Unpacking the Personal Library is an edited collection of essays that ponders the cultural meaning and significance of private book collections in relation to public libraries. Collectively, the chapters articulate a poetics of the personal library within its extended social, aesthetic and cultural contexts.

Introduction: Private, Public and Personal Libraries In Situ and In Circulation / Jason Camlot -- In Memory of Alexandria / Alberto Manguel -- William Osler and the Collecting of the Middle Ages / Anna Dysert -- A Gift to the Nation Worth While : The Library of William Lyon Mackenzie King / Meaghan Scanlon -- Personal Libraries of the State / Bart Vautour -- Remaindering the Difference : Book Collections of Radical Protest Libraries / Sherrin Frances -- Serious House : On the Future of Library Print Collections / Andrew Stauffer -- Virginia Woolf's Poetry Library / Emily Kopley -- Unpacking Duncan's Books : Remarks on the Personal Library of Robert Duncan / James Maynard -- "Her Books Filed for Divorce" : Embeddedness and the Question of Belonging in Relation to Sheila and Wilfred Watson's Personal Library / Linda Morra -- Al Purdy's Lives and Libraries : A Bibliographical Essay / Nicholas Bradley -- jwcurry's Room 3o2 Books : The Small Press Bookstore as Library and Archive / Cameron Anstee -- Conclusion: "In My End Is My Beginning" : The Library as Heraclitean Archive / J. A. Weingarten.