Ethan T Hoben

Ethan T Hoben

Habitual Project Collector

Ethan's Library

When you stand inside somebody’s library, you get a powerful sense of who they are, and not just who they are now but who they’ve been. . . . It’s a wonderful thing to have in a house. It’s something I worry is endangered by the rise of the e-book. When you turn off an e-book, there’s no map. All that’s left behind is a chunk of gray plastic.

-Lev Grossman

Welcome to my personal library! I am an amateur librarian and rare books collector, with an emphasis on technical content from STEM fields. As my background is in electrical engineering, I started out collecting useful texts on a variety of EE topics, and eventually branched out into collecting any text I think will be an interesting topic to learn about. The majority of my collection are used titles.

My life goal for my library is to have the largest technical library on earth, at least the largest one owned by a single private individual. I have yet to find anyone claiming that title publicly, but I am sure somone is ahead of me at the moment, but not for long!

Library Stats

The amount of books that fall under the technical content umbrella are 459. The total size of my personal collection, which includes technical, historical, and literature is 604. 70.86% of the collection are hardcovers, 29.14% of the collection are paperbacks. The median book age is 44 years, the average book age is 45 years, the oldest book is from 1879, and the newest book is from 2024.

Collections

Within my library, I have various subsets of books that make up collections. My list of ongoing collections is found here

Contents

If you would like to view my technical catalog, click here. The catalog features the titles, year of publication, and the ISBN or library of congress catalog number of for each text.

Shoudlers of Giants

Half the fun of my collection is that most of my books are used titles, and I spend quite a bit of my time going through my books trying to figure out the history behind the previous owners of the books.

People leave their mark on the world in many ways, whether that be through their families, their work, their relationships, etc. I have always thought the best and lasting way to leave one’s mark on the world was through books, but that doesn’t just mean writing them. I personally think that something as little as a written name, a personal library stamp, or even initials in a book’s pages is the penultimate expression of the human urge to say, “I was here”.

I have a rather large collection, and of those most have initials, a name, or a personal library stamp for those who have a penchant for collecting like myself. In my collection, while most of the stories of those names I have cataloged are lost to me, their names continue, and hopefully will continue past me as well. My goal is to live on in a way through my books as well, as they will eventually go back in circulation, embossed with my personal library stamp, and someone else will see them on the shelf in a used bookstore somewhere and add them to their collection, perpetuating the cycle of knowledge and learning. Who knows, maybe they will look me up the same way I research my predecessors.

That being said, I have quite a few interesting stories for some of the books and owners in my collection, and those are listed below:

Additionally, some of my books have unique origins, from the private technical libraries of companies to universities far and wide and those are listed below: