Sunday, September 27, 2015

Links & Reviews

- The book collection of Robert S Pirie will be sold at Sotheby's in December. David Redden calls it "the greatest private collection put together since World War II." This is going to be quite a sale to watch.

- Librarian of Congress James Billington announced this week that his retirement will take effect on 30 September, not on 1 January as previously stated. Deputy Librarian of Congress David Mao will serve as acting Librarian until Billington's successor is confirmed by the Senate.

- A federal judge ruled this week that "Happy Birthday" is in the public domain. Read the full decision. Warner/Chappell has not yet indicated whether they will appeal. For background, see Paul Collins' 2011 Slate piece on the copyright status of this song.

- APHA is developing a History of Printing Timeline and they have asked for comments and suggestions.

- Making the rounds this week, Alexandra Alter's NYTimes report "The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead."

- The National Library of Scotland has announced plans to digitize a third of its 24 million items available digitally in the next ten years.

- Literary Hub has a great feature called "Interview with a Bookstore" - this week they talked to the staff at Cambridge's Harvard Book Store.

- The Society of American Archivists has released a comment on the Copyright Office's pilot program for mass digitization projects.

- A major exhibition on the library of John Dee will be on display at the Royal College of Physicians in London from January to July 2016.

- UVA Today profiled book conservator Eliza Gilligan this week, focusing on her work with a book from Landon Carter's library.

- Daniel Crouch Rare Books has donated a 1926 embroidered map made by the Disabled Soldiers Embroidery Industry to the Bodleian Library.

- Megan Cook writes about her work at an RBS course in Philadelphia this summer, where she explored a 16th-century heraldic manuscript and "shows how open access to digital images of early books can facilitate new answers to old questions."

- The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library has received a $4 million grant from the Arcadia Fund to support HMML's cataloging, archiving, and digitization efforts. Teams from the museum have been engaged in digital preservation in Syria, Iraq, and Mali in recent years.

- Not in the least unconnected, the e-book subscription service Oyster will close early next year.

- Eve Kahn reports for the NYTimes on MIT conservator Jana Dambrogio's work on "letterlocking."

- In Smithsonian, Alexander Stille reports on the 2013 discovery of a trove of what are perhaps the oldest identified papyri, which are providing much new information about the construction of the pyramids.

- The Folger Shakespeare Library has joined the Provenance Online Project, with the first batch of images comprising more than 350 women's provenance marks identified by Georgianna Ziegler.

- Lew Jaffe posts about a few new bookplate acquisitions, including one fantastic new name label (of Gardner Winslow of Pomfret, VT) with a nice manuscript addition.

- William Blake's Felpham cottage has been saved for the British nation after a fundraising campaign: the Blake Society was able to purchase the house for £495,000.

- Claire M.L. Bourne has a guest post at The Collation about a great sammelband from the Folger collections.

- Princeton has acquired a copy of William James Stillman's 1870 photographic book The Acropolisy of Athens. Stillman's an old favorite of mine; he and I share an alma mater, Union College.

- Speaking of bookplates, some 2,000 from James Goode's collection will be sold at Heritage Auctions in New York in early November.

- Osama S.M. Amin writes about a fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh acquired in 2011 by the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq. It, along with other clay tablets, are believed to have been illegally excavated from southern Iraq - the museum purchased them as part of an initiative to intercept smuggled antiquities before they could be removed from the country.

- Houghton Library has acquired a collection of more than 3,000 items related to "major conflicts and transformative events of the 20th century" from the José María Castañé Foundation.

Reviews

- Andrea Wulf's The Invention of Nature; review by Colin Thubron in the NYTimes.

- Andrea Mays' The Millionaire and the Bard; review by Nick Romeo in the Daily Beast.

- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Laird Hunt in the LATimes.

- Elsa Hart's Jade Dragon Mountain; review by Denise Hassanzade Ajiri in the CSM.

