- The second "Virtual Issue" of The Library, containing articles about private libraries, is now available.
- Eric Kwakkel has a great post at Medieval Books about the recent work he and others have been doing to pilot the use of x-rays to reveal manuscript fragments hidden inside bookbindings. More here.
- A new database of early American library charging records, from the Easton (PA) Library Company, is now available at elc.lafayette.edu. The team is still adding records, but this looks like a great start.
- The Sotheby's London sale of 15 December realized £1.6 million. See the full results. The sale included the very interesting archive of Robert Catterson-Smith, a collaborator on the Kelmscott Chaucer.
- Daniel Grant writes for The Observer on the 22 December sale of material from the Valmadonna Trust Library. And Sotheby's David Redden talked to a local NYC news station about the collection and the auction.
- UNC's purchases at the Pirie sale were announced this week.
- A bill to make the US Copyright Office independent has been introduced in the House.
- New from Oxford, the 15cBOOKTRADE Project offers a whole range of resources and useful tools for the study of early books. An accompanying database, TEXT-inc, was also released this week.
- New from the University of Southampton, The Austen Family Music Books, a digital collection of 18 music albums belonging to Jane Austen's family. See the announcement.
- Mitch Fraas answers the question "What do you do all day?" for Medium.
- At Echoes from the Vault, Briony Aitcheson writes about the identification during cataloging of a previously-unrecorded variant cancel title page for the first edition of The Wealth of Nations.
- Jennifer Maloney and Pia Catton report for the WSJ on the coming "bonanza" of Shakespeare-related events/exhibits/books, &c., to mark the 400th anniversary of the Bard's death in 2016.
- New from The Appendix contributors, Backlist, a selection of curated lists of books.
- Dee Clayman writes for the OUP Blog about the ongoing work on the Herculaneum scrolls. John Seabrook's recent New Yorker piece on the project is also now online.
- Coming up in the fall of 2016, a series of interlinked exhibitions and an international conference in Boston on illuminated manuscripts.
- Over at POP for "Mystery Monday," "Who signed the Newberry Library's First Folio?"
- A rare Kay Nielsen watercolor illustration for a 1924 edition of Hans Christian Andersen stories sold for £32,000 at auction this week.
- Liberty University has received a collection of rare Bibles from Dr. Harold Rawlings.
- Andy Stauffer has a response to Jacob Nadal's column "Silvaculture in the Stacks."
- The Daily News reported this week on the $22 million overhaul of the NYPL's Schomburg Center.
- More from The Collation on the launch of Shakespeare's World.
- In the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Penn's Laura Aydelotte is featured this week.
- Stephen Heyman writes for Slate about the success of the UK bookstore chain Waterstone's and what lessons US bookstores could learn.
- The AP reports on a soon-to-be-published Civil War diary volume separated from its fellows when it was captured by a Union soldier during the conflict.
- The Carnegie Corporation of New York has awarded a $2.2 million grant to the Columbia University Libraries for the development of an online portal to the corporation's institutional records.
- A replica "handling copy" of the Gutenberg Bible has been produced for the John Rylands Library.
Reviews
- Rebecca Rego Barry's Rare Books Uncovered; reviews by Ben Marks for Collectors Weekly and Kurt Zimmerman at American Book Collecting.
- Harold Holzer and Norton Garfinkle's A Just and Generous Nation; review by Andrew Delbanco in the NYTimes.
- Andrew Pettegree's Brand Luther; review by Colin Woodard in the NYTimes.
- James Shapiro's The Year of Lear; review by Blake Seitz in the Washington Free Beacon.
- Lisa Moses Leff's The Archive Thief; review by James McAuley in the WaPo.
