Apologies for the delays in getting a post up: it hasn't been for lack of news, but simply because much travel over the last several weeks has kept me very busy. The SEA conference in Tulsa was an excellent one, and it was a delight to see so many friends both there and during the book fair festivities in New York last weekend.
- From the book fair: Scott Zieher for the Village Voice; Erin Schreiner for LitHub; Rebecca Rego Barry for Fine Books Blog.
- The president's budget plan calls for the elimination of the NEA, NEH, and IMLS, among many other effective, efficient, and worthy programs. While this is indeed only a proposal, it says much about the priorities of this administration, and if you value the good works supported by these and other programs targeted, I urge you to contact your representatives and tell them so. Some links on this front: Christopher Knight in the LATimes "The NEA works. Why does Trump want to cut it?"; Andrea Scott in the New Yorker; Amanda French's "A Visit to the Rayburn Building"; "Why We Need the NEA and the NEH" by Mellon Foundation executive vice president Marlët Westermann; a call from AHA to its membership urging them to contact Congress about the budget plan; Sophie Gilbert in the Atlantic on "The Real Cost of Trump's Abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts"; PEN America's excellent "What You Can Do" post; statement by the leadership of the Digital Library Federation;
- The March Rare Book Monthly articles include Michael Stillman's report on the brazen warehouse theft of rare books in late January, a piece by Forum Auctions' Rupert Powell on the state of the book auction world, and Eric Caren on several of his upcoming auctions.
- From Molly Hardy at Past is Present, "Running the Numbers on Early American Literature."
- The Newberry Library has acquired the Bexley Hall Rare Book Collection.
- Helen Hazen writes for the American Scholar about her job as librarian of a convent library in Peru and her efforts to catalog the rare materials in the collection.
- From Sarah Laskow for Atlas Obscura, "The Unsung Delight of a Well-Designed Endpaper."
- Vincent Noce has an update in The Art Newspaper about the Aristophil collection of rare books and manuscripts, auctions of which could begin at Drouot as early as September. The sales could be spread out over "at least six to ten years," according to the report.
- Jane Kamensky has won the New-York Historical Society's annual book prize for A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley.
- Senators McCaskill and Carper have written to AOTUS David Ferriero expressing concern about the Trump Administration's compliance with the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act.
- Jay Moschella has an update on the BPL's project of digitizing their earliest printed books.
- Ebook sales in the UK fell in 2016, for the second year in a row, as print sales increased.
- New blog of interest: Caribbean Histories.
- The family of Antonin Scalia will donate the justice's papers to the Harvard Law School Library.
- I've neglected to link to a recent volume of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society which will be of interest to many readers; the papers are drawn from the APS symposium "Fabrication, Verification, Authentication," and include Nick Wilding's essay "Forging the Moon," on the Galileo forgeries.
- Owen Williams and Rachel Dankert post for The Collation about "The Folger as a Collection of Collections."
- Registration is open for this year's Texas A&M Book History Workshop.
- From Tess Goodman at Inciting Sparks, "Reading As If To Live."
- Jackie Penny posts at Past is Present about the upcoming construction project at AAS.
- Daniel Dreisbach has a post for SHEAR adapted from his new book Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
- The Maine State Library and Archives have jointly launched the Digital Maine Transcription Project.
- Rebecca Romney gets the "Bright Young Booksellers" spotlight.
- The Liesborn Gospels will return to Germany after a $3 million deal.
- Noah Sheola posts for the Houghton Library Blog about recataloging several undated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century quartos of Julius Caesar from the Houghton collections.
- Over at The Junto, a Q&A with Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman, editors of The American Revolution Reborn.
- The Book Collector has launched a contest to design the "27th letter."
- There's an excellent cataloging/provenance mystery post over on the Perne & Ward Libraries blog.
- Publisher George Braziller died this week at the age of 101. See the NYTimes obituary.
- Peter Steinberg has a post at Sylvia Plath Info about an important Plath archive currently offered for sale by bookseller Ken Lopez.
- At Verso, the Huntington Library's blog, Andrew Walkling posts about the printing process(es) used for a 1685 songbook.
- Scholar-librarian Michael Turner also died this week: Ian Gadd has a post on SHARP-L about Turner's long and productive career.
- Oxford professor Adam Smyth talks to cataloger Lucy Kelsall and conservator Nikki Tomkins about the library of Nicholas Crouch, now at Balliol College.
Reviews
- Charlie Lovett's The Lost Book of the Grail; review by Rebecca Rego Barry at the Fine Books Blog.
- The American Revolution Reborn, edited by Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman; review by Christopher Minty at The Junto.
- James Barron's The One-Cent Magenta; review by Timothy R. Smith in the WaPo.
- Spencer McBridge's Pulpit & Nation; review by Jonathan Wilson at The Junto.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A House Full of Females; review by Louisa Thomas in the WaPo.
- Eugene Hammond's Jonathan Swift and John Stubbs' Jonathan Swift; review by Claude Rawson in the TLS.
- Sidney Berger's The Dictionary of the Book; review by Dennis Duncan in the TLS [paywalled].
Upcoming Auctions
- Fine Literature with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beats at PBA Galleries on 23 March.
- Texana and Western Americana at Heritage Auctions on 24 March.
- Spring 2017 auction at Arader Galleries on 25 March.
Showing posts with label Girolamini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Girolamini. Show all posts
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Links & Reviews
Lots of catching up to do: since my last I had the great pleasure and honoring of addressing the annual meeting of the Ticknor Society in Boston on the friendship between Thomas Jefferson and George Ticknor. The annual meeting was held at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where Ticknorites had the opportunity to view the excellent current exhibition, "The Private Jefferson" (which I commend to anyone who can get there to view it before it closes on 26 May). While in Boston I also got to make my semi-annual visits to the Brattle Book Shop and Commonwealth Books, and was able to work in a little research time at MHS (more about that latter soon; I located something I'm quite excited to share). All that plus a laptop meltdown! If I missed anything vital in this catch-up post, please don't hesitate to send it along.
- A copy of the "Plannck II" Columbus Letter donated to the Library of Congress in 2004 was repatriated to Italy this week; it had been stolen from the Riccardiana Library in Florence and replaced with a photographic facsimile. The letter was subsequently sold at Christie's in 1992 (lot description). See: Department of Justice press release; seizure warrant (this makes for fascinating reading - boy would I like to see what's underneath those redaction lines!); Elisabetta Povoledo's NYTimes article. For more: La Repubblica (in Italian); Italian Cultural Ministry statement (in Italian); LATimes. (Thanks to Nick Wilding and others for posting on ExLibris about this story). Volker Schroder also linked to a bookseller's description of the letter from before the 1992 Christie's sale.
- Jill Bourne, city librarian at the San Jose Public Library, will be the new president of the Boston Public Library.
- RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, is now officially fully open-access.
- Erin Blake has a great two-part series at The Collation this week: "Physical description in book cataloging," and "Signature statements in book cataloging."
- Christie's will sell a copy of the true first edition of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland on 16 June. More from the Fine Books Blog. Coming up on the same day, also at Christie's, Neal Cassady's famed letter to Jack Kerouac (more on this from Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes).
- Lara Putnam's American Historical Review article "The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast" is currently available via the AHR.
- A 15-year-old's collection of more than 200 Apple computers may become the cornerstone of a planned Maine Technology Museum.
- Jerome McGann's ADE keynote, "Exceptional Measures: The Human Sciences in STEM Worlds," is now available online.
- An 11th-century letter known as the last surviving work of Chinese scholar Zeng Gong has set a new record price for an example of Chinese calligraphy, the BBC reports, selling for $32 million at a Beijing auction. The buyer was film mogul Wang Zhongjun.
- Last month the Princeton History Department hosted what looks like a great two-day conference in honor of Sidney Lapidus: "Fighting Words: Polemical Literature in the Age of Democratic Revolutions."
- Skinner is holding an online auction of fine books and manuscripts, which runs through 26 May.
- Matt Kirschenbaum has a short piece for the Paris Review: "Picturing the literary history of word processing."
- A manuscript Dutch East India Company map of the Java Sea from 1743 is coming up for auction at Swann Galleries.
- Tim Parks' T Magazine piece on the Corsini family archive is very much worth a read.
- In "A Melville Marginalia Mystery," NYPL's Thomas Lannon interviews Dawn Coleman about some erased Melville marginal notations she's been working on sussing out.
- At Smithsonian, Marissa Fessenden offers a brief history of traveling with books.
- Report is a little spotty, but "Ukraine Today" reports that a 1574 volume printed by Ivan Fedorov was stolen from Ukraine's Vernadsay National Library.
- NPR's "Parallels" reports on the ongoing work on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.
- Mitch Fraas has a post up at Unique at Penn about a volume of government documents possibly once owned by Alexander Hamilton.
- Eric White writes for Princeton's Notabilia blog about the recent discovery that one of Princeton's copies of the 1545 Greek Bible bears the annotations of Martin Chemnitz.
- Digitized copies of the Boston Athenaeum's exhibitions catalogues from 1950 through the present are now available via the Athenaeum's website.
- From Atlas Obscura, Cara Giaimo profiles archaeological linguist Nora White and her work on Ireland's "Ogham" alphabet.
- New to me (and thanks to Tess Goodman for sending it along): a 1969 Paris Review interview with E. B. White.
- Friday, 20 May marked the premiere of a new opera, "The Book Collector." Ernest Hilbert of Bauman Rare Books wrote the libretto.
Reviews
- Bronwen Riley's The Edge of Empire; review by Jan Morris in the NYTimes.
- Nathaniel Philbrick's Valiant Ambition; reviews by David Waldstreicher in the NYTimes and Carol Berkin in the WaPo.
- Mark Kurlansky's Paper; review by Anthony Grafton in the NYTimes.
- Norma Clarke's Brothers of the Quill; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Carla Mulford's Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire and George Goodwin's Benjamin Franklin in London; review by T. H. Breen in the TLS.
- Michael Canfield's Theodore Roosevelt in the Field; review by Peter Coates in the TLS.
- A copy of the "Plannck II" Columbus Letter donated to the Library of Congress in 2004 was repatriated to Italy this week; it had been stolen from the Riccardiana Library in Florence and replaced with a photographic facsimile. The letter was subsequently sold at Christie's in 1992 (lot description). See: Department of Justice press release; seizure warrant (this makes for fascinating reading - boy would I like to see what's underneath those redaction lines!); Elisabetta Povoledo's NYTimes article. For more: La Repubblica (in Italian); Italian Cultural Ministry statement (in Italian); LATimes. (Thanks to Nick Wilding and others for posting on ExLibris about this story). Volker Schroder also linked to a bookseller's description of the letter from before the 1992 Christie's sale.
- Jill Bourne, city librarian at the San Jose Public Library, will be the new president of the Boston Public Library.
- RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, is now officially fully open-access.
- Erin Blake has a great two-part series at The Collation this week: "Physical description in book cataloging," and "Signature statements in book cataloging."
- Christie's will sell a copy of the true first edition of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland on 16 June. More from the Fine Books Blog. Coming up on the same day, also at Christie's, Neal Cassady's famed letter to Jack Kerouac (more on this from Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes).
- Lara Putnam's American Historical Review article "The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast" is currently available via the AHR.
- A 15-year-old's collection of more than 200 Apple computers may become the cornerstone of a planned Maine Technology Museum.
- Jerome McGann's ADE keynote, "Exceptional Measures: The Human Sciences in STEM Worlds," is now available online.
- An 11th-century letter known as the last surviving work of Chinese scholar Zeng Gong has set a new record price for an example of Chinese calligraphy, the BBC reports, selling for $32 million at a Beijing auction. The buyer was film mogul Wang Zhongjun.
- Last month the Princeton History Department hosted what looks like a great two-day conference in honor of Sidney Lapidus: "Fighting Words: Polemical Literature in the Age of Democratic Revolutions."
- Skinner is holding an online auction of fine books and manuscripts, which runs through 26 May.
- Matt Kirschenbaum has a short piece for the Paris Review: "Picturing the literary history of word processing."
- A manuscript Dutch East India Company map of the Java Sea from 1743 is coming up for auction at Swann Galleries.
- Tim Parks' T Magazine piece on the Corsini family archive is very much worth a read.
- In "A Melville Marginalia Mystery," NYPL's Thomas Lannon interviews Dawn Coleman about some erased Melville marginal notations she's been working on sussing out.
- At Smithsonian, Marissa Fessenden offers a brief history of traveling with books.
- Report is a little spotty, but "Ukraine Today" reports that a 1574 volume printed by Ivan Fedorov was stolen from Ukraine's Vernadsay National Library.
- NPR's "Parallels" reports on the ongoing work on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.
- Mitch Fraas has a post up at Unique at Penn about a volume of government documents possibly once owned by Alexander Hamilton.
- Eric White writes for Princeton's Notabilia blog about the recent discovery that one of Princeton's copies of the 1545 Greek Bible bears the annotations of Martin Chemnitz.
- Digitized copies of the Boston Athenaeum's exhibitions catalogues from 1950 through the present are now available via the Athenaeum's website.
- From Atlas Obscura, Cara Giaimo profiles archaeological linguist Nora White and her work on Ireland's "Ogham" alphabet.
- New to me (and thanks to Tess Goodman for sending it along): a 1969 Paris Review interview with E. B. White.
