- From the Baltimore Sun, which has been doing an exemplary job of covering the Barry Landau theft case, word that NARA investigators now believe Landau sold more stolen documents, and that they're now working with dealers to recover the materials. Paul Brachfeld, the NARA IG, told the paper that he expects new evidence against Landau to be introduced at Landau's sentencing hearing in May.
- A major acquisition for the Beinecke Library, announced this week: Yale will be the new home of the Thomas Thistlewood papers, more than 90 volumes of diaries and notebooks kept by Thistlewood about his Jamaica plantation, his reading, and his personal life.
- Garrett Scott recounts a recent book-scouting trip through the South, at Bibliophagist.
- Bethany Nowviskie has posted the text of her code4lib keynote, "Lazy Consensus."
- An English Civil War broadside "wanted poster" for the man later crowned as Charles II was sold at auction last week for £33,000; the auction house had estimated it at just £750-£1,000.
- Several folks passed along "keep reading and carry a towel," from the xoom blog. Well worth a read.
- Houghton Library has acquired one of just three known copies of Thomas Spence's 1775 work The Grand Repository of the English Language, and this one has notable provenance: it bears the ownership notations of a British officer stationed at Fort George (ME) during the later years of the Revolutionary War.
- In the Chronicle this week, Jennifer Howard reported that Google seems to be scaling back scanning at libraries, though it's not entirely clear whether this means anything other than that they've picked the low-hanging fruit at those institutions.
- Rick Ring notes a very cool new acquisition at Trinity: a copy of Thomas Nuttall's Manual of Ornithology, with notes and annotations by Philadelphia naturalist Vincent Barnard. This reminds me of the copy of Bewick's Birds I saw for sale once which had been used as a field guide (and which I'm still regretting that I didn't buy).
- Writing at the Morgan Library blog, Carolyn Vega reveals how librarians there worked to date a Sir Philip Sidney letter to Christopher Plantin based in part on the books he mentions.
- In the new Humanities magazine, Meredith Hindley writes about Gouverneur Morris' European travels in the 1790s.
- Author T.C. Boyle's papers have been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center.
- From Houghton's "You've Got Mail" series, a letter from Harry Elkins Widener from March 1912 to his friend Luther Livingston. In the letter Widener reports that he'll be returning to America on the Titanic, and reports on his book-collecting activities.
- The "Bright Young Things" series at the Fine Books Blog continues: Nate Pedersen interviews Kara McLaughlin of Little Sages this week.
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