Over the weekend we watched Freaks & Errors: A Rare Collection, a fantastic documentary on stamp collecting. Directed by Mark Cwiakala, this film explores the world of philately through interviews with dealers and collectors.
The film showcased a few famous stamps:
These stamps are valuable, famous, and have interesting stories centered around their provenance. However, what resonated with me in this film were the explanations on why the collectors became and remain interested in stamp collecting. One collector explained it as a desire and ability to bring order out of chaos.
That's what librarians do! Bring order out of the information chaos. We do it by cataloging materials using MARC and other standards. We do it by creating research guides using LibGuides. We do it by creating user-friendly web pages that enable our patrons to easily find what they need.
There are not any established standards for organizing philatelic materials into collections or albums (there are standards for exhibiting, but that's a post for another day). Philatelists are able to organize how they desire - by country, topic, release date, acquired date, etc.
I would like nothing better than to have a meet-up with the folks in the overlapping bit of the above Venn diagram.
