Bibliomania

Bibliomania is the obsessive purchase or collecting of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged. One of many obsessive-compulsive behaviours associated with books, bibliomania, is frequently characterized by the collecting of books which have no use to the collector nor any great instrinsic value to a genuine book collector.

The purchase of multiple copies of the same book and edition, for example, or the accumulation of books beyond possible capacity of use or enjoyment, are frequent symptoms of bibliomania considered as a psychological disorder.

The term bibliomania is also used of a more selective, but in the eyes of some, excessive accumulation of books. These bibliomanes are also obsessed with the hunt but greater discrimination, resources and talent lend a patina of respectability to the higher class of bibliomane.

Great collectors of books can, like other people who sacrifice their immediate personal interests and society to a particular drive or ambition, may serve the greater good by assembling libraries of rare or valuable manuscripts and books, but are nonetheless considered bibliomanes in so far as they are driven to collect beyound what are deemed normal bounds.

Other abnormal or condemned behaviour involving books include book-eating, or bibliophagy, compulsive book-stealing, book-burying, and book-burning.