Links & Reviews

- The manuscript of Capt. Robert Scott's speech to his crew before their trek to the South Pole has been found and acquired by the Canterbury Museum.

- New York City has filed a lawsuit against Christie's and Sam Buckley, the current owner of architectural drawings by Jacob Wrey Mould, planner of several major NYC buildings and parks. The drawings were discovered by Buckley's father in the 1950s, and his son approached Christie's to sell them, but the city maintains that they remain the property of the Parks Department (of which Mould was an employee). Lawyers say both sides anticipate an amicable settlement.

- A group of Philadelphia-area libraries has launched a cross-repository finding aids search tool.

- LibraryThing's launched "Operation (LibraryThing) Paperback," an effort to send 750 paperbacks to troops serving overseas.

- At Inside Higher Ed, Barbara Fister comments on how Google and libraries are alike ... and how they're not.

- The tweets of @drsamueljohnson are to be collected into a book.

- Sam Jordison asks what will become of marginalia in the age of the ebook?

- Shakespeare biographer Katherine Duncan-Jones has an essay on Shakespearean actor Will Kemp in the TLS.

- Following the 2009 ruling in the case of the Wiscasset Declaration of Independence, Maine legislators have passed a law greatly expanding the definition of "public record" to encompass "records of historic and archival value to the State, regardless of the date of their generation." The new law also guarantees that any record "created by or belonging to the State, to a local or county government in the State or to any agency of the State remains the property of the State until ownership and possession are formally relinquished in accordance with statute and rules."

- Scholars now believe that horse bones found in China with cuneiform inscriptions from the "Cyrus Tablet" may be genuine.

- The LA Times profiles the NARA team searching for stolen documents.

- A guest post on the AAS blog highlights Henry David Thoreau's visit 1855 to AAS and his musings on Cotton Mather's library.

- Roy Greenslade highlights a revised edition of Bob Clarke's book on English newspapers, From Grub Street to Fleet Street.

- Cambridge University and Kings College, London have collaborated to release PASE Domesday, an online database of the Domesday Book.

Reviews

- Mary Roach's Packing for Mars; review by Peter Carlson in the Washington Post.

- Tim Blanning's The Romantic Revolution; review by Jonathan Bate in the Telegraph.

- Andrew Pettegree's The Book in the Renaissance; review by Robert Pinsky in the NYTimes.

- Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries; review by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal in TNR.