- It was "Cheat Week" at Atlas Obscura, with nearly forty articles on all manner of hoaxes, scams, frauds, &c. They included Damaris Colhoun on fake diaries and Cara Giaimo on "Beringer's Lying Stones."
- David Gary, writing for The Atlantic, explains Yale's decision to purchase nearly 3,000 VHS tapes of 1970s and 1980s horror movies.
- The winners of the 2015 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest were announced this week.
- Many congratulations to Molly Hardy on being appointed the Digital Humanities Curator at AAS. In a blog post, Molly reflects on "how we at AAS understand the relationship between digital humanities and special collections libraries."
- Mary Fissell writes about the long-lasting appeal of Aristotle's Masterpiece at Public Domain Review.
- Nancy Maron, writing in EDUCAUSE Review, asks "The Digital Humanities Are Alive and Well and Blooming: Now What?"
- From the Seattle Times, a profile of scholar Devin Naar, who has accumulated one of the largest collections of books in Ladino and is planning a digital library of same.
- Glyn Farrow, Chief Executive of the St Bride Foundation, has posted an update on "recent developments," maintaining that no collections will be sold or given away, but that the library and other facilities could be reopened if the foundation's financial situation improves.
- Former Getty curator Marion True has broken her silence, talking to Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. She's also reportedly drafted a memoir (which may or may not see print).
- There's a report in today's Guardian that MI5 monitored the activities of author Doris Lessing for more than two decades, according to previously secret files released on Friday.
- Coming up in September at Amherst College, a symposium on "Books and Print between Cultures, 1500-1900."
- From Sarah Hovde at The Collation, a look at how catalogers at the Folger (and rare book catalogers generally) use genre and form terms to facilitate searching, discoverability, &c.
- Sarah Werner has revised and updated her very useful list of digitized First Folios.
- Laurence Worms of Ash Rare Books has announced that his "Cataloguing for Booksellers" is about to be published.
- The University of Akron has walked back its plan to lay off two employees of its university press, saying that the two will "help ensure operations" continue as the press is folded into the university library.
- A planned Bloomsbury Auctions sale of several personal items belonging to actor Daniel Day-Lewis has been called off after Day-Lewis intervened.
- The University of Wisconsin-Superior has received a $50,000 grant to catalog and preserve a collection of technical drawings, negatives, and other documents from the shipbuilding firm Fraser Shipyards, Inc.
- There's a new post on the Trinity College Library blog highlighting a short PowerPoint "exhibition" about the value of exploring personal libraries (in this case, Isaac Newton's).
- In the New York Times Magazine, Steven Johnson explores "The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn't."
Reviews
- Matthew Battles' Palimpsest; review by David Shields in the NYTimes.
- John Palfrey's Bibliotech, Ann Morgan's The World Between Two Covers, Tim Parks' Where I'm Reading From, Michael Dirda's Browsings, and James Wood's The Nearest Thing to Life; short reviews by Timothy Aubry in the NYTimes.
- Lisa Jardine's Temptation in the Archives; review by Henriette Louwerse in THE.
