Currently in process at the Archives and Rare Books Library are the papers of Robert E. Cazden, Professor Emeritus of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky.  Cazden was a scholar of printing, publishing, and the German-American book trade, and his papers focus largely on the research he conducted for his books including  German Exile Literature in America 1933-1950: A History of the Free German Press and Book Trade (1970) and Social History of the German Book Trade in America to the Civil War (1984).

Cazden was a man of many talents.  An accomplished pianist, Cazden studied at the Juilliard School, and received an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Southern California.  Cazden completed an MLS at Berkeley and a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1965.  He worked in the libraries of the University of California, Berkley and Oregon State University before being appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky.  He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1969 and then to full Professor in 1976.  Cazden was a member of the American Antiquarian Society, Printing Historical Society, Immigration History Society, Gutenberg Gesellschaft, and the Wolfenbuetteler Arbeitskreis für Geschichte des Buchwesens.  Cazden died in 2002.

Throughout his career, Dr. Cazden compiled an extensive and diverse collection of research on the German American book trade and on  exile literature. Dr. Cazden’s research on exile literature includes anti-Fascist broadsides, testimony from the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, and pamphlets on socialism. For his research on the German American book trade, Dr. Cazden collected an immense amount of literature in both German and English.  The collection includes his research notes, drafts of chapters, and correspondence with scholars, librarians, and archivists.  A complete finding aid for the collection is available at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/archives/ead/OhCiUAR0239.

– Written by Kate Kreuger and Suzanne Maggard