Plenty In A Word For Two Sisters
By Jennifer Sicking
Barbara Cordell (left) and Jeanne Cordell Shaeffer honored their parents' legacy with a gift of words.
For two sisters, words were a bridge to the past during an early summer visit to Indiana State’s Cunningham Memorial Library to honor the Cordell Collection, the world’s largest collection of dictionaries and word books that was made possible by and named for their parents.
Officially, Barbara Cordell and Jeanne Cordell Shafer were on campus to mark the 40th anniversary of the dictionary collection donated by their parents, Warren, ‘33, and Susan Cordell, and housed in ISU’s library. Unofficially, the occasion allowed them to reconnect with their own past.
“It’s him,” said Barbara of Palo Alto, Calif., after spending time in the room named for her parents that houses part of the collection. “When I go into that room with the smell of old books, my childhood comes back.”
“I have an affinity for loving these books,” said Jeanne of Weathersfield, Vt. “They’re my father’s memory, preserved and protected.”
To mark the collection’s anniversary, Barbara and Jeanne presented the library with a two-volume 1771 edition of Joseph Baretti’s Dictionary of English and Italian Languages. That dictionary bears a dedication by Samuel Johnson, who compiled The Dictionary of the English Language, which was published in 1755.
During the presentation, which was attended by members of the Dictionary Society of North America, Barbara Cordell donated a paperback version of NetLingo: The Internet Dictionary. “This brings us into the new century,” she said.
Warren collected thousands of dictionaries because of his love of words and donated them to his alma mater. He graduated from Indiana State with majors in mathematics and physics. He worked for the A.C. Nielsen Company, a pioneer marketing research organization.
“In his heart he was a bibliophile,” Barbara said. “That passion permeated our daily lives.”
He tutored his children in Greek and Latin word roots and gave them word riddles to solve. He also had his children help him sneak boxes of books into the house.
“Mother would wake up in the morning and ask, `Jeanne, how many boxes did you take down?’ “ Jeanne said.
Warren, who was then in the early stages of being a collector, chose dictionaries for his own study. He used them to write articles on word derivations and word meanings for the A.C. Nielsen Company’s in-house magazine.
“A characteristic image of him is in his library studying dictionaries,” Barbara said. “It was clear he amassed the collection so he could use it.”
“He was really in the right place at the right time,” Shafer said. “It would be difficult to amass a collection like this now.”
After renovating his basement, Warren stored many of the dictionaries there.
In December 1969, he donated 453 early English dictionaries to Indiana State, thus beginning the collection bearing his and his wife’s names that would soon total thousands of volumes.
During the next 10 years, he donated 3,232 editions totaling 3,913 volumes to the library. After he died in 1980, his wife donated the remainder of his lexicographical holdings, resulting in the addition of hundreds of titles.
Nearly 13,000 volumes of dictionaries and word books now make up the Cordell Collection.
“I’ve been working with the collection for 20 years and I haven’t found another one that’s close in size or depth,” said David Vancil, ISU chair of special collections.
(Jennifer Sicking is associate director of media relations at ISU. To learn more about the Cordell Collection and ISU’s other special collections, please visit http://library.indstate.edu/about/units/rbsc/.)