PROFILES.

This article profiles Lola Szladits, curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature in the New York Public Library, New York City. Lola Szladits has two profound lovers--her husband Charles Szladits, and the Berg Collection, of which she is a curator. Her husband is a professor of law at Columbia. The Berg collection contains a hundred and fifty thousand items, among them is the manuscript of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, written in pencil in blue-covered examination books. The collection begun in 1906 and Lola Szladits was appointed curator in 1969, and in turn, has continued to add to the collection. Her most famous acquisition is probably the Auden papers, some of which came to the Berg only after an arduous legal battle. She talks about the Berg with passion saying that it is a research collection and must be used. She takes care of the Berg five days a week. Her office is a long, rectangular room that shoots off at a right angle from the northeast corner of the study room. One wall is lined with shelves holding materials waiting to be catalogued with her assistants Brian McInerney and Patrick Lawlor. They are her amanuenses, helpmeets and slaves.