- Friday, 20 May marked the premiere of a new opera, "The Book Collector." Ernest Hilbert of Bauman Rare Books wrote the libretto.
Reviews
- Bronwen Riley's The Edge of Empire; review by Jan Morris in the NYTimes.
- Nathaniel Philbrick's Valiant Ambition; reviews by David Waldstreicher in the NYTimes and Carol Berkin in the WaPo.
- Mark Kurlansky's Paper; review by Anthony Grafton in the NYTimes.
- Norma Clarke's Brothers of the Quill; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Carla Mulford's Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire and George Goodwin's Benjamin Franklin in London; review by T. H. Breen in the TLS.
- Michael Canfield's Theodore Roosevelt in the Field; review by Peter Coates in the TLS.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Links & Reviews
- The Times (UK, subscription required) reported this week that newly-released phone taps "have exposed how Marcello Dell'Utri, a senator and old friend of Berlusconi, received books from Marino Massimo De Caro. ... In one phone conversation with De Caro in 2012, Dell'Utri says one book he wants is so valuable, it will come with 'truffles on it'." Dell'Utri was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 for ties to the Sicilian mafia; he has maintained that he did not know the books he was receiving from De Caro were stolen. The texts of the phone taps were originally reported in La repubblica.
- The British Library has turned down an archive of material related to the Taliban, with librarians saying that housing the collection could violate anti-terrorism statutes, which prohibit the collection "of material which could be used by a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism" as well as the "circulation of terrorist publications."
- This year's National Book Festival commemorates the 200th anniversary of the sale of Jefferson's books to the nation to rebuild the destroyed Library of Congress. In the Washington Post, Mark Dimunation presents a few of Jefferson's favorite titles.
- As part of the processing of Toni Morrison's literary archive, staff at Princeton have been working to recover files from 5.25" floppy disks. Elena Colon-Marrero outlines the process used.
- From Damian Fleming, a list of free digitized manuscripts containing Old English.
- Kazuo Ishiguro's literary archive has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center for just over $1 million.
- At The Collation, Erin Blake shows how Hamnet is one big data set, and offers some advice on parsing exported MARC data.
- Rare Book School is now accepting applications for scholarships and the IMLS-RBS Fellowships.
- Michael Beckerman reports for the NYTimes about the discovery of missing parts of Adam Michna's 1653 musical work "The Czech Lute," found in a Franciscan library in Slany, near Prague.
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of two James Joyce letters, which fetched more than $24,000 at RR Auction in Boston.
- At Early Modern Online Bibliography, Eleanor Shevlin discusses and reviews ArchBook, an open-access collection of essays "about specific design features in the history of the book."
- Jessamyn West has posted about her discussions with the White House personnel office about what the next Librarian of Congress should be able to bring to the table.
- Tim Cassedy writes in the LA Review of Books about the new app OMBY, "a game that you win by unscrambling Moby Dick, a few words at a time."
- The Library of Congress and Levenger Press are publishing Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark, examining "the critical role that maps played in Jefferson's vision of a formidable republic that would no longer be eclipsed by European empires."
- Items from the Kerry Stokes Collection, including the Rothschild Prayerbook, will be on display at the University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum until 15 November. A lecture series accompanies the exhibition.
- In Humanities, Steve Moyer reports on the use of spectral imaging and reflectance transformation imaging on the Jubliees palimpsest.
- Ancestry.com and Gannett Newspapers are collaborating to digitize the full archives of some 80 daily newspapers.
- Elizabeth Ott highlights an utterly fantastic new acquisition at UNC Chapel Hill: an 18th-century perspective "peep show" of a printer's shop at work.
- The British Library will loan the Codex Sinaiticus to the British Museum for an exhibition exploring religion in Egypt after the pharaohs.
- In the Deccan Herald, Pradeep Sebastian explores the fascination with biblio-theft, highlighting a few recent cases.
- Michelle Tay writes for Blouin Artinfo about Sotheby's auction of selections from Pierre Bergé's collection of rare books, which will begin with a sale in December.
- A long-sought Nazi "gold train" may have been located in southwestern Poland after a death-bed confession. The armored train is believed to have been carrying weapons, gold, art, and possibly Nazi archives. Authorities are urging treasure-hunters to stay away, as they fear that the hidden train may be booby-trapped.
- Satellite images reveal the extent of the destruction being wrought on the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.
Reviews
- The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale's Lost Manuscript; review by Dana Jennings in the NYTimes. The manuscript, left unfinished when Peale died in 1885, is being published by the American Museum of Natural History.
- Rosemarie Ostler's Founding Grammars; review by Barbara Spindel in the CSM.
- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Jennifer Maloney in the WSJ. This one sounds fascinating ...
- The British Library has turned down an archive of material related to the Taliban, with librarians saying that housing the collection could violate anti-terrorism statutes, which prohibit the collection "of material which could be used by a person committing or preparing for an act of terrorism" as well as the "circulation of terrorist publications."
- This year's National Book Festival commemorates the 200th anniversary of the sale of Jefferson's books to the nation to rebuild the destroyed Library of Congress. In the Washington Post, Mark Dimunation presents a few of Jefferson's favorite titles.
- As part of the processing of Toni Morrison's literary archive, staff at Princeton have been working to recover files from 5.25" floppy disks. Elena Colon-Marrero outlines the process used.
- From Damian Fleming, a list of free digitized manuscripts containing Old English.
- Kazuo Ishiguro's literary archive has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center for just over $1 million.
- At The Collation, Erin Blake shows how Hamnet is one big data set, and offers some advice on parsing exported MARC data.
- Rare Book School is now accepting applications for scholarships and the IMLS-RBS Fellowships.
- Michael Beckerman reports for the NYTimes about the discovery of missing parts of Adam Michna's 1653 musical work "The Czech Lute," found in a Franciscan library in Slany, near Prague.
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of two James Joyce letters, which fetched more than $24,000 at RR Auction in Boston.
- At Early Modern Online Bibliography, Eleanor Shevlin discusses and reviews ArchBook, an open-access collection of essays "about specific design features in the history of the book."
- Jessamyn West has posted about her discussions with the White House personnel office about what the next Librarian of Congress should be able to bring to the table.
- Tim Cassedy writes in the LA Review of Books about the new app OMBY, "a game that you win by unscrambling Moby Dick, a few words at a time."
- The Library of Congress and Levenger Press are publishing Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark, examining "the critical role that maps played in Jefferson's vision of a formidable republic that would no longer be eclipsed by European empires."
- Items from the Kerry Stokes Collection, including the Rothschild Prayerbook, will be on display at the University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum until 15 November. A lecture series accompanies the exhibition.
- In Humanities, Steve Moyer reports on the use of spectral imaging and reflectance transformation imaging on the Jubliees palimpsest.
- Ancestry.com and Gannett Newspapers are collaborating to digitize the full archives of some 80 daily newspapers.
