Vosper and Rubinstein
The acquisition of the Ellis and Fitzpatrick collections gave impetus for the appointment of specialized staff and the provision of separate quarters for the rare materials. In 1953 Special Collections was established and its first curator, Joseph Rubinstein, was appointed to develop and care for the University's rare books and manuscripts. A native New Yorker, educated at the University of Arizona and the University of California, Berkeley, Rubinstein was a man of great erudition, with a keen memory, an unrivaled fund of bibliographical knowledge, fluency in several languages, and a thorough familiarity with the book market. An excellent teacher, he welcomed undergraduates to the department and established its dedication to the support of research and teaching. His ten years at KU shaped most of the Department's major collecting areas for the future and he continued to help build the collections after he left the University for the life of an antiquarian bookseller.
Rubinstein's appointment coincided with a period of great expansion in the activities of the entire library system under the leadership of a bibliophile chancellor, Franklin D. Murphy, and a remarkable librarian, Robert Vosper.
______________________________________________________________________
9. "The Vosper Hours," France, ca 1470.
Named in honor of Robert Vosper, director of the University of Kansas Libraries from 1951 to 1960.
During his nine years as Director of Libraries, Robert Vosper built the University of Kansas Libraries collections from less than mediocrity to near excellence. He founded and encouraged Special Collections and it was on his watch that our disparate beginnings became recognized as the foundation collections for a major rare book and manuscripts library. Such wide-ranging contributions made by a director tend to merge imperceptibly with the history of the library itself, remembered as "the Vosper years" or some such phrase, but not connected to any specific book or collection. It seemed to us, when Vosper left Kansas for the directorship of the UCLA Libraries, that if other contributions, inevitably lesser than his, were memorialized in collection names, his name should be attached to some object of particular merit.
Among our mediaeval manuscripts, which are mainly text manuscripts, is one book of particular beauty, a fine French 15th century Book of Hours, acquired from Harry Levinson (bought at the Sotheby auction of 7 December 1953, lot 30, from the library of Miss Priscilla Gordon). Its spectacular appearance and the attention and enthusiasm which it generated in our readers led Special Collections to name this fine book The Vosper Hours, ensuring that Robert Vosper's name is remembered whenever the manuscript is read or cited.
____________________________________________________________________