Headed back to Portland today after just over a month at Rare Book School: this last week I had the great privilege of helping out with Matt Kirschenbaum and Naomi Nelson's Born-Digital Materials: Theory & Practice class, and as always when I leave RBS I am humbled and so thrilled to have been able to play a small part in the school's mission.
- The Codex Calixtinus, stolen from the library of the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in July 2011, has been recovered. Four people have been arrested in connection with the theft: an electrician who formerly had worked at the cathedral, his wife, his son, and the son's girlfriend (the latter two have already been released). Other books from the cathedral and a silver tray were also recovered, police said. Some pictures of the garage where the codex was found are here, and Susan Boynton writes on the OUP blog about the relevance of the Codex Calixtinus, then and now.
- A ring which once belonged to Jane Austen will be sold at Sotheby's this week; it's estimated at £20,000-30,000.
- Writing at Publick Occurrences, Joseph Adelman examines the Library of Congress' "Books That Shaped America" through an early Americanist lens.
- Over at The Collation, the July "what manner o' thing?" post is up, featuring a good opportunity to test out your provenance research skills! Also from The Collation, some hints on using the Folger's new database of binding images.
- Both the Authors Guild and HathiTrust have filed motions for summary judgment in their lawsuit, "with the Authors Guild asserting that it should win because the library defendants have no viable defense for their mass-digitization program, while the HathiTrust argues that it should win because its program clearly falls under fair use."
- Ted Underwood's Tumblr Sphinx is well worth a read.
- New from the UVa Scholars' Lab, Neatline. More coverage.
- Also new, at least to me: Papiers de l'abbé Guillaume Thomas Raynal.
- A previously unknown version of the Waldsemueller map (the first to show the American continent) was found at Munich's Ludwig Maxmilian University recently. See the press release. Download a large image file of the map here.
- Eleanor Shevlin reports on the recent launch of the British Newspaper Archive, noting some of the key benefits and potential pitfalls.
- Vanity Fair editor Bruce Handy has an essay in the NYTimes this week about his collection of "boring books".
Reviews
- Mark Kurlansky's Birdseye; review by Abigail Meisel in the NYTimes.
- Leonard Pitt Freeman's Freeman; review by Howard Frank Mosher in the WaPo.
- Marilynne Robinson's When I Was a Child, I Read Books; review by August Brown in the LATimes.
- Keith Lowe's Savage Continent; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Bernd Heinrich's Life Everlasting; review by Jennie Erin Smith in the WSJ.
- Andro Linklater's Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die; review by Dennis Drabelle in the WaPo.
- Kurt Andersen's True Believers; review by Carolyn Kellogg in the LATimes.
- Stephen Carter's The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln; review by Ron Charles in the WaPo.