- Elizabeth Ott highlights an utterly fantastic new acquisition at UNC Chapel Hill: an 18th-century perspective "peep show" of a printer's shop at work.
- The British Library will loan the Codex Sinaiticus to the British Museum for an exhibition exploring religion in Egypt after the pharaohs.
- In the Deccan Herald, Pradeep Sebastian explores the fascination with biblio-theft, highlighting a few recent cases.
- Michelle Tay writes for Blouin Artinfo about Sotheby's auction of selections from Pierre Bergé's collection of rare books, which will begin with a sale in December.
- A long-sought Nazi "gold train" may have been located in southwestern Poland after a death-bed confession. The armored train is believed to have been carrying weapons, gold, art, and possibly Nazi archives. Authorities are urging treasure-hunters to stay away, as they fear that the hidden train may be booby-trapped.
- Satellite images reveal the extent of the destruction being wrought on the ancient city of Palmyra by ISIS.
Reviews
- The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale's Lost Manuscript; review by Dana Jennings in the NYTimes. The manuscript, left unfinished when Peale died in 1885, is being published by the American Museum of Natural History.
- Rosemarie Ostler's Founding Grammars; review by Barbara Spindel in the CSM.
- Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; review by Jennifer Maloney in the WSJ. This one sounds fascinating ...
Sunday, April 05, 2015
Links & Reviews
- Italian authorities said this week that some books seized from the library of former Italian senator Marcello Dell'Utri (now in prison for ties to organized crime) had been "removed from" from public and ecclesiastical libraries across Italy. The NYTimes piece on this is currently headlined "Politician's Books Came from Libraries Across Italy, Police Say." (Presumably some of the books might have been legitimately deaccessioned). Appended at the bottom is the following correction:
- The GAO has issued a 130-page report on the Library of Congress' IT strategies, and the title itself is pretty telling: "Strong Leadership Needed to Address Serious Information Technology Management Weaknesses." The Washington Post ran a long piece on the report by Peggy McGlone, in which top management at the library comes in for very strong criticism. An NYTimes editorial yesterday concludes that "Congress ... has been far too lax over the years in reviewing [Librarian of Congress James] Billington's leadership because of his status as a capital fixture. Lawmakers must hold him to his latest promises and much more if the institution is not to slip further behind in a world where smartly managed information should be the basic stuff of a library."
- Princeton has acquired the personal library of philosopher Jacques Derrida; many of the 13,800 volumes reportedly contain significant marginalia and insertions.
- Anthony Grafton's March talk at the New York Society Library, "Books & Barrels: Readers and Reading in Colonial America," is now available on YouTube.
- Yale's Beinecke Library has purchased the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of Lincoln material, including thousands of photographs, some 600 volumes from Lincoln's Springfield library, and much more.
- The Maine Antique Digest posted an editorial this week on the (currently-postponed) planned sale of highlights from the Edward Payson Vining collection by Gordon College. The college has reportedly requested an opinion from the state attorney general's office on the legality of any sale.
- A collection of manuscripts from the Syriac Orthodox Mar Matti Monastery in northern Iraq was saved from ISIS militants and is currently being housed in an apartment in Dohuk, according to an AP report.
- The NYPL broke ground this week on the expansion of underground storage space beneath Bryant Park.
- More than 15,000 new maps have been added to the David Rumsey Map Collection, bringing the total number of digitized maps on the site to 58,078.
- The ABAA blog reports that a cache of documents and other items relating to work on the Statue of Liberty were in Baltimore in late December. See their post for full information on the stolen materials.
- The Library of Congress has acquired some 540 Civil War stereographs from the Robert G. Stanford Collection.
- J.L. Bell notes the important discovery of a new poem by enslaved poet Jupiter Hammon. I agree with him that the full text will be very important in determining how the poem is read.
- Scholars working with the Black Book of Carmarthen have identified via ultraviolet light two erased portrait sketches, marginalia, and a "hitherto unknown Welsh poem."
- An odd volume of a 1543 Cicero set, with the badge of Elizabeth I on the boards, will be sold at Swann this week, estimated at $8,000-12,000.
- There's a Q&A with Hilary Mantel in the WaPo about upcoming stage and screen adaptations of Wolf Hall (the Masterpiece series begins airing tonight on PBS).
- Over at Manutius in Manchester, an account of a short-term fellowship at Harvard to examine books printed on parchment.
- Two archivists at the University of Oregon have been removed from their positions after turning over confidential university records to a professor.
- There's a piece in the Dallas Morning News about the construction of a 77-car underground garage at the estate of Harlan Crow, near Dallas. Crow told the paper that the garage will accommodate visitors to his library who would otherwise need to park on the street.
- Collector Reid Moon's exhibition of rare Bibles is now open in Provo, Utah.
Reviews
- Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed; reviews by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes and Astra Taylor in the LATimes.
- Matthew Denison's Behind the Mask and Robert Sackville-West's The Disinherited; review by Amber K. Regis in the TLS.
- Massimo Bucciantini's Galileo's Telescope; review by Mark Archer in the WSJ.
- Abigail Swingen's Competing Visions of Empire; review by Donald MacRaild in the THE.
- The GAO has issued a 130-page report on the Library of Congress' IT strategies, and the title itself is pretty telling: "Strong Leadership Needed to Address Serious Information Technology Management Weaknesses." The Washington Post ran a long piece on the report by Peggy McGlone, in which top management at the library comes in for very strong criticism. An NYTimes editorial yesterday concludes that "Congress ... has been far too lax over the years in reviewing [Librarian of Congress James] Billington's leadership because of his status as a capital fixture. Lawmakers must hold him to his latest promises and much more if the institution is not to slip further behind in a world where smartly managed information should be the basic stuff of a library."
- Princeton has acquired the personal library of philosopher Jacques Derrida; many of the 13,800 volumes reportedly contain significant marginalia and insertions.
- Anthony Grafton's March talk at the New York Society Library, "Books & Barrels: Readers and Reading in Colonial America," is now available on YouTube.
- Yale's Beinecke Library has purchased the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of Lincoln material, including thousands of photographs, some 600 volumes from Lincoln's Springfield library, and much more.
- The Maine Antique Digest posted an editorial this week on the (currently-postponed) planned sale of highlights from the Edward Payson Vining collection by Gordon College. The college has reportedly requested an opinion from the state attorney general's office on the legality of any sale.
- A collection of manuscripts from the Syriac Orthodox Mar Matti Monastery in northern Iraq was saved from ISIS militants and is currently being housed in an apartment in Dohuk, according to an AP report.
- The NYPL broke ground this week on the expansion of underground storage space beneath Bryant Park.
- More than 15,000 new maps have been added to the David Rumsey Map Collection, bringing the total number of digitized maps on the site to 58,078.
