- The California book fair(s) are behind us and here comes New York. Recaps from Oakland from Tavistock Books, Oak Knoll Books, and Lux Mentis. It was my first visit to the CA Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland; the Rare Book School table stayed busy for much of the fair and it was a treat to see so many friends and meet lots of new folks. Found a few good books, too!
- More on that theft of a shipment of rare books from a warehouse in London: see the stolen-book.org page for a PDF list of the titles. The ABA posted a statement about the thefts, the Guardian covered the story, and the Daily Mail ran a report (which the ABA secretary described as "more than a little sensationalist" - take it with a grain of salt).
- Brenda Cronin profiles Glenn Horowitz for the WSJ.
- Robert Darnton offers "The True History of Fake News" in the NYRB.
- Mark Samuels Lasner has donated his collection of British literature and art to the University of Delaware.
- Ella Morton writes for Atlas Obscura about "library hand," the penmanship technique once common on library catalog cards.
- Audio of selected presentations from RBMS 2016 is now available.
- The Harry Ransom Center has posted video of Eric White's recent talk there about the HRC copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
- Don't miss Matt Kirschenbaum's "Books.Files" in the new Archive Journal.
- Sarah Werner asks "what do digitized first folios do for us?"
- The Newberry Library has received a Mellon Foundation grant to create a website for training in Italian Renaissance paleography.
- At their annual meeting during Bibliography Week, APHA presented awards to Lisa Unger Baskin and to the U.S. Government Printing Office, and a Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship to Amanda Stuckey.
- From Sarah Larson for the New Yorker: "The Librarian of Congress and the Greatness of Humility."
- The Internet Archive has reached the semifinalist stage in the competition for a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
- APHA also offered a sneak peak into the forthcoming Printing History 21.
- Maddy Smith writes for the BL's Untold Lives blog about their recent acquisition of the only known copy of a 1650 schoolbook, The Grounds of Learning.
- Over at The Collation, an 1838 promptbook covered in coarse cloth.
- On the OUP Blog, Vincent Carretta asks if Phillis Wheatley's husband was a "crook or a dreamer"?
- New from the Bodleian: The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné. See their press release for more.
- LitHub has launched a new series on librarians in the 21st century.
- Nick Holdstock writes for the Guardian about cataloging Doris Lessing's library.
- Daniel Pollack-Pelzner explores "The Radical Argument of the New Oxford Shakespeare" for the New Yorker's Page-Turner blog.
- Behind a paywall, alas, but Haaretz has a report on the Kafka manuscripts by Hilo Glazer.
Reviews
- Karen Baston's Charles Areskine's Library; review by Alexander Murdoch at Reviews in History.
- Anders Rydell's The Book Thieves; review by David Holahan in the CSM.
- Randall Fuller's The Book That Changed America; review by Jerry A. Coyne in the WaPo.
- "The Art of the Qur'an" at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; review by Robert F. Worth in the NYRB.
- A November 2016 symposium on women's book history at Texas A&M; review by Kate Ozment at Early Modern Online Bibliography.
Upcoming Auctions
- Americana - Travel & Exploration - World History - Photographs - Cartography at PBA Galleries, 23 February.
- Books and Works on Paper at Bloomsbury, 23 February.
