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Mark Dvoretsky’s library donated to Adi Akhmad Club
August 9, 2017
Big chess book collections that have taken years to accumulate would seem to be prime for donation to universities and public libraries.
Unfortunately, this is not so. To house and catalogue a collection of several thousand volumes is not easy. It takes expertise and a great deal of money and even then you may not have the public, scholars and writers using it in significant numbers.
A National Chess Library was set up in England and made up of contributions from George Diggle, Sir Richard Clarke, Harry Golombek, John Robinson and R.G. Wade among others.
But sadly, it ran into problems of upkeep:
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic....lombek+library
This letter from May of 2015 from George Jelliss in the EC Forum:
I am concerned to learn that after only seven years the University of Brighton in Hastings has decided not to continue to host the National Chess Library, where it was offered a "permanent" home, and that the ECF has decided to put the collections into storage where it will not be possible for anyone to consult them.
If neither body is prepared to sustain the project, I would like to suggest the setting up of a separate National Chess Library charity with the aim of lobbying for funds and sponsorship to maintain the library in some accessible form. This would not necessarily involve some other academic institution but simply acquiring a property where the Library could be housed and made available to visitors on a regular basis.
The problem with housing such a collection within a University Library is that the subject of chess is peripheral to their interests, and with changes of personnel there is the danger of the collection being made more and more difficult of access until it ends up in a storage room in the basement, as has happened at the University of Brighton in Hastings.
________
Some solutions are volunteer cataloguing and lodging the collection elsewhere, scanning all the books and making them available on the Internet and selling them on the used book market.
Happily, some collections find use as in the following story from chessdom.com
Mark Dvoretsky’s library donated to Adi Akhmad Club
Aug 9, 2017
The chess library of a famous coach Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016) was solemnly donated to Adi Akhmad Sports Club (Troitskoe, the Republic of Ingushetia) at the Palace of Culture of Nazran.
Inna Dvoretskaya, Leonid Dvoretsky, Boris Gelfand, Ernesto Inarkiev (for many years he had been Dvoretsky’s trainee), President of ISCU Alexander Kostiev and Editor-in-chief of the RCF’s website Vladimir Barsky took part in the event.
Mark Dvoretsky had been collecting chess books since school days. He was very particular about their quality: only the most interesting and useful (in his opinion) books were selected for his library.
Pupils of Adi Akhmad Chess School will get more than 600 volumes, including all the books written by Dvoretsky himself. The speakers talked to the young participants of the Tower Concord Festival about Mark Dvoretsky, his searching for truth in chess and his readiness to share his knowledge and experience. All Dvoretsky’s books are bestsellers, and it’s hardy possible to find a strong grandmaster who is not acquainted with his works.
As President of the Chess Federation of Ingushetia, Ernesto Inarkiev expressed confidence that Mark Dvoretsky’s library would help to train a worthy chess generation in the Republic.
http://www.chessdom.com/mark-dvorets...i-akhmad-club/
August 9, 2017
Big chess book collections that have taken years to accumulate would seem to be prime for donation to universities and public libraries.
Unfortunately, this is not so. To house and catalogue a collection of several thousand volumes is not easy. It takes expertise and a great deal of money and even then you may not have the public, scholars and writers using it in significant numbers.
A National Chess Library was set up in England and made up of contributions from George Diggle, Sir Richard Clarke, Harry Golombek, John Robinson and R.G. Wade among others.
But sadly, it ran into problems of upkeep:
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic....lombek+library
This letter from May of 2015 from George Jelliss in the EC Forum:
I am concerned to learn that after only seven years the University of Brighton in Hastings has decided not to continue to host the National Chess Library, where it was offered a "permanent" home, and that the ECF has decided to put the collections into storage where it will not be possible for anyone to consult them.
If neither body is prepared to sustain the project, I would like to suggest the setting up of a separate National Chess Library charity with the aim of lobbying for funds and sponsorship to maintain the library in some accessible form. This would not necessarily involve some other academic institution but simply acquiring a property where the Library could be housed and made available to visitors on a regular basis.
The problem with housing such a collection within a University Library is that the subject of chess is peripheral to their interests, and with changes of personnel there is the danger of the collection being made more and more difficult of access until it ends up in a storage room in the basement, as has happened at the University of Brighton in Hastings.
________
Some solutions are volunteer cataloguing and lodging the collection elsewhere, scanning all the books and making them available on the Internet and selling them on the used book market.
Happily, some collections find use as in the following story from chessdom.com
Mark Dvoretsky’s library donated to Adi Akhmad Club
Aug 9, 2017
The chess library of a famous coach Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016) was solemnly donated to Adi Akhmad Sports Club (Troitskoe, the Republic of Ingushetia) at the Palace of Culture of Nazran.
Inna Dvoretskaya, Leonid Dvoretsky, Boris Gelfand, Ernesto Inarkiev (for many years he had been Dvoretsky’s trainee), President of ISCU Alexander Kostiev and Editor-in-chief of the RCF’s website Vladimir Barsky took part in the event.
Mark Dvoretsky had been collecting chess books since school days. He was very particular about their quality: only the most interesting and useful (in his opinion) books were selected for his library.
Pupils of Adi Akhmad Chess School will get more than 600 volumes, including all the books written by Dvoretsky himself. The speakers talked to the young participants of the Tower Concord Festival about Mark Dvoretsky, his searching for truth in chess and his readiness to share his knowledge and experience. All Dvoretsky’s books are bestsellers, and it’s hardy possible to find a strong grandmaster who is not acquainted with his works.
As President of the Chess Federation of Ingushetia, Ernesto Inarkiev expressed confidence that Mark Dvoretsky’s library would help to train a worthy chess generation in the Republic.
http://www.chessdom.com/mark-dvorets...i-akhmad-club/
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