- The ABAA blog reports that a cache of documents and other items relating to work on the Statue of Liberty were in Baltimore in late December. See their post for full information on the stolen materials.
- The Library of Congress has acquired some 540 Civil War stereographs from the Robert G. Stanford Collection.
- J.L. Bell notes the important discovery of a new poem by enslaved poet Jupiter Hammon. I agree with him that the full text will be very important in determining how the poem is read.
- Scholars working with the Black Book of Carmarthen have identified via ultraviolet light two erased portrait sketches, marginalia, and a "hitherto unknown Welsh poem."
- An odd volume of a 1543 Cicero set, with the badge of Elizabeth I on the boards, will be sold at Swann this week, estimated at $8,000-12,000.
- There's a Q&A with Hilary Mantel in the WaPo about upcoming stage and screen adaptations of Wolf Hall (the Masterpiece series begins airing tonight on PBS).
- Over at Manutius in Manchester, an account of a short-term fellowship at Harvard to examine books printed on parchment.
- Two archivists at the University of Oregon have been removed from their positions after turning over confidential university records to a professor.
- There's a piece in the Dallas Morning News about the construction of a 77-car underground garage at the estate of Harlan Crow, near Dallas. Crow told the paper that the garage will accommodate visitors to his library who would otherwise need to park on the street.
- Collector Reid Moon's exhibition of rare Bibles is now open in Provo, Utah.
Reviews
- Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed; reviews by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes and Astra Taylor in the LATimes.
- Matthew Denison's Behind the Mask and Robert Sackville-West's The Disinherited; review by Amber K. Regis in the TLS.
- Massimo Bucciantini's Galileo's Telescope; review by Mark Archer in the WSJ.
- Abigail Swingen's Competing Visions of Empire; review by Donald MacRaild in the THE.
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Links & Reviews
- Gérard Lhéritier of Aristophil was taken into custody this week and placed under formal investigation for fraud, on suspicion that he'd been running a very extensive pyramid scheme. He's been released on bail.
- The Digital Humanities Awards for 2014 have been announced.
- A new edition of Trollope's The Duke's Children will reinstate some 65,000 words cut from the original publication.
- Another of the stolen books returned to Italy recently by US authorities had been purchased by Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Sun reports.
- Yale Law Library is hosting an exhibit to mark the 250th anniversary of Blackstone's Commentaries.
- Katherine Grandjean talked to the Boston Globe this week about her recent book American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England.
- Dave Gary and Aaron Pratt were instrumental in bringing a collection of ~2,700 VHS tapes to Yale's Sterling Library; the Yale Daily News covers the acquisition.
- The AAS has posted an updated list of recent books and articles by AAS fellows, members, or readers.
- Writing for The Atlantic, Adam Chandler argues that by using a private email system as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton jeopardized the preservation of an accurate historical record.
- Simran Thadani writes for Unique at Penn about a fascinating copy of Edward Cocker's Arts Glory (1669).
- Library Journal reports on the NEH-Mellon Humanities Open Book project, which will fund open-access e-editions of out-of-print scholarly texts.
- From the Provenance Online Project, a copy of The Iliad (probably) owned by both Henry VIII and Edward VI.
- Michele Filgate reports on the ABA's Winter Institute for Buzzfeed: "The Rise of the Independent Bookseller in the Time of Amazon."
- The Junto is hosting another March Madness bracket this year: this time they're pitting primary sources against each other.
- For FB&C, Meganna Fabrega profiled the efforts of Sylvia Holton Peterson and William Peterson to reconstruct the library of William Morris.
- Christianity Today reported on the scheduled sale of books from the Edward Payson Vining Collection by Gordon College.
- Designer Robert Green has posted a digital prospectus of his reconstruction of the Doves Type [pdf].
Reviews
- The Grolier Club exhibition "Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze"; review by Steven Heller in The Atlantic.
- Erik Larson's Dead Wake; reviews by Hampton Sides and Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons; review by Simon Goldhill in the TLS.
- The Digital Humanities Awards for 2014 have been announced.
- A new edition of Trollope's The Duke's Children will reinstate some 65,000 words cut from the original publication.
- Another of the stolen books returned to Italy recently by US authorities had been purchased by Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Sun reports.
- Yale Law Library is hosting an exhibit to mark the 250th anniversary of Blackstone's Commentaries.
- Katherine Grandjean talked to the Boston Globe this week about her recent book American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England.
- Dave Gary and Aaron Pratt were instrumental in bringing a collection of ~2,700 VHS tapes to Yale's Sterling Library; the Yale Daily News covers the acquisition.
- The AAS has posted an updated list of recent books and articles by AAS fellows, members, or readers.
- Writing for The Atlantic, Adam Chandler argues that by using a private email system as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton jeopardized the preservation of an accurate historical record.
- Simran Thadani writes for Unique at Penn about a fascinating copy of Edward Cocker's Arts Glory (1669).
- Library Journal reports on the NEH-Mellon Humanities Open Book project, which will fund open-access e-editions of out-of-print scholarly texts.
- From the Provenance Online Project, a copy of The Iliad (probably) owned by both Henry VIII and Edward VI.
- Michele Filgate reports on the ABA's Winter Institute for Buzzfeed: "The Rise of the Independent Bookseller in the Time of Amazon."
- The Junto is hosting another March Madness bracket this year: this time they're pitting primary sources against each other.
- For FB&C, Meganna Fabrega profiled the efforts of Sylvia Holton Peterson and William Peterson to reconstruct the library of William Morris.
- Christianity Today reported on the scheduled sale of books from the Edward Payson Vining Collection by Gordon College.
- Designer Robert Green has posted a digital prospectus of his reconstruction of the Doves Type [pdf].
Reviews
- The Grolier Club exhibition "Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting Than Bronze"; review by Steven Heller in The Atlantic.
- Erik Larson's Dead Wake; reviews by Hampton Sides and Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons; review by Simon Goldhill in the TLS.
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Links & Reviews
- Gordon College's planned sale of some 500 books with an estimated value of $2-3 million from the Edward Payson Vining collection at Doyle New York this fall (postponed from April) rated an article in the Boston Business Journal this week, as well as coverage in the Boston Globe. The college has not provided a final list of the books to be sold.
- Islamic State militants continued their assault on Iraq's cultural heritage, destroying archaeological relics and sites in and around Mosul.
- The Folger announced this week which institution in each state and Puerto Rico will host the First Folio going on the road in 2016 as part of their The Wonder of Will: 400 Years of Shakespeare initiative. I'm delighted that one will be coming to UVA, too!
- Maine governor Paul LePage has proposed to end state revenue sharing with municipalities, offering to "make up the difference" by allowing towns to levy property taxes against non-profit institutions, including hospitals, private colleges, museums, archives, historical societies, and historic sites with property assessed at more than $500,000. Maine Antiques Digest has editorialized against the proposal, and the Association of Maine Archives and Museums issued a strong statement opposing LePage's plan.
