Who was Susan B. Anthony’s Bronte of choice? How many dictionaries did Alexander Hamilton own? What non-fiction books did Ian Fleming have at hand when he wrote about 007? If these are the burning questions keeping you up at night, check out LibraryThing’s Legacy Libraries. (http://www.librarything.com/legacylibraries). Dating back to 2007, LibraryThing has been working to gather information on famous people’s libraries (Thomas Jefferson’s library was the first). The famous individual has a profile and a catalog listing of his or her library. (Be warned, not all information is complete and there are many works in progress.)
The crowd sourced project took on a new direction in 2008 as it began working on the Early American Libraries Project. The Project’s goal is to create a database of America’s private libraries up to 1825. There’s data on more than 1,250 libraries so far, including the libraries of many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Now, should you ever desire to know if there were books that John Adams would have to hit up Thomas Jefferson for, you can find out.