varied. It includes references to other writings of a period, inventories, wills, household account books, diaries, and the collectors’ personal papers. It is also available in book dealer and auction house catalogs of collections and their business archives, printed catalogs of collections, manuscript catalogs of collections, the collections themselves, provenance evidence such as bookplates, signatures, and inscriptions, marginalia, book stamps (ink or embossed), library acquisitions records and correspondence, and existing secondary sources. Until recent decades research on private libraries has been plentiful, although mainly descriptive. This large body of primary and secondary evidence now provides a solid base for analytical and interpretive research. It can be used not only to write library history, but also to assess the past roles of books, reading, and personal libraries in society. -Judith Overmier, Encyclopedia of Library History (1994), 517