- The Morgan Library & Museum's exhibit "Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars"; review by Charles McGrath in the NYTimes.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Links & Reviews

- As if they needed more bad news: the BPL has temporarily closed its rare book department for an assessment after a "significant mold outbreak."

- Megan Cottrell has a short piece in American Libraries about thwarting book thefts, featuring comments from Travis McDade.

- Nancy Scola reported for Politico that biographer Walter Isaacson "took himself out of the running" to be the next Librarian of Congress. The report includes several other names of folks supposedly under consideration, including Amy Gutmann, John Palfrey, Carla Hayden, Susan Hildreth, Deborah Jacobs, Brewster Kahle, and David Ferriero.

- There's a new Pew Research report about the importance of libraries in American society, which ought to be read by anyone with an interest.

- Roll Call's Bridget Bowman talked to new Library of Congress CIO Bernard A. Barton, Jr. about what he hopes to do at LC.

- Coming up from 12–14 November in Philadelphia, the 8th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year's theme is "Picking up the Pieces," about fragmentation and reconstitution of manuscripts. See the event webpage for full details.

- An iconic Darwin letter about the Bible heads to auction on Monday: Rebecca Rego Barry reports for the Guardian.

- Lambeth Palace Library has purchased the Broughton Missal.

- Robert Darnton has released two of his early books as open-access texts through the Authors Alliance.

- From Past is Present, "Omeka Mania at AAS."

- The Library of Congress has acquired the personal archives of Jerry Lewis.

- WBUR reported this week on the jam-packed state of affairs at the Massachusetts Archives in Boston.

- Also going to the Library of Congress, the papers of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

- Library historian Wayne Wiegand talked to the Daily Tar Heel about his new book Part of Our Lives: A People's History of the American Public Library.

- Over on the APHA blog, Robert Oldham writes about his attempt to track all extant hand presses in the United States.

- Simon Fraser University has purchased a 1269 manuscript law volume; this is reportedly the first medieval manuscript purchased by the university. [Warning: white glove alert]

- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a neat find about early modern printing practices in the notebooks of John Ward, a physician and the vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon.

- An excellent example of bearing type, from the UNC Wilson Special Collections Library's Tumblr. [via John Overholt]

- Typographer Adrian Frutiger died on 10 September; his NYTimes obituary is well worth a read.

- There's a new exhibit at the Harvard Law School Library: "One Text, Sixteen Manuscripts: Magna Carta at the Harvard Law School Library." There's an online companion to the show as well.

- More on the ongoing crisis at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project from the Illinois Times.

- AAS Fellow Linford Fisher talked to Past is Present about his work on colonial slavery.

- Pauline Schol writes about this year's York Antiquarian Book Seminar (YABS) over at The Bookhunter on Safari.

- The Independent highlights artist Lisa Nilsson's use of "quilled" paper to create vivid anatomical cross-sections.

- Bob McCamant links to a short video on YouTube of Anthony Bourdain visiting Andrew Hoyem's Arion Press.

- The New-York Historical Society has acquired a collection of more than 300 documentary photographs of New York City, taken between 1978 and 2015 by Raymond Germann.

- Up for sale on Tuesday at Bonhams will be Franz Kafka's signed Czech passport.

- Nate Pedersen visited the Innerpeffray Library in Scotland in June, and has posted a short video he took on his trip over on the FB&C blog.

- Currently on display at the Grolier Club, "Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll's Masterpiece."

- Orson Welles' copies of the screenplay for "Citizen Kane" will be sold at a Profiles in History sale on 30 September. Up for grabs are an original first draft, a final draft, and a revised shooting script with Welles' manuscript notes.

- In the TLS, Jonathan Clark suggests that Thomas Paine was not the author of significant portions of The Rights of Man, and offers his own candidate.

Reviews

- Sasha Abramsky's The House of Twenty Thousand Books; review by Toby Lichtig in the TLS.

