This symposium brings together a group of UK-based academics and librarians, as well as key continental scholars, in an attempt to consolidate current research, for the first time, on seventeenth-century libraries and book collecting. Seventeenth-Century Libraries: Problems & Perspectives will address questions of topography and typology, networks of library activity, administration, visual identity, dispersal, owners and content, and definitions of public and private. The symposium will also confront current topics of cultural and intellectual history – especially heritage and antiquarianism, the circulation and management of knowledge, and the rise of consumerism and the culture of collecting.