- President Obama announced this week that he will nominate Carla Hayden as the next Librarian of Congress, to near-universal acclaim. Hayden must now be confirmed by the Senate.
- A new exhibition, "Shakespeare by the Book: Four Centuries of Printing, Editing, and Publishing" is now open at the Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library at UVA. I went to the opening on Friday night, and do encourage anyone in the area to come by and give the exhibit a look.
- Legal disputes over a cache of documents created by the Korean National Association in the early 20th century have ended in a settlement: USC will conserve and digitize the material, with the originals going to Korea until a proper facility can be constructed for their long-term storage.
- A great post by Susan Martin at The Beehive about the sleuthing it took to identify the author of a manuscript diary recently acquired by MHS. Well done!
- The Huntington Library has acquired by gift the Lawrence D. and Betty Jeanne Longo Collection on Reproductive Biology, a large collection of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, &c. related to the history of human reproduction.
- Eric Kwakkel's new post, "Dirty Old Books," surveys what signs of use on medieval manuscripts tell us about how these documents were used.
- Heather Wolfe explores the knotty question of textual variants in William Henry Ireland's forged Shakespeare documents.
- Keith Houston's forthcoming The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (W.W. Norton) is now available for pre-order.
- The Library of Congress has digitized the Rosa Parks papers currently on loan to LC from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
- Voting is now open for "Oddest Book Title of the Year 2015" contest.
- At Atlas Obscura, Natalie Zarrelli takes a look at lighthouse libraries.
- Christopher Minty talked to Ted O'Reilly of the N-YHS about the work done to process the N-YHS' institutional archives.
- Budget cuts are expected to hit the National Library of Australia extremely hard, according to a report in the Canberra Times.
- Historian Elizabeth Eisenstein died on 31 January: this week obituaries appeared in both the New York Times and the Washington Post.
- Don't miss Rebecca Romney's excellent post memorializing Umberto Eco.
Reviews
- Manisha Sinha's The Slave's Cause; review by Ira Berlin in the NYTimes.
- Alison Weir's The Lost Tudor Princess; review by Philippa Gregory in the WaPo.
- Claire Harman's Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart; reviews by Laurie Stone in the WaPo and Julia M. Klein in the LATimes.
- A whole slew of recent Tolkien-related books; review by Roz Kaveney in the TLS.
- William Egginton's The Man Who Invented Fiction; review by David Wootton in the WSJ.
- Eric Burns' The Golden Lad; review by Roger Lowenstein in the WSJ.
