- Just weeks after a plan to sell four Shakespeare folios was abandoned after a vociferous international outcry, the director of the Senate House libraries, Christopher Pressler, resigned this week. The Telegraph reported that Pressler had "admitted breaching financial rules by not disclosing his relationship with an employee at Bonhams, appointed to oversee the sale."
- A Vermont man has pleaded guilty to the theft of Robert Frost letters and Christmas cards from a desk donated to a White River Junction thrift store. Tim Bernaby has maintained that he took the letters from a trash can rather than from the desk, and he sold them for $25,000. The charge to which he pled guilty, unlawful taking of personal property, carries a $100 fine. A civil suit which will determine the rightful owner of the letters is pending.
- At The Junto, Sara Georgini interviews Molly O'Hagan Hardy, new Digital Humanities Curator at the American Antiquarian Society.
- Speaking of AAS, I was absolutely delighted to get word this week that the AAS Proceedings from 1880 through 2008 are now available on the Society's website. I hope to have more to say about these fairly soon.
- Rebecca Rosen recently visited the Folger Library and has written up a "Brief Tour of the Digital Delights" for The Atlantic.
- From Sue Lonoff de Cuevas at Harper's, a close reading of the Bronte sisters' French homework.
- The Library Company of Philadelphia has acquired Joe Freedman's collection of Philadelphia ephemera, comprising some 900 items.
- New from Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a new scholarly edition of piracy depositions from the Bacon-Townshend collection.
- In the LA Review of Books this week, Daniel Hernandez explores a new theory (offered by bookseller Kevin Mac Donnell, in fact) on the origin of the name "Mark Twain."
- Over at The Public Domain Review, Phillippe Blom argues for Diderot's importance as we mark the tercentenary of the philosopher's birth.
- The Harvard Libraries have started a pilot program to scan key content at the point of accessioning or cataloging. Read about the project here.
- Over at the John Rylands Library blog, a look at marginalia.
- The folks responsible for the great Six Degrees of Francis Bacon project are requesting input from users about additional information you'd like to see as part of the interface.
- Profiled in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" series this week, University of Iowa Special Collections Librarian Patrick Olson.
Reviews
- Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things; reviews by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes and Jane Shilling in the Telegraph.
- Mark Cocker and David Tipling's Birds and People; review by Jeremy Mynott in the TLS.
- Roderick Beaton's Byron's War; review by Emily A. Bernhard Jackson in the TLS.
- Jill Lepore's Book of Ages; review by Julia M. Klein in the Boston Globe.
- Denise Spellberg's Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran; review by R.B. Bernstein at The Daily Beast.
- Dara Horn's A Guide for the Perplexed; review by Saul Austerlitz in the Boston Globe.
- Frank Prochaska's The Memoirs of Walter Bagehot; review by George Selgin in the WSJ.
- Peter Ackroyd's Three Brothers; review by Mark Sanderson in the Telegraph.
- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review in Kirkus.
- The Morgan Library and Museum's exhibit "Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul"; review by Charles McGrath in the NYTimes.