- Rich Rennicks has posted some background on the Doves Press to complement the recent discovery of some of the lost type.
- Tom Mashberg has a piece in the NYTimes about twenty-five years of theories about the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum thefts.
- ILAB has called for entrants for the 17th ILAB Breslaur Prize, to be awarded in 2018.
- Two books stolen from the Historical National Library of Agriculture in Italy (by somebody in the de Caro ring?) will be returned; they had been purchased by a buyer in San Francisco. There's a lengthy report in the San Francisco Chronicle about the books, but it's so full of eye-roll-worthy statements that it's probably not worth your time.
- A large collection of books by and related to Robert Graves has been donated to Illinois State University's Milner Library.
- Michael Rosenwald reports for the WaPo about a new finding: "digital natives" prefer reading in print.
- Bibliophile Frances Currer's copy of Bewicks British Birds has turned up and is now being offered for sale by Quaritch.
- Rare Book Monthly has posted its articles for March.
- The Telegraph ran an obituary this week for literary forger and confessed manuscripts thief Lee Israel, who died in December.
- Stephen Berry talked to Jessica Parr about his new book A Path in the Mighty Waters for The Junto.
- Anthony Tedeschi notes a neat event coming up in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales in April: a "pop-up book fair" organized by ILAB, and a display of all four of the library's four Shakespeare Folios.
- Ruth Scurr previews her new biography of John Aubrey in The Guardian.
- A second copy of The Book o' the Brig, containing the "new" Sherlock Holmes story noted last week, has come to light: and this one appears to be signed by Arthur Conan Doyle on the cover!
- The finalists for the Diagram Oddest Book Title prize for 2015 have been revealed.
Reviews
- The new Aldus exhibit at the Grolier Club; review by Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes.
- James Fairhead's The Captain and "The Cannibal"; review by Gary Krist in the WaPo.
- Reif Larsen's I Am Radar; review by Carolyn Kellogg in the LATimes.
- Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey; review by Stuart Kelly in the TLS.
- Death Sentences, edited by Otto Penzler; review by Ted Fox in the Otago Daily Times.
- Islamic State militants continued their assault on Iraq's cultural heritage, destroying archaeological relics and sites in and around Mosul.
- The Folger announced this week which institution in each state and Puerto Rico will host the First Folio going on the road in 2016 as part of their The Wonder of Will: 400 Years of Shakespeare initiative. I'm delighted that one will be coming to UVA, too!
- Maine governor Paul LePage has proposed to end state revenue sharing with municipalities, offering to "make up the difference" by allowing towns to levy property taxes against non-profit institutions, including hospitals, private colleges, museums, archives, historical societies, and historic sites with property assessed at more than $500,000. Maine Antiques Digest has editorialized against the proposal, and the Association of Maine Archives and Museums issued a strong statement opposing LePage's plan.
- Rich Rennicks has posted some background on the Doves Press to complement the recent discovery of some of the lost type.
- Tom Mashberg has a piece in the NYTimes about twenty-five years of theories about the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum thefts.
- ILAB has called for entrants for the 17th ILAB Breslaur Prize, to be awarded in 2018.
- Two books stolen from the Historical National Library of Agriculture in Italy (by somebody in the de Caro ring?) will be returned; they had been purchased by a buyer in San Francisco. There's a lengthy report in the San Francisco Chronicle about the books, but it's so full of eye-roll-worthy statements that it's probably not worth your time.
- A large collection of books by and related to Robert Graves has been donated to Illinois State University's Milner Library.
- Michael Rosenwald reports for the WaPo about a new finding: "digital natives" prefer reading in print.
- Bibliophile Frances Currer's copy of Bewicks British Birds has turned up and is now being offered for sale by Quaritch.
- Rare Book Monthly has posted its articles for March.
- The Telegraph ran an obituary this week for literary forger and confessed manuscripts thief Lee Israel, who died in December.
- Stephen Berry talked to Jessica Parr about his new book A Path in the Mighty Waters for The Junto.
- Anthony Tedeschi notes a neat event coming up in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales in April: a "pop-up book fair" organized by ILAB, and a display of all four of the library's four Shakespeare Folios.
- Ruth Scurr previews her new biography of John Aubrey in The Guardian.
- A second copy of The Book o' the Brig, containing the "new" Sherlock Holmes story noted last week, has come to light: and this one appears to be signed by Arthur Conan Doyle on the cover!
- The finalists for the Diagram Oddest Book Title prize for 2015 have been revealed.
Reviews
- The new Aldus exhibit at the Grolier Club; review by Jennifer Schuessler in the NYTimes.
- James Fairhead's The Captain and "The Cannibal"; review by Gary Krist in the WaPo.
- Reif Larsen's I Am Radar; review by Carolyn Kellogg in the LATimes.
- Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey; review by Stuart Kelly in the TLS.
- Death Sentences, edited by Otto Penzler; review by Ted Fox in the Otago Daily Times.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Links & Reviews
Lots to cover once again. Here goes:
- The Bavarian government has returned more than 500 books stolen from the Girolamini and other Italian libraries. The books were seized from the Munich auction house Zisska & Schauer in 2012.
- The recovery of some of the Doves Type, noted in December, is the subject of several more complete accounts now, including a long piece in the Creative Review by Rachael Steven and a report from Justin Quirk in The Sunday Times.
- Nick Basbanes writes for the Fine Books Blog about recent attacks against books and libraries in Iraq.
- UPenn has received a $7 million gift to create a digital humanities lab.
- Jennifer Howard has launched a new project, "Books in the Wild," to document visually how we interact with books.
- Fairly surprising place for it, but there's a piece on historical bibliography (and Bible typos) in the Washington Post's Style blog.
- The Harvard magazine reports on "Cold Storage," a new documentary about the Harvard Depository.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer has a new report on the ongoing feud between the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia and the estate of Maurice Sendak.
- The Library of Congress has acquired the papers of composer Marvin Hamlisch.
- Materials related to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park, including several unique Banbury sheets, have been found in the rafters of buildings at the site during renovations.
- From the BPL Collections of Distinction blog, a look at some excellent volvelles in Apian's Cosmographica.
- The Warburg Institute and the University of London have reached a "binding agreement" through mediation about the future management of the Institute.
- In the LA Review of Books, Matthew Kirschenbaum asks "What is an @uthor?"
- Bernard Bailyn talked to The Junto about his new book, Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History.
- The NYTimes ran a story on the aftermath of the big Brooklyn warehouse fire was destroyed thousands of pages of archival records.
- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's recent digitization initiatives.
- Michael Hoinski reports for the NYTimes on Gaylord Schanilec's new work, Lac des Pleurs.
