- The excellent "Authenticity of Print Materials" symposium held at LC back in December is now available as a webcast [Updated with YouTube link, since that's easier to access].
- Tom Hyry has been announced as the new Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library.
- The BBC reports that three FSB agents have been sentenced for the theft of a Gutenberg Bible from Moscow State University: Sergei Vedishchev received a three-year term in a penal colony for theft, and two accomplices received lighter sentences for trying to sell the book to a collector.
- The Independent has more on the large-scale thefts of books and artwork from All Hallows College in Dublin.
- The Rare Book School summer lecture series was announced this week.
- From the Samuelson Clinic at Berkeley, a new "Is it in the Public Domain?" handbook.
- Newly-published is Collecting, Curating, and Researching Writers' Libraries: A Handbook (Rowman & Littlefield), edited by Rich Oram and Joseph Nicholson.
- Tests have confirmed (for all intents and purposes) that a Houghton Library book, Arsène Houssaye's Des destinées de l'ame is actually bound in human skin.
- The NYPL has revealed that its new renovation plans for the Fifth Avenue building and other upgrades will likely cost something on the order of $300 million, while the expected costs of the now-abandoned Central Library Plan had creeped up to more than $500 million. This just days after a falling chunk of plaster closed the Rose Main Reading Room indefinitely.
- Joel Kovarsky is profiled in the Crozet Times about his new book, The True Geography of Our Country: Jefferson's Cartographic Vision.
- From the ABAA Security blog, a robbery at Bay Leaf Books in Newaygo, MI.
- In the Guardian, a fascinating story about an overpainted whale in a 1641 Dutch painting, newly revealed through conservation work.
- Stephen Greenblatt writes about Montaigne's influence on Shakespeare.
Reviews
- Katharine Grant's Sedition; review by Andea Wulf in the NYTimes.
- Michael Blanding's The Map Thief; review by Michael Washburn in the Boston Globe.
