- Your can't-miss post this week is Heather Wolfe's look at 17th-century filing practices.
- A fire broke out on Monday at the Walworth Town Hall building in Southwark, London, which houses the Newington Library and Cuming Museum in Southwark. There was some damage to the collections of the museum and library, but it sounds as though it could have been significantly worse.
- The Globe & Mail has published an update on the John Mark Tillman thefts case, including the little tidbit that Tillman's son Kyle, 23, also faces charges related to the thefts (obstruction of justice, possession of stolen property, and perjury). The CBC has posted a similar story, noting that the number of seized artifacts has now passed 2,000. And from the RCMP, a photo gallery of recovered items.
- They did it with menus, and now the NYPL has turned to crowdsourced transcription of playbills: head over to ensemble.nypl.org and help transcribe!
- Over at Fine Books Blog, Rebecca Rego Barry posted "Ten Reasons a Pessimist Can be Optimistic about the Future of the Book."
- Also from Canada, the Calgary Herald reports on the continuing troubles at LAC, which now include a troubling new "code of conduct" for archives staff.
- The New-York Historical Society's new Audubon exhibit is now open, and this week they also posted a very interesting piece that's also in the show: a Meiji-era woodcut depicting the episode when Audubon opens up a box of watercolors only to find they've been destroyed by rats.
- Jennifer Howard reported last week on the forthcoming edition of Willa Cather's letters. Read the whole thing, it's well worth it!
- And speaking of documentary editions, Jeff Looney of the Thomas Jefferson Papers was recently profiled in the Washington Post.
- From the Houghton blog, a neat new acquisition: a hollow-cut silhouette of Arthur Maynard Walter, one of the founders of the Boston Athenaeum. The silhouette was made by Moses Williams, one of the few known African-American silhouettists of the early 19th century.
- DPLA Director of Content Emily Gore is interviewed by Annie Schutte on the Knight Foundation blog.
- Dave Gary recently had the chance to visit and explore the library of William Seward, at his home in Auburn, NY. Not surprisingly, he found some absolutely great stuff.
- New developments in the de Caro case, too: he and fourteen accomplices have reportedly confessed to additional thefts from more libraries, including the Biblioteca dell’Osservatorio Ximeniano and the Biblioteca Scolopica San Giovannino, both in Florence.
- The Grolier Club's new exhibit on book thief Guglielmo Libri is reviewed by Eve M. Kahn in the NYTimes.
- There's a long profile of George R.R. Martin in the Telegraph.
- Others have already covered the Supreme Court's strong first-sale ruling more thoroughly than I need to, but do read Jennifer Howard's Chronicle report on the case.
- Bookseller Norman Kane (The Americanist) passed away on 23 March; he was 88. Fine Books Notes has a short notice, plus links to their profile and interview with Kane from 2011.
- A couple unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald poems will go on the auction block this week.
- An update on a link I posted around this time last year: the 1555 copy of Vesalius containing the author's own annotations for a projected third edition is now being made available for study at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, where it is on deposit. The library is planning an exhibition next year to mark the 500th anniversary of Vesalius' birth.
Reviews
- Steven Galbraith and Geoffrey Smith's Rare Book Librarianship; review by David Gary at Function Follows Forme.
- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed; review by Wendy Smith in the LATimes.
- Sandra Day O'Connor's Out of Order; review by Adam Liptak in the NYTimes.
- Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood; review by Amy Wilentz in the NYTimes.
- Catherine Bailey's The Secret Rooms; review by Nicola Shulman in the TLS.
