Talk:Chess libraries

Baron von der Lasa
Baron von der Lasa collected a chess library that at the end of the nineteenth century was considered comprehensive. It is still intact at Kornik Castle near Poznan, Poland. Is it entirely insignificant? J S Ayer 02:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Relative Sizes
The Cleveland Public Library's webpage on the John G. White Collection says that it contains 32,568 volumes. This casts a shadow on the article's statement that the Dutch Royal Library has the second largest collection with 40,000 volumes. Would anyone care to address this issue? J S Ayer 03:19, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Paolo Ciancarini
In your page my chess library is described as the largest private library on chess. I am flattered, but unfortunately this is not true. I am sure that several people own larger libraries than mine, e.g. GM Schmidt in Germany or Mr. DeLucia in New York. Also Mr. Karpov, former World Champion, is told to own a large chess library. Probably my library is simply the only one which has a catalog publicly available on the Web, and periodically updated.

Paolo Ciancarini


 * I have taken out the material in the article about Mr. Ciancarini's collection. As best I can tell from his catalogue, without actually counting the items one by one, he has something on the order of 2,000 books and magazines. There is no way that is even close to a world record. Lothar Schmid's chess library is commonly said (e.g. by The Oxford Companion to Chess and Golombek's Chess Encyclopedia) to be the largest in the world. Assiac (Heinrich Fraenkel) in his 1974 book The Delights of Chess described Schmid's library as having 15 or 16,000 volumes. More recently, Susan Polgar has stated that the library now has over 20,000 books. As Mr. Ciancarini frankly acknowledges above, his library "is simply the only one which has a catalog publicly available on the Web, and periodically updated". Given that his library is roughly an order of magnitude smaller than Schmid's, I do not think that is enough to make it notable. Krakatoa (talk) 01:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Dutch and Hastings collections
The article is in dire need of more sources and facts about the Dutch and Hastings collections. No sources are given for either. Moreover, it is not even specified how many volumes are in the Hastings collection, nor is there any detail about "a number of unique items relating to British chess clubs". What number? What kind of items? Krakatoa (talk) 01:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I question whether the Hastings collection is worth mentioning in the article. If you go to the search box and enter the keyword "chess", you only get 2,161 items. That is far less than the John G. White collection, and apparently also the Dutch collection. I am sure that there are a great many private collections larger than that, as well. Krakatoa (talk) 02:32, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Since no one has responded and there is no showing that the Hastings chess library is notable, I'm deleting mention of it. Krakatoa (talk) 20:30, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that's the right thing to do. Quale (talk) 21:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Other notable public library collections?
A search of the State Library of Victoria for "chess" returns 10,151 hits. According to, "The National Chess Library, the third largest public chess library in the world is held within the University of Brighton's Hastings Campus. The English Chess Federation library now has a permanent home in Hastings, a town with a long association with the game of chess and home to the annual Hastings International Chess Congress." Probably these collections also merit mention in the article? Krakatoa (talk) 04:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

"The MV Anderson Chess Collection, with over 13,000 volumes of books, magazines and tournament reports, is one of the largest chess collections in the world.

Five thousand recent volumes and the latest issues of the world’s major chess magazines are kept in the Library's Chess Room. There are almost 3000 volumes on openings such as the Sicilian Dragon, King’s Indian, Complete Hedgehog, and Hippopotamus. The collection includes books about the history of chess, chess in film and art, and even novels in which chess is a central theme.

A feature of the collection is the many older books on chess; the earliest is a leaf from The game and playe of the chesse, published by Caxton in 1483.

The collection owes its origins to the generosity of MV Anderson, who donated his collection of 6700 volumes between 1959 and 1966. The Library adds several hundred volumes to the collection each year. Others have made generous donations of chess sets.

Players preparing for tournaments, chess commentators and chess historians are all frequent users of the MV Anderson Chess Collection." Krakatoa (talk) 04:53, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

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