Due to mergers and acqusitions in recent years there are only two chess
libraries of major signicance and only a few other specialist collections. They
are,
The John G. White Chess and Checkers Collection at
Cleveland Public Library.
Largest chess and draughts library in the world.
Built on the donation of quarter of a million dollars and 11,000 books
from
John G. White's private library upon his death.
The Chess & Draughts collection at the
Bibliotheca Van der Linde-Niemeijeriana (part of the
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands).
Second largest chess and draughts library in the world.
Built on the donations of from the private chess libraries of
Antonius van der Linde,
Meindert Niemeijer and
G.L. Gortmans.
Contain 40,000 works.
Chess collection at the
Templeman Library,
University of Kent at
Canterbury.
Built on donation of archive material of the
British Chess Federation.
Contains a number of unique items relating to British chess clubs.
The most significant publicly acknowledged private chess library is currently
that of Paolo Ciancarini. However, Mr. Ciancarini states that several people own
larger libraries, including
Lothar Schmidt in Germany and Mr. DeLucia in New York. Also, the former
World Champion
Anatoly Karpov is told to own a large chess library. Mr. Ciancarini's is the
only one which has a catalog publicly available on the Web, and periodically
updated.