Cataloging Sir Elton John’s pictures guide assortment at Emory – Emory Libraries Weblog

This summer season, I had the extraordinary privilege of interning with Emory University’s Woodruff Library Resource Description staff. As an undergraduate getting into my ultimate yr and planning to pursue an MLIS, this expertise provided me hands-on perception into the world of cataloging. Now, it may very well be assumed that I’d be engaged on commonplace supplies like course reserves or textbooks. In actuality, I discovered myself cataloging uncommon, limited-edition, and signed pictures books donated by none aside from Sir Elton John. I had the chance to proceed the work of a earlier summer season intern, Mia McCown from Agnes Scott College, who started the challenge the yr earlier than.

Emory’s Randy Gue and Jordan Ok. Putt, assistant director to the Sir Elton John Photography Collection, at Elton John’s dwelling reviewing his guide assortment.

While it will not be broadly recognized, Sir Elton maintained a house in Atlanta from the Nineties till 2023, when he determined to promote his penthouse. As a part of that transfer, he selected to donate his private pictures guide assortment and Emory University was given first rights. According to an electronic mail obtained by the library from John’s employees, “Elton suggested the idea of donating to the Emory library so that his books could have an impact after leaving his collection.” Art historical past librarian Kim Collins and Randy Gue, Rose Library’s assistant director of assortment growth, had been invited to go to Sir Elton’s dwelling and chosen roughly 2,000 titles for Emory’s collections.

Emory’s effort to catalog, home, and protect this assortment and make it accessible to Emory group was profiled by Rough Draft Atlanta. So far, 1,065 of these books have been cataloged. While my contribution represents solely a small piece of this bigger challenge, it has been deeply significant. This internship not solely sharpened my cataloging expertise but in addition gave me a novel window into the world Sir Elton John curated by pictures.

One of essentially the most memorable points of working with the gathering was how intimate most of the books felt. Some held printed emails between Elton’s personal artwork purchaser and gallery curators. Others featured sticky notes marking particular photos he might have supposed to buy. Many of the books had been signed by the photographers or authors themselves together with a replica of “Blackface” by David Levinthal, who makes use of toy-sized props and lighting to depict scenes on struggle, voyeurism, race, and popular culture. In one guide, I even got here throughout a handwritten be aware from his husband, David Furnish. The books themselves span a lot of Sir Elton’s life. The earliest titles within the assortment date again to 1972, and the latest had been printed as late as 2022. The books had been printed in additional than 25 international locations and in over 15 languages. One standout is “Marilyn in New York,” a German-language title that includes pictures by Ed Feingersh from the Michael Ochs Archives.

Students and school took half in a collage and zine-making train on Oct. 6, 2024, utilizing the mud jackets of books donated by Sir Elton John.

Given the dimensions of the gathering, Emory has approached the cataloging with each thoroughness and creativity. In the method of cataloging, mud jackets are usually eliminated and discarded. But in an effort to scale back waste, Emory hosted a zine-making and collage workshop known as “HANDS ON: An art making study break with Sir Elton John’s photography books” utilizing the jackets as artwork materials. Students and school gathered to create items impressed by and made out of the eliminated guide covers. It was a fantastic method to rejoice the gathering whereas upholding the sustainability practices so vital in fashionable librarianship.

Of course, due to the scale and fragility of many volumes, the gathering is being saved on the Library Service Center (LSC), a climate-controlled, high-density facility collectively operated by Emory and Georgia Tech. While patrons can’t browse its 32-foot-high stacks in individual, all supplies are totally accessible upon request.

In my work, I additionally explored how these books are labeled. Looking at Library of Congress topic headings, two classes emerged most often: TR647 (targeted on creative pictures exhibitions) and TR681 (portraits of particular teams or people). Other frequent classifications targeted on the intervals the pictures had been taken, particularly works from 1952–2000 and 2001 to the current. Some books had been uniquely labeled, like one below NK7398, coping with jewellery by particular artists, and one other below DS485, a historic work on a lesser-known area in India.

As of now, the books which were cataloged are searchable on Emory Libraries’ web site utilizing the phrase “gift of Sir Elton John” and will also be discovered on WorldCat, making them discoverable to researchers and pictures fans worldwide. Emory remains to be within the strategy of cataloging the remaining titles.

This internship taught me not solely find out how to describe and protect books, however how libraries protect tales. Sir Elton John’s pictures guide assortment is greater than a set of gorgeous objects. It is an attention-grabbing perspective into his passions, his aesthetic, and his perception in artwork as one thing price sharing. Being a part of that course of, even in a small method, was an expertise price remembering.

—by Lily Brickmeier, 2025 summer season intern, Robert W. Woodruff Library