- Harvard and the National Library of China have reached an agreement under which Harvard's 51,000 rare Chinese books will be digitized and made available free on the internet. The project is expected to take about six years.
- Library Journal reported this week that a new company, SkyRiver, will seek to compete with OCLC by providing quality copy-cataloging records to libraries.
- In the Boston Globe, Toby Lester writes on the Waldseemüller map of 1507 and its links to Copernicus' heliocentric theory.
- The ACRL board has approved new "Guidelines Regarding Security and Theft in Special Collections."
- Mark Lamster has a short essay adapted from his new book, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens.
- In the NYTimes, Ben Zimmer writes on Bill Safire's "On Language" column.
- NPR reported this week on the return of two 16th-century law books to Germany; an American GI took them from a salt mine during the closing days of WWII.
- Stephen Gertz looks at the extremely-lengthy subtitles often seen on old titles pages. I love these.
- Note: This post is not for real. Glad I checked it out (the final line wasn't there at first) before I got excited (why would I get excited about this? This blog's name comes from The Old Librarian's Almanack).
Reviews
- David Bell reviews Jacob Soll's The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System for The New Republic.
- Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower, a tale of the end of Anne Boleyn, is reviewed by Lisa Hilton in the Independent.
- In the New Yorker, Jill Lepore reviews several books on management, including Matthew Stewart's The Management Myth.
- A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is reviewed by Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes.
- Martin Rubin reviews Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall in the WSJ. Wendy Smith reviews it in the WaPo, and Stephen Greenblat reviews it in the NYRB. The last deeply examines the question "what is a historical novel?" and makes for very good reading.
- Another review of Allison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much in the San Francisco Chronicle, this one by John Jory.
- Alexander Theroux reviews Peter Mancall's Fatal Journey in the Boston Globe.
