One of the most common questions I get from undergraduate students during instruction sessions is some variation of “How do materials end up in Special Collections?” There are many answers to this question, of course, but one of the most important ways we receive materials is through donations. With our rare book collections, we are particularly fortunate when collectors decide to donate their personal collections. Book collectors often spend a lifetime amassing carefully curated collections that reflect deep personal interests and expertise. This is certainly the case with FSU Special Collections & Archives’ newest rare book collection: The Marsha Gontarski Children’s Literature Collection.
Marsha Gontarski (Ph.D, FSU, 1993) has a background in Education with a research focus on visual literacy in children’s literature. Her children’s literature collection contains over 1,000 titles, ranging from classic fairy-tales to contemporary pieces featuring modern art. The wide variety of authors, illustrators, styles, sizes, shapes, and languages in the collection will be of interest to those studying Education, Literature, Illustration, History of Text Technologies, and Book Arts – not to mention those who want to feel nostalgic about their favorite childhood books! Every member of our staff who has seen the collection coming out of bins and being put on shelves has found something that strikes a cord – “I remember that book!” – which is surely a testament to the lasting impression left by our earliest memories of reading.
After a couple of trips to the Gontarski’s residence, Special Collections’ staff transported the books in about twenty bins, which were then unloaded in our stacks. The next step in the process will be to create an inventory of the donation before they are sent to cataloging and given records and call numbers. Since the books were donated with notes from the collector about significant illustrators, authors, and groupings of texts, it will be important for us to transfer these notes to the collection inventory and preserve information that could be useful to future researchers. In the next post in this series, I will share with you the progress being made in the accession process as well as a few highlights from the Marsha Gontarski Children’s Literature Collection.
Illuminations 
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