Salo Wittmayer Baron was the first person to hold a chair in Jewish history at an American university and the author of numerous groundbreaking studies in the field. In an essay first published in 1989, he tells the story of his passion for collecting books, and how he assembled his enormous private library, most of which now resides at Stanford University:
As a child of four (in 1899) in Galicia I was introduced to the study of the Bible and its various interpreters. Less than two years later my father paraded me before relatives and friends as a student of the Talmud together with its commentaries. At the same time I excelled in mathematics and the game of chess. . . .
Soon thereafter the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) introduced me to the world of journalism. I began to devour every page on that subject in the Polish, German, and Hebrew newspapers and magazines that arrived at our home. For some reason, when I was about nine years old, I became an admirer of the British empire. For hours I would pore over a map, figuring out how many days it would take to travel by ship from London to Sydney, for example. . . .
But not until I was a teenager did I become a passionate buyer of books. Both of my parents had been book-lovers. My mother had a good general knowledge of Polish and German literature, which she cultivated throughout her life. She also spoke French fluently. With her aid I learned to buy books by mail, especially from major German booksellers. Since I received a small weekly allowance from my parents, I established at the age of fourteen or fifteen a regular exchange with one particular book dealer in Berlin, who sent me his catalogues; from them I would choose one or more items. Later he would choose one or two recently arrived titles that he knew would be of interest to me. He sent them directly to me with the understanding that I could return them, in case I found them less than desirable. In this way I assembled quite a collection of German and later also Hebrew books. This marked the beginning of my book-collecting mania.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/193274/a-memoir-of-my-library