- Federal judge Royce Lamberth held the Russian government in contempt on Wednesday, ordering payment of a $50,000-per-day fine until a collection of books and manuscripts held in Russia is returned to a Brooklyn-based Jewish group. Lamberth ruled in 2010 that the library should be returned. The Justice Department opposed the contempt finding, and the Russian government denies the authority of the court in this matter.
- From Erin Blake at The Collation, "Myth-busting early modern book illustration, part one," drawing on recent work by Blair Hedges and others on what causes lines in engravings to become thinner and paler over time.
- New from the Institute of Historical Research at UCL, InScribe, a free online paleography course.
- Over at Past is Present, a new series on "Identifying the Unidentified" launched this week, with former AAS intern Lucia Ferguson beginning a discussion on newly-identified diarist Henry Martin.
- At American Book Collecting, a truly frightening post about the erasure of an ownership signature from an important association copy.
- Library and Archives Canada has acquired a copy of the first complete bible printed in Canada, an early 1830s edition published by John Henry White. The purchase was funded by the Friends of Library and Archives Canada.
- From the University of Glasgow library blog, a look at a few items from their special collections from the library of Richard Stonley, an Elizabethan official (whose main claim to fame is that his signature in a copy of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis is the earliest-known signature in a Shakespeare work).
- The Library Copyright Alliance put out a paper this week responding to recent court rulings on fair use and other related copyright developments.
- Newly digitized by the New York Public Library, their Thomas Addis Emmet collection of Revolutionary-era American manuscripts.
- From the MIT Technology Review, "The Algorithms that Automatically Date Medieval Manuscripts."
- The much-damaged copy of the Book of Mormon stolen from Helen Schlie of Mesa, AZ by Jay Michael Linford earlier this year and later recovered was returned to Schlie this week.
Reviews
- Peter Ackroyd's Foundation; review by Walter Olson in the NYTimes.
- Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper; review by Michael S. Roth in the WaPo.
- Simon Garfield's On the Map; review by David L. Ulin in the LATimes.