- Livi Michael's Succession; review by Jean Zimmerman in the NYTimes.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Links & Reviews

- Angelique Chrisafis reports for the Guardian about a remarkable legal battle in France over the manuscript of Chateaubriand's memoirs. Lawyer Pascal Dufour faces trial this week for "aggravated breach of trust" for attempting to sell the manuscript, which has been kept under lock and key since 1847, passed down through generations of notaries. Dufour claimed ownership of the ten volume memoir and tried to consign it for sale in 2012, but the state prosecutor maintains that Dufour can't sell it and that it should be returned to the author's heirs (who, apparently, may include Dufour's wife!). Meanwhile, Chateaubriand's will mandates that all copies by burnt without being read ... so there's that. Quite a story.

- In the New Yorker, Tim Wu asks "What ever happened to Google Books?"

- An early and unpublished Stravinsky work, "Funeral Song," has been located at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

- The AAS has acquired a copy of the first authorized American edition of Martin Chuzzlewit, in seven parts with their original wrappers.

- Bernard A. Barton, Jr. has been appointed CIO at the Library of Congress.

- Nick Basbanes writes in Humanities about Philip Kelley's efforts to publish the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

- Rare books from the collection of W.A. Cadbury (son of a co-founder of the chocolate company) will be sold at a Mellors & Kirk auction this week.

- From David Levy, an inside look at the XML schema he's using for his bibliography of the works of Edmond Hoyle.

- Michael Daly writes for The Daily Beast about the process of returning Jefferson's manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence to the NYPL from the British Library, where it was on display as part of the Magna Carta exhibition.

- Over on the Houghton Library Tumblr, an animated look at progressive proofs of a color image from Alice in Wonderland.

- There's a roundup of recent rare book catalogs at The New Antiquarian.

- Oak Knoll Press announced the creation of a new editorial board (list here).

- Pierre Bergé talked to WWD about the upcoming sale of books from his collection.

- From Christopher Minty at The Junto, "Finding Its Way: Gordon Wood and the William and Mary Quarterly."

- David Finkelstein has posted a Storify of the tweets from the Cultures of Communication conference in Edinburgh.

- The AHA has released guidelines for evaluation of digital scholarship.

- Lyrics written by Tupac Shakur while in jail are to be sold at Sotheby's Rock & Pop sale; they've rated an estimate of £30,000–50,000.

- Also up for sale, the manuscript of Wagner's "wedding march," available from the website Moments in Time for £2.3 million.

- John Palfrey will chair the search committee for the next BPL president.

- Dan Gillmor, writing for Slate, urges the appointment of Brewster Kahle as the next Librarian of Congress.

- The BPL highlights five recently-digitized rare books, including a 1613 title with "mourning pages."

- A new train line in Scotland is aimed (at least in part) at literary tourists interested in the scenes of Sir Walter Scott.

- At Fast Company, Tina Amirtha explores "The Trouble With Digitizing History."

- Open Culture highlights the digitized theater ephemera from the collections of the NYPL.

- Lew Jaffe's new post at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie concerns the disposal of bookplate collections.

- CLIR has issued a new report, "Changing and Expanding Libraries," by Amy Chen, Sarah Pickle, and Heather Waldroup.

- Thanks to an increase in funding, the NYPL will expand hours and hire more than 100 new staff members.

Reviews

- Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies; reviews by Robin Black in the NYTimesRon Charles in the WaPo, and Edan Lepucki in the LATimes.

- Irwin Gellman's The President and the Apprentice; review by Timothy Naftali in the NYTimes.

- M.L. West's The Making of the Odyssey; review by Peter Green in the TLS.

