- A decision in the long-running Google Books case may be coming soon, Library Journal reported this week.
- Bethany Nowviskie has posted the text of her talk last week at a University of Illinois symposium on the future of the humanities at state-funded research universities. Read the whole thing.
- Prominent on this week's list of IMLS grant winners was the Folger Library, which has received nearly $500,000 to create a free, searchable database of manuscript transcriptions as well as a virtual community of transcribers.
- The Washington Post had good coverage this week of the grand opening of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
- A collection of nine early alchemical manuscripts, mostly from the 15th century, has been acquired by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
- Michael Geist has an intriguing look at Library and Archives Canada's current mass-digitization plan, known as Heritage. Again, read the whole thing.
- The Morgan Library and Museum announced recently that it will digitize and post for use its collection of some 10,000 drawings.
- There's a new exhibit of association copies from the collection of Bryan A. Garner on display at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale.
- A Haggadah written and illuminated by famed scribe Aaron Wolf Herlingen was found recently in a Manchester house. It will be sold at auction in November, and could fetch up to £100,000.
- There's now video up of Jack P. Greene's talk at a recent JCB conference on "1763 and the Re-evaluation of Empire: The View from Britain."
- Over at the LOC blog, Erin Allen profiles the tremendously important Peter Force Library, comprising some 60,000 items.
- At The Junto, Jonathan Wilson writes about "Locating the Literati: Charles Brockden Brown in Philadelphia."
- The Jane Austen ring purchased at auction by Kelly Clarkson will stay in Britain after sufficient funds were raised. It will be displayed at the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire.
- New, and quite possibly a tremendously useful resource as it grows: Geocontexting the Cultural Industries, 1500-1900.
- For Banned Books Week, Simon Beattie highlighted the Phillippiques of Lagrange-Chancel, and the University of Glasgow library blog focused on some copies of Tycho Brahe's works in their collections.
- This year's MacArthur fellows were announced this week.
- Over at Brain Pickings, some unusual techniques of famous writers, from Celia Blue Johnson's Odd Type Writers.
- From the AbeBooks blog this week, a quick look at the most expensive books (and manuscripts) sold.
- Nick Basbanes posted on the FB&C blog this week a question (plus some possible answers) he'd received about his new book On Paper.
- At Notabilia, the shelf-marks of Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke.
- The St. Andrews University Library is publishing a six-part collection to mark the six-hundredth anniversary of the university: 600 Years of Book Collecting.
- The February 2014 courses for the Australian and New Zealand Rare Books Summer School have been announced.
- From the UVA Special Collections blog, M.A. student Stephanie Kingsley on a recent bibliographical exploration she conducted using the papers of Virginia author Ellen Glasgow.
Reviews
- Arlette Farge's The Allure of the Archive; review by Jacob Soll in the CHE.
- Andrea Barrett's Archangel; review by Jess Row in the NYTimes.
- Denise A. Spelberg's Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an; review by Seth Perry at The Junto.
- Jill Lepore's Book of Ages; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- Lawrence Principe's The Secrets of Alchemy; review by Nicholas Popper in the TLS.
- Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things; review by Barbara Kingsolver in the NYTimes.