- The manuscript of Don McLean's "American Pie" is set to be sold at Christie's in April, with an estimate of up to $1.5 million. McLean claims that the manuscript will "divulge all that there is to divulge" about the meaning of the song's lyrics.
- Over at The Collation, a neat find on the endpapers of a quarto Henry VI.
- From Stefan Fatsis at Slate, what should a dictionary look like in the 21st century?
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of a first edition of Aristotle's Masterpiece at last weekend's California International Antiquarian Book Fair.
- Beinecke Library curator Timothy Young has posted ten reasons why the physical book still matters.
- An Elmira, NY man has been charged with the theft of a plaque from Mark Twain's grave.
- The folks at Bookfinder have released their list of the most-sought out-of-print books of 2014.
- Pradeep Sebastian profiles London book-runners Martin Stone and Driff in his "Endpaper" column.
- The BBC Magazine ran a feature on maps, drawn from the recently-published Times History of the World in Maps.
- A copy of the Magna Carta from 1300 has been found in a scrapbook in Sandwich, England. This copy is just the seventh of this version known to exist.
- Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature have announced the planned launch of Literary Hub on 8 April. Just what this new site will do is pretty opaque, but it seems worth watching. More from the WSJ.
- The Cambridge University Library has mounted an exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Aldus Manutius. More of these are coming, including what promises to be a fantastic one at the Grolier Club in New York.
- From Eric Kwakkel, a look at "medieval books on the go."
- Scholium Group has posted earnings warnings and spun off two companies (South Kensington Books and Ultimate Library). Is it just me, or is it really weird to read press releases like this about books?
- Manuscript Road Trip visits Rhode Island this week.
- A collection of 19th-century dust jackets, most from the 1870s-1890s, is up for grabs from South Carolina book dealer Books Tell You Why. Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the collection at Fine Books Blog.
Reviews
- "Decoding the Renaissance," the current Folger exhibition; review by William Grimes in the NYTimes.
- Peter Gay's Why the Romantics Matter; review by Peter Swaab in the Telegraph.
- Andrew Levy's Huck Finn's America; review by Parul Seghal in the NYTimes.
- Martha Hodes' Mourning Lincoln and Richard Wightman Fox's Lincoln's Body; review by Jill Lepore in the NYTimes.
- Richard Marsh's The Beetle; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Robert Middlekauff's Washington's Revolution; review by Daniel Shribman in the Boston Globe.
- Michael Rosen's Alphabetical; review by Carlos Lozada in the WaPo.
- Richard Brookhiser's Founders' Son; review by Drew Gilpin Faust in the NYTimes.
- Ruth Guildings' Owning the Past; review by Nigel Spivey in the TLS.
- Mary Pilon's The Monopolists; review by Jen Doll in TNR.
- Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger's Robert Love's Warnings; review by Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan at Reviews in History.
- The Bavarian government has returned more than 500 books stolen from the Girolamini and other Italian libraries. The books were seized from the Munich auction house Zisska & Schauer in 2012.
- The recovery of some of the Doves Type, noted in December, is the subject of several more complete accounts now, including a long piece in the Creative Review by Rachael Steven and a report from Justin Quirk in The Sunday Times.
- Nick Basbanes writes for the Fine Books Blog about recent attacks against books and libraries in Iraq.
- UPenn has received a $7 million gift to create a digital humanities lab.
- Jennifer Howard has launched a new project, "Books in the Wild," to document visually how we interact with books.
- Fairly surprising place for it, but there's a piece on historical bibliography (and Bible typos) in the Washington Post's Style blog.
- The Harvard magazine reports on "Cold Storage," a new documentary about the Harvard Depository.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer has a new report on the ongoing feud between the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia and the estate of Maurice Sendak.
- The Library of Congress has acquired the papers of composer Marvin Hamlisch.
- Materials related to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park, including several unique Banbury sheets, have been found in the rafters of buildings at the site during renovations.
- From the BPL Collections of Distinction blog, a look at some excellent volvelles in Apian's Cosmographica.
- The Warburg Institute and the University of London have reached a "binding agreement" through mediation about the future management of the Institute.
- In the LA Review of Books, Matthew Kirschenbaum asks "What is an @uthor?"
- Bernard Bailyn talked to The Junto about his new book, Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History.
- The NYTimes ran a story on the aftermath of the big Brooklyn warehouse fire was destroyed thousands of pages of archival records.
- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's recent digitization initiatives.
- Michael Hoinski reports for the NYTimes on Gaylord Schanilec's new work, Lac des Pleurs.
- The manuscript of Don McLean's "American Pie" is set to be sold at Christie's in April, with an estimate of up to $1.5 million. McLean claims that the manuscript will "divulge all that there is to divulge" about the meaning of the song's lyrics.
- Over at The Collation, a neat find on the endpapers of a quarto Henry VI.
- From Stefan Fatsis at Slate, what should a dictionary look like in the 21st century?
- Alison Flood reports for the Guardian on the sale of a first edition of Aristotle's Masterpiece at last weekend's California International Antiquarian Book Fair.
- Beinecke Library curator Timothy Young has posted ten reasons why the physical book still matters.
- An Elmira, NY man has been charged with the theft of a plaque from Mark Twain's grave.
- The folks at Bookfinder have released their list of the most-sought out-of-print books of 2014.
- Pradeep Sebastian profiles London book-runners Martin Stone and Driff in his "Endpaper" column.
- The BBC Magazine ran a feature on maps, drawn from the recently-published Times History of the World in Maps.
- A copy of the Magna Carta from 1300 has been found in a scrapbook in Sandwich, England. This copy is just the seventh of this version known to exist.
- Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature have announced the planned launch of Literary Hub on 8 April. Just what this new site will do is pretty opaque, but it seems worth watching. More from the WSJ.
- The Cambridge University Library has mounted an exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Aldus Manutius. More of these are coming, including what promises to be a fantastic one at the Grolier Club in New York.
- From Eric Kwakkel, a look at "medieval books on the go."
- Scholium Group has posted earnings warnings and spun off two companies (South Kensington Books and Ultimate Library). Is it just me, or is it really weird to read press releases like this about books?
- Manuscript Road Trip visits Rhode Island this week.
- A collection of 19th-century dust jackets, most from the 1870s-1890s, is up for grabs from South Carolina book dealer Books Tell You Why. Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the collection at Fine Books Blog.
Reviews
- "Decoding the Renaissance," the current Folger exhibition; review by William Grimes in the NYTimes.
- Peter Gay's Why the Romantics Matter; review by Peter Swaab in the Telegraph.
- Andrew Levy's Huck Finn's America; review by Parul Seghal in the NYTimes.
- Martha Hodes' Mourning Lincoln and Richard Wightman Fox's Lincoln's Body; review by Jill Lepore in the NYTimes.