Sunday, September 06, 2015

Links & Reviews

- The collection of rare books and manuscripts acquired by Aristophil, the French company run by Gérard Lhéritier, will be sold at auction according to a report in The Art Newspaper. French prosecutors have described the company's business model as a Ponzi scheme, and the founder is currently out on bail. The collection includes fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls and the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom." The report suggests that it may be a while before any such auction, occurs, though: "Conducting a full inventory of the company's collection is expected to take several years." Lhéritier maintains that the liquidation of the collection was instigated by "a small gang of civil servants" who want the manuscripts for the state.

- Another great episode from "To The Best of Our Knowledge" this week, on "The Art of the Collection." Highly recommended.

- Bookseller James Jaffe examined the contents of a safe-deposit box containing Harper Lee materials, and concluded that a third novel is not present. He reports that the box contained an original typescript of "Go Set a Watchman," a early typescript of portions of "To Kill a Mockingbird," and a copy-edited full typescript of the latter. You can read Jaffe's full report here.

- Recirculating this week, a list of Hebrew books missing from Lincoln College, Oxford. The presumed theft of these books was first investigated in 1990.

- The University of Louisville recently announced the discovery of the only known manuscript of "Good Morning to All," now better known as "Happy Birthday." The manuscript was located in a sketch book belonging to the song's co-author, Mildred Hill, part of a collection donated to the university in the 1950s and never cataloged. The first page of the manuscript is missing, and there is some question about whether this is the original version, or a revision.

- Much confusion this week in Springfield over the fate of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project, with the Illinois Times reporting that the project would be shut down or at least halted as a state budget impasse continues. More from the Lincoln Courier.

- Now up at Folgerpedia, a very useful writeup on "Interpreting MARC records."

- A copy of the book containing the first known image of the dodo was on the auction block this week in Edinburgh, but failed to sell.

- Thanks to Mitch Fraas for passing along Sasha Abramsky's article in The Nation about his grandfather's library: "How the Atheist Son of a Jewish Rabbi Created One of the Greatest Libraries of Socialist Literature."

- Rose Eveleth highlights the recent launch of Archives Corps, a volunteer effort to "organize the saving of physical materials in danger of loss."

- In the 7 September New Yorker, Stacy Schiff has a long piece on the Salem witchcraft crisis.

- Bowdoin College has acquired a collection of more than 700 books on American cookery, with emphasis on pre-1900 titles. The collection was assembled by New York banker Clifford Apgar, and its purchase was funded in part by a gift from Esta Kramer. More coverage in a Bowdoin news piece and from the Portland Press-Herald.

- Eric Kwakkel explores medieval "posters" this week.

- An unpublished Ezra Pound poem sold at auction this week for £7,500.

- The Tate galleries have launched a new crowdsourced transcription project (called, naturally, AnnoTate) through Zooniverse, to transcribe items from their archive of artists' papers.

- A 19th-century manuscript Koran sold for £230,000 at a Devon auction, over estimates of just £1,500.

- On display at the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia through January as part of their exhibit Catholics in the New World: A Selection of 16th–18th Century Texts are copies of the first surviving book printed in the Americas, Doctrina breve (Mexico City, 1544) and the first book printed in South America, Doctrina christiana (Lima, 1584).

- Jeff Scott, director of library services at the Berkeley Public Library (CA) for just ten months, resigned this week after staff and community members accused him of lying about the number of books being weeded from the library's collections and for removing staff members from the weeding process after they protested the extent of the deaccessioning.

- From July, but new to me: NBC Tech ran an article on the use of multispectral imaging on manuscripts, maps, &c.

- A copy of the last Titanic lunch menu will be sold in an online auction on 30 September.

- This month's crocodile mystery is up at The Collation.

- The AAS has posted its quarterly roundup of recent articles and books by AAS community members.

- From Pradeep Sebastian at The Hindu, a look back at Nirmal Kumar's mid-century Calcutta bookshop.

Reviews

- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Hari Kunzru in the NYTimes. More on this book from Ari Shapiro at NPR.

- Zachary Lesser's Hamlet After Q1; review by Arnold Hunt in the TLS.