Just to clear out my inbox a bit, a few things that have come through so far this week:
- The BL is hosting a conference regarding library security on 20 May sponsored by the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche/Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). "The aim of this conference is to share information on market intelligence, technology watch, trend analysis and research into collection security. It will provide a forum to share experience in managing risks to library collections, investigating incidents and preventing loss. International speakers from law enforcement organisations and national libraries as well as leading academics have been invited." Program and registration information here.
- The Friends of Coleridge have set up a site to document the ongoing debate over the attribution to Coleridge of an 1821 translation of Faust. This will be very useful; I'll check in often.
- Everett Wilkie noted on Ex-Libris yesterday this article about the new Pennsylvania State Library facility. He writes "One interesting aspect of the new library is that they seemed to have banned traditional writing instruments entirely from the reading room" (the article says "No pens or pencils are allowed here, lest graphite dust and stray ink mar its treasures. Instead, patrons can use laptop computers to take notes"). Not allowing even pencils is a step that I know of no other library taking (if there are others, I'd love to hear of them). Everyone's just supposed to have a laptop now? Of course it's entirely possible the author misunderstood the policy (she notes elsewhere in the piece that Franklin's "kite-and-key" experiment "resulted in the discovery of electricity", which is, of course, not the case).
- Paul van den Brink reports on MapHist that the Leiden Archives have digitized their Toonneel des Aerdrycks, ofte Nieuwe Atlas of 1659 (by Blaeu). Another very "high tech" viewer, but if the images will load on your computer it looks excellent. The website text is in Dutch.
