Jennifer Schuessler, “Robert Caro’s Papers Find a Home,” New York Times, January 9, 2020, p. C1.
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The books are already monumental. And now Mr. Caro is getting monumental treatment himself.
The New-York Historical Society has acquired Mr. Caro’s papers — some 200 linear feet of material that will be open to researchers in its library. And just a as important to the 84-year-old Mr. Caro, it will create a permanent installation int its museum galleries dedicated to showing how he got the job done.
The archive will be among the largest of an individual in the historical society's collection. It includes research notes, drafts, annotated news clippings, correspondence, and other documents, from once-classified memos excavated at the L.B.J. Presidential Library to at least one artifact literally coaxed out of a secret trunk.
COMMENT
The article describes an archival collection acquired by a special library. The collection originates from a research strategy that includes library research as well as other kinds of documentation.
The article also describes Caro’s research process as “a kind of museum of a vanishing analog world.” As a consequence of his careful gathering, his research materials can now be used by other historians. This kind of idiosyncratic individual collecting stands in contrast to automated approval plans the mean every library buys the same things. There’s a photo of a typewriter, and the article says he has more than one just in case he needs spare parts.
