My collection would not have been possible without the help of others.
Most important is my wife, Irina McLaughlin. Her acceptance of this rather eccentric collection is remarkable. (She let me cover a set of rarely-used double doors with bookshelves to house the collection.) She was also critical to final negotiations for Azerbaijani, Russian J, Ukrainian [S] B, and Russian M.
Then there is my family, including my daughters (Chelsea Eatough, Katie Morozova, Jenni Poster, Ana Morozova) and my mother (Nancy McLaughlin), who (sometimes begrudgingly) gave me book money and Amazon gift cards for Christmas, my birthday, and Fathers Day in lieu of trying to pick something out on their own. (Sometimes I even listed items on my Amazon wish list.)
My sister-in-law, Svitlana Morozova, gave me Dutch A, Dutch B, Dutch C, and French B as well as served as a transit point in the European Union for Swedish D, Dutch M, Dutch [S] B, and Dutch [UT]. My nephew, Michael Morozov, carried French B to Utah in his luggage. During the unfortunate time in 2025 when President Trump eliminated the de minimis exception on US import tariffs, Svitlana served as an important "collector" of my European purchases when most European postal services stopped sending parcels to the US (German L, Lithuanian C, Slovenian C, Slovenian [S] B)
Like my sister-in-law, our family friends Inna Maksimova and Petro Teslenko also served as a transit point in Ukraine for Russian [S] D and Russian [S] E.
"Transit points" are very important when booksellers in one part of the world will not ship to the United States directly. In addition to my sister-in-law in the European Union and our family friends in Ukraine, Hanbooks in Los Angeles has served as an agent for obtaining books from Korea and then sending them to me. They do charge a fair fee for the service as they are a business and neither family nor family friends. I am still grateful for their willingness to serve in this capacity.
There are individuals in Europe, Asia, and the United States who helped find and acquire different translations, both in person and through the magic of the internet. These are individuals who did more than just sell me a book on-line.
Ewelina Suchorska, a friend who, speaking Polish, helped acquire Polish A in Poznań, Poland during my visit there.
Zinaida Biro, who sold me part of Croatian A, pointed me to Serbian B, and put me in touch with the first link of the "Macedonian chain".
The "Macedonian chain", Dinko Mihovilović, Magdalena Lazarevska, and Marija Kokanović, who found, purchased, and delivered the last set of Macedonian from the publisher.
The "Georgian connection", Khloe Smith, one of my linguistics students who told me that she had lived in Georgia and still had a friend there, and Alina Ambariani, Khloe's friend, who found and helped me acquire Georgian A.
Jung-Ae Choi, a colleague at my university who, speaking Korean, helped locate Korean B.
Jan Boom "Fangorn", who sought me out through our connections in Tolkien societies and pointed me to his auctions on ebay. (Czech C)
Adiyasuren Jamiyandagva, who contacted me by email after seeing that I was only missing Mongolian. He pointed me to the publisher of Mongolian [Cyrillic].
John Mitchinson, who contacted me by email after seeing that I had fulfilled my goal of at least one copy from every language that LOTR had been translated into and asked if I had the Asturian translation (a language that had a translation previously unknown to me).
Eric Schele, who suggested that I replace the heavily damaged dust jackets on Dutch H with replicas and helped me acquire them. Dutch H looks great now.
Frode Vinje, who exchanged his second printing copy of Icelandic RK for my first printing copy of the same so that both of our sets were no longer mixed printings--his a first printing set and mine a second printing set.
A Friend in the Tolkien Society from Switzerland, who pointed me to the presence of Romansh [H], but whose name I failed to record during an international group Zoom chat on the occasion of J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday in the fall of 2024. (If you ever happen to see this, please let me know your name.)
Due to political events beyond our control in 2025, international sales and shipping to the United States was disrupted so that many formerly easy routes for purchasing books were made extremely difficult (or worse). During this time I turned to the proxy buyers and shippers found on Reddit at r/internationalshopper. I have used Marina Henriques Lopes (u/Sensitive-Elk4486, Brazil), Gian Carlo MacAdaeg (u/Inevitable-Cap133, Sweden), Renanda Aziz Iskandar (u/aschoolofneontetra, Indonesia), Andrea García López (u/FlowerBulldoggie, Spain), and Charalampos Papandreou (u/grimmia, Greece). I could not have purchased a fair number of my treasures in 2025 and 2026 without them.
I am grateful to Constantin Pirozhkov, a fellow subscriber to the Tolkien Collector's Guide, who pointed out a number of transcription errors on my Russian pages as well as a couple of places where I failed to properly identify the genitive case in Russian translator names. I have happily made all the changes that he identified.
My friendship and appreciation also go to Xu Zhan (zionius), from the Tolkien Collector's Guide as well as the tolkienbooks Reddit, who pointed me to the presence of a copy of Mongolian [Bichig] on kongfz.com. He has also provided useful lists for Chinese translations and publications from 2025 and earlier and corrected my errors on the Chinese page.
And for his stellar business skills in noticing my interests, purchasing habits, and being able to identify me from my comments under the truly anonymous Reddit user name I was given, my gratitude goes to Alonso Steiner and his team at Azeribay. His immeasurable help in arranging for the purchase and delivery of multiple sets of books from Iran and Uzbekistan (Farsi C, Farsi D, Farsi E, and Uzbek B) has truly enriched my collection in ways that I could never have accomplished on my own.
Finally, thanks must go to Yvan Strelzyk, whom I have never met, but whose Elrond's Library website was of immeasurable inspiration. It is a major source of reference for anyone interested in the collection of Tolkien's works in translation. My collection is, admittedly, just a shadow of his.