Wow, aside from all the conferences this felt at first like it was a somewhat quiet week, but when I started putting this together I realized just how wrong that impression was!
- Missed this announcement in December: Alberto Manguel has been appointed director of the National Library of Argentina.
- The New York Public Library released 180,000+ digitized items as high-resolution downloads, with various changes to the NYPL Digital Collections website intended to "facilitate sharing, research and reuse." This announcement, and rightly so, earned much praise this week. See also good coverage from NPR and the NYTimes.
- A round of eighteen awesome CLIR Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grants was announced this week: they include a project to digitize the Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive at the HRC, a website to aggregate Philadelphia-area medieval manuscript images, a cross-museum collection of field notes, and much, much more.
- Rebecca Rego Barry was on WAMC this week to talk about Rare Books Uncovered.
- NPR's Susan Stamberg covered the big First Folio Tour for NPR this week.
- Over at Past is Present, an excellent post on the conservation treatment process recently carried out on the AAS's 1709 Bay Psalm Book.
- The Getty is digitizing early books illustrated with photographs from its collections.
- From Erin Schreiner on the NYSL blog, "New York Needs a History of Reading."
- Britta Lokting, writing at Forward, asks "What's Next for Valmadonna Judaica Trove After Record-Shattering Sale?"
- There's a neat new Omeka presentation of 17th-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne bookseller William Corbett's shop.
- Speaking of Bay Psalm Books: Swann has announced that a previously unknown seventh edition (Boston, 1693), with some truly excellent provenance, will be part of their sale on 4 February. See the lot description, with photos. The estimate here, $30,000–40,000, seems a bit low to me ...
- Another Pirie sale acquisition announcement: the State Library Victoria acquired four lots (containing 33 English Civil War pamphlets) for inclusion in their Emmerson collection.
- And over at The Collation, Elizabeth DeBold has the first in a series of posts to highlight the Folger's Pirie sale purchases.
- Tim Martin reports for The Telegraph on the Royal College of Physicians exhibit about John Dee's library.
- Jim Kuhn has been appointed associate director and Hobby Foundation Librarian at the Harry Ransom Center.
- In the NYTimes, William Neuman reports on recent work on Incan khipus, including a recent discovery of several khipus in situ at an Incan storage facility.
- Over at The Alchemy Website, see "A modern alchemical hoax exposed." Extremely odd indeed.
- New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced a fairly extensive plan to digitize some 2.8 million boxes of municipal records.
- At LitHub, Samantha Hunt offers up "A Brief History of Books that do not Exist."
- In slightly more annoying news, the Authors Guild announced that they will appeal the Google Books ruling to the Supreme Court.
- Paul Collins was on BBC Radio recently discussing the wonderfully zany book Plotto.
Reviews
- Shaun Greehalgh's A Forger's Tale; review by Jeff Taylor in TNR (more art forgery primer than review, but interesting anyway).
- Kate Loveman's Samuel Pepys and his Books; review by Lena Liapi at Reviews in History.
- Eric Nelson's The Royalist Revolution; review by Heather Schwartz at Common-place.
- Tom Holland's Dynasty; review by Michiko Kakutani in the NYTimes.
- Justin Peters' The Idealist; review by Michael Schaub in the LATimes.
- Scott Hendrix's Martin Luther and Andrew Pettegree's Brand Luther; review by D.G. Hart in the WSJ.
