The grand democracy of book collecting: anyone can become an expert. Just start with an interest.

Roberts' collection, officially named the Kathleen V. Roberts Collection of Decorated Publishers' Bindings, will provide the museum with an element that it has been missing: an expertly curated selection of bindings made by hand between 1830 and the 1950s. 

"I'm the only one I know that has amassed a collection [like this] for the purpose of study," said Roberts, a former children's librarian at Burlington's Fletcher Free Library and an adjunct professor in children's literature at Saint Michael's College. 

Her books are arranged by decade, an ordering system she learned when she studied bindings with Sue Allen at the University of Virginia's Rare Book School. Allen, according to Roberts, "singlehandedly put this field of study [of bookbindings] on the map." 

Chronological organization of her collection allows Roberts to show how broad historical transitions affected bookmaking, which she did for a reporter with great excitement. She explained that bindings made during the Civil War, for example, used primarily deep green and brown cloth, and had little or no gilt stamping because metal was usurped for war efforts.
By the late 1800s, it was fashionable for families to keep full library sets in their parlors as a sign of status, but the books were rarely read. The result was elaborately decorated book covers whose pages were filled with slipshod printing on cheap paper. 

Roberts considers her work "a composite study of art, history, design and commerce" — an enticing rabbit hole indeed. One particularly fascinating artifact is an 1885 salesman's sample for a book called What Can a Woman Do.At first glance, it appears to be a sort of Franken-volume with incongruous pages and different bindings mashed into a unit. In fact, this is not a book in the traditional sense but a tool for selling books, which the traveling salesman would use to show customers his wares' customization options. This particular sample comes with blank order forms and even includes "The Key," a pamphlet filled with detailed notes and talking points for the salesman. 

"There are people who only collect salesman's samples," Roberts said.