- Joseph Berger's NYTimes report "A Secret Jew, the New World, a Lost Book: Mystery Solved," on the identification of manuscript stolen from the National Archives of Mexico, is not to be missed.
- Heather Wolfe's recent Shakespeare discoveries are highlighted in The Guardian.
- The Grolier Club is hosting a mini-symposium on Wednesday, 11 January, "The World of Bookplates," drawing on their current exhibition, "Bookplates at the Grolier Club."
- Alex Shashkevich writes for the Stanford News website about a recent collaborative initiative to get students using materials from the university's special collections and archives.
- Among the Rare Book Monthly pieces for January are the annual look at the top 500 auction prices for works on paper (2016), Bruce McKinney on Sven Becker's appointment as head of books and manuscripts at Christie's New York, and Michael Stillman on the badly-done California law governing the sale of signed materials.
- Speaking of AB 1570, there's a Change.org petition up now urging its repeal, which had more than 800 signatures as of this morning.
- The BPL has started a new blog series in unique items in their collections, and I'd missed a pre-Christmas post from Jay Moschella about the BPL's important Americana purchases at the 1896 sale of the library of S.L.M. Barlow.
- Georgianna Ziegler notes a beautiful new Folger acquisition: a tiny manuscript presented to the eldest son of James I in 1607 by calligrapher Esther Inglis.
- Kirk Johnson highlights the work of bookbinder Donald Vass, who has worked for the King County Public Library system for more than a quarter-century.
- New and with all kinds of interesting things to be found, Early Modern Typography.
- This year marks the 75th anniversary of the opening of Harvard's Houghton Library.
- Rick Rojas reports for the NYTimes on the big move for a large collection of New York City court archives.
- Pradeep Sebastian surveys 2016's books about books for The Hindu.
- The British Library has returned a book from its collections after determining that it was stolen from an earlier owner by the Nazis.
- Jay Sylvestre of the University of Miami gets the "Bright Young Librarians" treatment at the Fine Books Blog.
- The Kelmscott Chaucer census blog notes that two copies have recently found new institutional homes.
- Two librarians in Florida have been suspended for apparently falsifying circulation records by creating fake patron accounts. Reportedly they did this to avoid the books being "automatically culled," but it poses a problem since the libraries receive some funding based on circulation.
Reviews
- Robert Parkinson's The Common Cause; review by Annette Gordon-Reed in the NYRB.
- Lawrence Bergreen's Casanova; review by Anthony Gottlieb in the NYTimes.
- Dava Sobel's The Glass Universe; review by Eileen Pollack in the WaPo.
- David Silverman's Thundersticks; review by Casey Sanchez in the LATimes.
- Alison Bradford and Joyce Chaplin's The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus; review by Mark Micale in the TLS.
Upcoming Auctions
- Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photography at Lyon & Turnbull, 11 January
- Rare Medicine & Science: Inventory of Edwin V. Glaser Rare Books (with additions) at PBA Galleries, 12 January
