Staff Writer 

 Albert Howard once spent $15 dollars on an antique book album he discovered in a New York bookstore on a sunny August afternoon.

“My rent, at that time was $30 a month, so it was quite a decision,” he said. 

That was 51 years ago, and Howard has been buying antique books – sometimes 20 in a single month – ever since. 

“There is a squirrel instinct,” Howard said, pulling his arms towards his body as if to horde an invisible treasure. “They’re like acorns.”

Today, Howard’s collection totals more than 1,300 antique works, ranging from dictionaries and informational pamphlets to children’s books and political flyers. Eventually, all of his collection – now valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars – will move from his South Portland home to the University of Southern Maine’s Mildred Brenner Glickman Special Collections Area under an agreement he signed with the college in 2004, Special Collections Director Suzie Brock said. 

“The real benefit to Maine and USM is that we have the resources you expect Harvard and Yale to have,” Brock said. “I don’t think many [USM] students have ever touched a book that was 200 years old before.”

Last week, Howard donated five 14^th and 15^th-century Greek and Roman dictionaries to the university to honor Selma Botman’s inauguration as the 10th president of USM. While it may go against the “squirrel instinct,” Howard said donating the books made sense considering the resources at the university.

“My alma mater has one of everything and three of most, they really don’t need [the books],” he said. “I knew they were making this special collections area as part of the renovation of the old cookie factory and the fact that I had been here for so long, I thought, ‘Well, give it here.’” 

Howard, who worked as a cataloger for the university for 35 years, said the 500-year-old dictionaries he donated are much more than a reference for word meanings. 

“They’re really everything,” he said. “They go on and on about who said what and actually quote many lost works. I don’t know who I admire more, the writer or the printer.”

Howard said his Latin and Greek literature degree from Brown University and a graduate degree in antique literature help him determine a good buy, but it takes instinct to pluck the right book off the shelf in the first place. 

“Sometimes I look at who printed it, who published it, but there’s something that says ‘Look at me.’ Don’t ask me why,” Howard said. “It’s like a mechanic listening to a motor and saying ‘OK, that’s your alternator or a broken left rear spring.’ Having been around them for so long helps.”

Nowadays, Howard said rare book lovers have to be as computer savvy as they are passionate about finding the right book. Online book auctions and rare book collection sites have forced modern scholars to adapt in how they shop, he said. 

 “Now you have to jump immediately,” Howard said. “I’m concerned that it will become a matter of whichever curator has the most funds to spend right away. The library is going to have to think around the whole electronic presence.” 

Unlike most book donors, Brock said Howard has made a point of remaining involved with the university and the books he donates. 

She said he has conversed with professors and students alike – who use the books to learn about early literature – to help pass along not just the physical books, but the history behind them. 

“To have a donor who is really plugged into the university is unusual and incredibly wonderful. A majority of people who donate literature do it just to clear some room in their homes,” she said. 

“There’s a great deal of the history of the book that isn’t in the text.”

Howard said many books in his collection portray the values of the people who wrote them, such as political flyers from the reformation period that include profane insults directed at opposing parties, and a children’s book that focuses on a child’s ability to memorize the different parts of a sailing ship. 

In addition to societal values, Howard said scholars have used antique books to record the history of publishing as it evolved into today’s industry.

“There’s so much you can absorb through some sort of osmosis,” Howard said. “It’s all part of the background noise – the static – which I think has value.”

When it comes to amassing a classic literature collection, Howard said scholars should be ready to shell out more than money. He said he has moved his entire collection with him from Connecticut to Canada as he found work, then to Standish where he lived before moving to South Portland three years ago.

“You have to be interested and be prepared to spend a lot of time with it,” he said. “Don’t look at it as an investment because you can make mistakes.”

To learn more about Albert Howard’s collection, visit www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/0607release/Ahoward.htm.

Staff Writer Nate Jones may be reached at 282-4337 ext. 233.