Andrea Vetter has a dream job for anyone who likes books — the physical, three-dimensional, real kind rather than the electronic version.
She’s a marketing office assistant at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County who, among other things, helps social media specialist Adam Baker find interesting holdings worthy of Facebook or Instagram posts.
“I walk around through the stacks looking for books that might go with a program or a holiday, or a beautiful vintage book,” Vetter says. “I work with (Baker) and photograph those and we put them up on our social media pages to let the public know of these great books that might not be on view to see.
“In my many journeys through the stacks, I just started finding these really small books that were really interesting and different,” she continues.
During one of these journeys, Vetter found Who Wrote That?, a tiny red volume that featured quotes from other books and was in its own delicate folded protective cover with a tie around it. She brought it to Baker. “I pulled it out because I didn’t even know what it was,” Vetter says.
The small book, written by one W.S.W. Anson, has a long title that also reads, “a dictionary of quotations of literary origin in common use; together with precise references to their sources and some parallel passages.” It was published in 1904 as part of Routledge’s Miniature Reference Library series. At some point, the library put the artful cover on it for protection.
Baker’s suggestion was to organize a physical exhibit; the Main Library’s Popular Library department was selected. “We wanted to get them all together visually, not just on social media, but where people could come view them,” Vetter says. “I just started to scour the stacks and tried to get a variety of subject matter.”
The resultant show, Tiny Tomes, features 71 of the library’s smallest books. It is on display in six cases through March 13. It’s a quirky and thoroughly charming exhibit. Who knew so many miniature books of all types existed, or that their subject matter could be so unusual and their graphic design so beautiful?
The smallest in the collection at two-and-a-half-by-four inches, Little Pretty Pocket Book, is from the children’s collection; the largest is an 1896 novel by J.G. Holland called Sevenoaks and is four-by-six-and-a-half inches.
There are also several handsome, serious books from the Observer’s Pocket Series, which started in 1937 and was active until the 1980s. Today, they are highly collectible. Five are in Tiny Tomes, devoted to zoo animals, cats, lichens, ferns and automobiles.
The Observer’s Pocket Series explains one reason such small books were published for adults, although it seems archaic in this time when everyone always carries a smart phone with them.
“A lot of them are guides or just references, especially nature books that are field guides,” Vetter says. “Even the ones about shipping or even guns were held — people would want to have them with them.”
But there are exceptions. There are four “flip books” — as you turn the pages quickly, the photographs approximate continuous movement — devoted to sporting-meet events like the broad jump and published in 1939. A note on one’s title page helpfully informs the reader of the proper flipping time for correct action. (You can see a video of a book in action on the Public Library’s Facebook page; you can also visit the Tiny Tomes exhibit at cincinnatilibrary.org.)
Unusually, the tiniest book in the library’s entire collection isn’t in Tiny Tomes. Titled The Smallest Book in the World, it is a 2002 “tiny leather-bound book that is 2.4-by-2.9 millimeters, a mere eighth of an inch high,” according to Lisa Mauch, a content specialist with the library. “It contains an exclusive alphabet created especially for this little volume by renowned German typographer Joshua Reichert.”
Fittingly, or perhaps perversely, it is permanently on display in the Cincinnati Room, inside a case that also holds one the largest and most valuable books, John James Audubon’s Birds of America.
CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN: srosen@citybeat.com
This article appears in Feb 10-17, 2016.