Sunday, May 17, 2020

Links, Reviews & Auctions

- The IOBA Virtual Rare Book Fair continues through the end of the weekend - well worth having a look through the many and varied offerings, though I confess, I miss chatting with the booksellers. Much looking forward to when we can all be in the same place again!

- Dan Cohen posted this piece on guidance for reopening library facilities, put together by IFLA. See also WebJunction's information hub.

- Great biblio-human Robin Myers, 94, is walking in her garden to raise money for World Jewish Relief.

- Princeton's fabulous Shakespeare and Company Project is highlighted in the Guardian.

- New from AAS, Black Self-Publishing.

- Ariel Sabar has a piece in the April Atlantic about the Dirk Obbink scandal.

- Michael Vinson is interviewed on the AbeBooks podcast about his new biography of Johnny Jenkins.

- From Simon Beattie, a look at the second issue (1733) of The Catch Club, a collection of humorous songs by English Baroque composers.

- At Early Modern Female Book Ownership, a copy of Hannah Woolley's The Queene-like Closet.

- Over on the University of Glasgow's Special Collections blog, the first installment of a series about the conservation of a 14th-century manuscript of Higden's Polychronicon.

- Distraction reading has increased in the UK, the Guardian reports.

- Research has revealed text on four Dead Sea Scroll parchments in the John Rylands Library previously believed to be blank.

- Sarah McMillan writes for Swann about the mixographia printing process. Hadn't heard of it? Me neither.

- Karin Wulf talked to Whitney Martinko for Smithsonian about "How Historic Preservation Shaped the Early United States."

- UC Berkeley has released a set of responsible access workflows for digitization projects.

- From A Bookhunter on Safari, "A Cambridge Binding – John Bird Hawes."

- Boston Athenaeum programming for the spring has gone virtual.

- The University of Liverpool library has started a blog series taking readers on an A–Z tour of the historic counties of Britain.

- The National Archives has awarded $2.9 million in grants for historical papers publication projects.

- Stephen Grant has posted the third part of his profile of first Folger director William Adams Slade.

- Famed collector Peter Spang has died. He was on the MHS board when I worked there years ago, and was unfailingly kind and interested in what we were up to. Donald Friary has a nice memorial post on Antiques and the Arts Weekly.

Book Reviews

- Nick Gadd's Death of a Typographer; review by Alex Johnson for the Fine Books Blog.

- Kevin Hayes' The Road to Monticello; review by Breck Baumann for the Colonial Review.

Upcoming Auctions

- Churchill in Charge at Sotheby's ends on 20 May.

Books and Works on Paper at Forum Auctions on 21 May.

- Americana from the George M. Steinmetz Collection – Literature – Miscellaneous Books at PBA Galleries ends on 21 May.

- Books and Manuscripts: A Spring Miscellany at Sotheby's ends on 21 May.

- Livres Rares et Manuscrits at Christie's on 27 May.

- Printed Books, Maps & Autographs at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on 27–28 May.

- Art & Archaeology of Asia – Travel & Exploration – Cartography at PBA Galleries on 28 May.

- The Martin Magovsky Collection of Children's Books and Books & Manuscripts at Freeman's on 28 May.