- The November Americana Exchange Monthly is out: it includes Bruce McKinney's proposal for a Library Book Exchange (which would facilitate, in theory, material swaps between institutions) and a recap of Terry Belanger's recent talk on deaccessioning; and a preview of the 3 December Bloomsbury NY sale of some early works on American exploration collected by McKinney (he writes "The sale will be unusual in one respect. Information on source, date purchased and price paid is included. Auctions, in the modern era, are almost always silent on purchase history. This sale will be among the most transparent on record, certainly the most transparent in modern times. As well, for anyone interested in how auctions work this sale will present an extraordinary view, the chance to observe how a collection does as an investment over more than ten years.").
- In Saturday's NYTimes Travel section, Geraldine Fabrikent profiles a number of rare book libraries around the country.
- A new exhibit at the BL is "Points of View, Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs." The show runs through March 2010.
- Caleb Crain writes on John Keats' speech patterns in the NYTimes "On Language" column, and he's got a follow-up blog post on the subject.
- The Millions has begun a series on "Difficult Books." The first installment covers works by Robert Burton, John Milton, and Jonathan Swift.
- Part of the parlor ceiling at Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, MA fell down last Sunday.
- J.L. Bell notes the very awesome Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800 database, which seeks to digitally reconstitute - to the extent possible - the War Department archive destroyed by an 1800 fire.
- Mark Godburn's early dust-jacket research is now in blog form, at Nineteenth Century Dust Jackets. I've added a link on the sidebar.
- Cornell University Library has published Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums by Peter Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon. Published as as open-access text, the book is available for download here or for purchase here.
- Chris has a report from the floor on the Golden Gate Book Fair, held last weekend.
- Here's a poem for today by Spencer Reece, from The New Yorker: "My Great-Grandmother's Bible."
- Cornell University Library has published Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums by Peter Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon. Published as as open-access text, the book is available for download here or for purchase here.
- Chris has a report from the floor on the Golden Gate Book Fair, held last weekend.
- Here's a poem for today by Spencer Reece, from The New Yorker: "My Great-Grandmother's Bible."
- If you're interested, James Fallows provides a detailed comparison of Amazon's Kindle and the B&N Nook.
- Haaretz reports that the "German Museum of Modern Literature Thursday rejected a demand from Israel's National Library that it return the manuscript of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, saying it acquired the manuscript legally." The museum claims that it bought the manuscript at public auction; Israeli authorities claim it was illegally sold by Esther Hoffe, former assistant to Kafka's friend Max Brod. [h/t Shelf:Life]
- Spencer Abel in the Boston Globe highlights the Hemingway Collection at the JFK Library.
- At A Summary View, Monticello's Anna Berkes reports that the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia (their super-cool wiki of all things Jefferson) is beginning to make some headway in Google, knocking some of the random bad Internet data out of the top results. Good going!
Reviews
- John Keegan's The Civil War: A Military History is reviewed by Hugh Brogan in The Telegraph.
- Haaretz reports that the "German Museum of Modern Literature Thursday rejected a demand from Israel's National Library that it return the manuscript of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, saying it acquired the manuscript legally." The museum claims that it bought the manuscript at public auction; Israeli authorities claim it was illegally sold by Esther Hoffe, former assistant to Kafka's friend Max Brod. [h/t Shelf:Life]
- Spencer Abel in the Boston Globe highlights the Hemingway Collection at the JFK Library.
- At A Summary View, Monticello's Anna Berkes reports that the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia (their super-cool wiki of all things Jefferson) is beginning to make some headway in Google, knocking some of the random bad Internet data out of the top results. Good going!
Reviews
- John Keegan's The Civil War: A Military History is reviewed by Hugh Brogan in The Telegraph.
- Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is reviewed by Christopher Benfey n the NYTimes.
- Dennis Drabelle offers a short review of Robert Darnton's The Case for Books in the Washington Post.
- Peter Ackroyd's The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is reviewed by Terrence Rafferty in the NYTimes, and by Thane Rosenbaum in the LATimes.
- Allison Hoover Bartlett's The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is reviewed by Velma Daniels in the Winter Haven News Chief.
- In the NYTimes, Tony Horwitz reviews Timothy Egan's The Big Burn.
- Also in the Globe, Michael Washburn reviews Toby Lester's The Fourth Part of the World, about the Waldseemüller map.
