The International Institute of Social History has a time-honoured tradition of writing its own history, as might be expected from one of the world's leading centres of collecting social history. A Usable Collection, Essays in honour of Jaap Kloosterman on collecting social history (Amsterdam University Press, June 2014) fits into this tradition.
The 35 essays brought together in this volume in honour of IISH's former director Jaap Kloosterman, who stepped down in 2008, give a rare insight into the history of the institute and the development of its collections in particular.
'A Usable Collection' is not a standard liber amicorum, but a solid piece of work about a subject particularly dear to Jaap Kloosterman: collections, libraries, and archives. The first section, 'The Emergence of of Social History Collections', offers a variety of perspectives on the early history of social history collections, as practised by the Institute's founder N.W. Posthumus. The next section, 'The European Collections of the IISH', is focused on what could be called the classical core of the IISH collection and its relations with European sister institutes. Finally, 'The IISH goes Global', brings us to the most recent emergence of globalization in both research policy and collection development.
A Usable Collection. Essays in Honour of Jaap Kloosterman on Collecting Social History, Aad Blok, Jan Lucassen, Huub Sanders (eds) Amsterdam University Press 2014 (ISBN 978908964688,489 pp.)
http://socialhistory.org/en/news/usable-collection
Also available in the OAPEN library at:
http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=496214