.  Richard brought a scholar’s interest to the collection and collection building. He also brought a sense of humour and a love for all these printed no matter how small or odd they might be.

He leaves the collection and its users in safe hands. Stephen Herrin will be in charge of the collection until the end of the year. Stephen has worked in Monash University Library Rare Books for about 4 years now. Before that he was a reference librarian.

Stephen came to librarianship from a literary background. He worked as the research assistant for the History of the Book in Australia project. Australian printing history is his main interest. His PhD looked at the Australian printing industry and personnel and how the printed output was influenced up to the year 1914. That was done at the School of Information Management and Systems at Monash (2005). He has published a book about the printing history of Ballarat, The Development of Printing in Nineteenth Century Ballarat (2000). He doesn’t collect personally but finds Australian pamphlets and pamphlet publishing very interesting. Here is a final ephemera ‘show & tell’ from Richard and the Monash Rare Books Collection.

Stephen will keep us up to date with ephemeral material from the Monash Rare Books Collection.