- New and interesting: Letterpress Commons, a community-based website designed as an "up-to-date manual" of letterpress techniques and information. And from Enlightenment scholar James Schmidt, Persistent Enlightenment. I've added sidebar links to both.
- At Contents Magazine, a must-read interview with the founders of The Appendix, which I certainly encourage all readers of this blog to be paying attention to.
- From the Royal Society's blog, a post on recent discoveries about their copy of Boyle's Sceptical Chymist, made because a scholar (Greg Girolami at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) is working on a census of extant copies of the book. As I've written before, I am a huge fan of book censuses in general, and encourage anyone who gets the opportunity to participate in them to do so!
- Over at Biblioguerilla, a book with Erasmus' name burned out wherever it occurred, "according to the prescriptions of the Expurgatory Index," and a fantastically-titled 1791 booksellers' catalog.
- This week's court of appeals decision on recess appointments [PDF] makes for fascinating reading for anyone interested in arcane-but-important constitutional provisions. Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell has begun a series on the origins of the recess appointment power: here and here. NB: Jay Wexler's recent book The Odd Clauses also has a useful primer on recess appointments.
- The "Identifying the Unidentified" series continues over at Past is Present.
- From Kevin Smith at Duke, some notes on the key importance of the Wiley v. Kirtsaeng case now under consideration at the Supreme Court.
- PBA Galleries, the San Francisco-based auction house, is now under the ownership of Sharon L. Gee.
- In today's New York Times, Steve Lohr profiles some of the "big data" projects being carried out by Matthew Jockers and others in "Dickens, Austen and Twain, Through a Digital Lens."
- Georgia governor Nathan Deal's proposed budget contains $4.3 million to keep the Georgia Archives open and restore five jobs cut last fall. A task force charged with developing a plan to transfer management of the Archives from the Georgia Secretary of State's office to the University of Georgia held its first meeting this month.
- Meanwhile, north of the border in South Carolina, genealogists and historians are concerned that a long string of budget cuts at the Department of Archives and History is having severe consequences for access to archival research material.
Reviews
- Joyce Chaplin's Round About the Earth; review by Jeffrey Wassterstorm in the LA Review of Books.
- John W. O'Malley's Trent: What Happened at the Council; review by Michael Dirda in at Washington Post.
- Bram Stoker and the Stage, ed. Catherine Wynne; review by Tracy C. Davis in the TLS.
