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[Narration] Since its founding in 1812,
the American Antiquarian Society has cast a wide
and inclusive net.
No printed item was considered too trivial or too mundane.
Such collecting has been invaluable
to researchers who have come here.
[David McCullough] Well I believe you need
to know not just what your characters wrote,
but what they read.
And that includes reading the books they read,
but it also includes reading the newspapers they read.
What did someone like John Adams see in the daily paper?
[Jill Lepore] My students today don't read newspapers
except online.
It's really important to go and actually hold it,
because what a whole generation, and generations to come,
don't understand is what it meant to hold this large piece
of paper, this sheet that was folded over.
18th century newspapers are all four pages.
It took sixteen hours just to set the type.
They have to be printed once a week.
When you hold it in your hand you can think about what it was
like to sit at a table and hold it in the 18th century.
You can see what story, where you line
of sight moves across the page.
You can see why you might read the runaway ads
because of the way they appear on the fold.
[William Fowler] There is nothing like being
in the presence of original materials
and having access to them.
You are in the actual presence of history.
[Narration] The Society holds some two millions copies
of newspapers from all over North America,
many of which exist nowhere else.
The collection also includes manuscripts,
graphic arts materials, pamphlets, and books -
in some cases several copies of the same title, for good reason.
[William Reese] People think that a book only consists
of a text, and that you can digitize that text
and then you don't need the physical object.
But a book is a whole series of texts.
There is a text in the annotations in the margin,
there is a text in ownership
and therefore potentially the readership in the book.
There is a text in how the book is put together
and how it's made, the materials it's made out of.
They speak to the time and place that the person who read lived.
One of the great parts
of the A.A.S 's collection is the Mather family library.
In each successive generation they added to this library,
and they added to the annotations in the margins.
One of my favorite quotes
of all these annotations is the annotation
that Cotton Mather made in a book.
There was a book attacking him and attacking his family.
And he wrote in the margin a quote from the Bible:
"If mine enemy hath written a book, I will take it
and bind it unto myself as a crown of thorns unto me."
[Narration] We know a something about Isaiah Thomas's passion
for collecting through his own note written in a copy
of the first book published in North America.
[William Reese] Well the Bay Psalm Book has always been a
legendary rarity.
It was almost impossible to find in Thomas's time.
And Thomas, who was seeking to build a great collection
of American imprints, looked all over the place for decades
without being able to find one.
And so when he finally obtained this in 1820,
he was very proud of himself.
And he wrote in the front this: "After advertising for a copy
of this book and making enquiry in many places
in New England etcetera I was not able to obtain
or even to hear of another.
This copy is therefore invaluable and must be preserved
with the greatest care.
Isaiah Thomas September 20th 1820.