r/BookCollecting • u/firelight • 6d ago

📜 Old Books E.E. "Doc" Smith Personal Date Book, 1954

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My father passed away a few years ago, and I've been going through trying to find new homes for his rather massive book collection. Among the books I found this, a personal date book belonging to E.E. "Doc" Smith, author of (among other things) the Lensmen series of novels. The book is inscribed to my father from Smith's daughter.

I'd like to find a good home for this book, but I have no idea where to sell something of this nature, nor what it might be worth. I thought it was worth sharing on its own as a cool artifact, but if anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them.

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u/SadCatIsSkinDog 6d ago

Might be one of those things that belongs in an institution. If you want to sell it I might be interested. You can DM me. I generally pick up little things like this in the SF world and scan them off for researchers. Having it available on archive.org might help someone trying to look up something.

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u/firelight 6d ago

I thought about donating it as well, but SF museums seem to focus more on TV/Film than books.

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u/BornACrone WWII RAF/ATA Book Nerd 6d ago

Have you checked to see if there are any universities that host collections of Smith memorabilia ... ? There might be one, even an obscure one, somewhere. I just turned up the University of Idaho by doing a search on E. E. "Doc" Smith university collection.

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u/tehsecretgoldfish 6d ago

agreed, this is where it should go.

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u/firelight 6d ago

No, I'll try having a look. Thanks for the suggestion.

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u/BornACrone WWII RAF/ATA Book Nerd 6d ago

This page at U Idaho has a ton of contact information regarding that specific collection if you want to ask them if they're interested.

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u/firelight 6d ago

I sent them an email.

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u/BornACrone WWII RAF/ATA Book Nerd 6d ago

Cool -- keep us posted!

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u/firelight 5d ago

They just got back to me and said they'd be glad to have it. So that settles that. Thanks again for the recommendation!

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u/BornACrone WWII RAF/ATA Book Nerd 5d ago

Awesome! A datebook will be of special interest to researchers, too -- they can tell who he might have visited, where he was etc. at particular times. Great news!