- Richard Marsh's The Beetle; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Robert Middlekauff's Washington's Revolution; review by Daniel Shribman in the Boston Globe.
- Michael Rosen's Alphabetical; review by Carlos Lozada in the WaPo.
- Richard Brookhiser's Founders' Son; review by Drew Gilpin Faust in the NYTimes.
- Ruth Guildings' Owning the Past; review by Nigel Spivey in the TLS.
- Mary Pilon's The Monopolists; review by Jen Doll in TNR.
- Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger's Robert Love's Warnings; review by Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan at Reviews in History.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Links & Reviews
- ILAB has issued an official letter of protest to the Italian Ministries of Culture and Justice over their investigations into de Caro's thefts from the Girolamini and other libraries. This follows the arrest of Danish bookseller Christian Westergaard over books matching titles stolen from the libraries (but all recovered and in German police custody since 2012) and the cancellation of a Bloomsbury/Philobiblon auction in Rome on suspicion that books scheduled to be sold there might have been stolen (none proved to have been removed from libraries). The full letter is very much worth a read.
- Over at The Collation, Goran Proot explores the use of "vv" for "w" in 17th-century title pages.
- Lisa Fagin Davis reports on manuscripts in Alabama and Georgia, and comments on the recent discovery that the now-broken Beauvais Missal was once in the possession of William Randolph Hearst.
- Another bookstore I've always wanted to visit is closing, I'm very sorry to say: Seattle's Wessel & Lieberman is shutting its doors soon.
- A library card signed by Elvis Presley when he was in seventh grade is going up for auction later this month at Graceland.
- Judge Richard Posner, ordering the Conan Doyle estate to pay Leslie Klinger's legal fees, slammed as extortion the practice of certain literary estates charging license fees.
- British Airways is planning to add audio versions of eleven Shakespeare plays to its inflight entertainment options.
- The Brontë parsonage at Haworth has purchased a script from the first film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, made in the 1920s and shot in the Haworth area. No copy of the film itself is known to exist.
- As part of their second sale from the library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching on 30 September, Sotheby's will sell a number of books and other artifacts from the 1914 Shackleton expedition.
- Over at The Junto, a list of forthcoming books on early American topics.
- The diploma of the first African-American student to attend Harvard, Richard Greener (also the father of Belle da Costa Greene) sold for $12,500 this week at a Chicago auction.
- Bookbinding scholar Anthony Hobson died in early July; read an obituary by Nicolas Barker in The Independent.
- Daryl Green of the University of St. Andrews is featured in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" interview series.
- Historians have authenticated an inscription in an 1854 book on race as being written by Abraham Lincoln.
- The State Library of Massachusetts has digitized the manuscript of William Bradford's autograph manuscript for Of Plimouth Plantation, now available here. The interface leaves rather a great deal to be desired, I must say, but I suppose better something than nothing.
- Donald Kerr posted on ExLibris-L about a new census he's compiling, of the 1913 work La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France by Paul Cendrars with artwork by Sonia Delaunay-Terk. Contact him if you have any information about copies of this work.
Reviews
- Edward Dolnick's The Rush; review by Walter Borneman in the NYTimes.
- Michael Schmidt's The Novel: A Biography; review by John Sutherland in the NYTimes.
- Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land; reviews by Sarah Lyall in the NYTimes and Gwenda Bond in the LATimes.
- Helen Rappaport's Four Sisters; review by Natasha Randall in the TLS.
- Over at The Collation, Goran Proot explores the use of "vv" for "w" in 17th-century title pages.
- Lisa Fagin Davis reports on manuscripts in Alabama and Georgia, and comments on the recent discovery that the now-broken Beauvais Missal was once in the possession of William Randolph Hearst.
- Another bookstore I've always wanted to visit is closing, I'm very sorry to say: Seattle's Wessel & Lieberman is shutting its doors soon.
- A library card signed by Elvis Presley when he was in seventh grade is going up for auction later this month at Graceland.
- Judge Richard Posner, ordering the Conan Doyle estate to pay Leslie Klinger's legal fees, slammed as extortion the practice of certain literary estates charging license fees.
- British Airways is planning to add audio versions of eleven Shakespeare plays to its inflight entertainment options.
- The Brontë parsonage at Haworth has purchased a script from the first film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, made in the 1920s and shot in the Haworth area. No copy of the film itself is known to exist.
- As part of their second sale from the library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching on 30 September, Sotheby's will sell a number of books and other artifacts from the 1914 Shackleton expedition.
- Over at The Junto, a list of forthcoming books on early American topics.
- The diploma of the first African-American student to attend Harvard, Richard Greener (also the father of Belle da Costa Greene) sold for $12,500 this week at a Chicago auction.
- Bookbinding scholar Anthony Hobson died in early July; read an obituary by Nicolas Barker in The Independent.
- Daryl Green of the University of St. Andrews is featured in the FB&C "Bright Young Librarians" interview series.
- Historians have authenticated an inscription in an 1854 book on race as being written by Abraham Lincoln.
- The State Library of Massachusetts has digitized the manuscript of William Bradford's autograph manuscript for Of Plimouth Plantation, now available here. The interface leaves rather a great deal to be desired, I must say, but I suppose better something than nothing.
- Donald Kerr posted on ExLibris-L about a new census he's compiling, of the 1913 work La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France by Paul Cendrars with artwork by Sonia Delaunay-Terk. Contact him if you have any information about copies of this work.
Reviews
- Edward Dolnick's The Rush; review by Walter Borneman in the NYTimes.
- Michael Schmidt's The Novel: A Biography; review by John Sutherland in the NYTimes.
- Lev Grossman's The Magician's Land; reviews by Sarah Lyall in the NYTimes and Gwenda Bond in the LATimes.
- Helen Rappaport's Four Sisters; review by Natasha Randall in the TLS.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Links & Reviews
Back from an excellent RBMS preconference in the very strange city of Las Vegas. It was a pleasure to see so many old friends and meet so many new ones, and to have a chance to hear from so many about the good work they're doing in their libraries and institutions.
- The Irish Times reports that the oldest known surviving Irish manuscript, known as the First Book of Ussher, will be displayed publicly by Trinity College Dublin for the first time in 2016.
- Mitch Fraas, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in person this week at RBMS, has posted some fascinating findings based on the Americana Exchange lists of top 2013 book and manuscript auction sales, including breakdowns by auction house, century, estimate overperformance, and more.
- From the Harvard Gazette, a story on the conservation of the miniature books created by the Brontë children.
- Over at the Melville House blog, Alex Shephard has an in-depth look at the ongoing Amazon/Hachette feud, and what it means for the publishing industry.
- Continuing the very strange stories coming out of Dublin, All Hallows College is planning to sell art and rare books next month at Sheppard's in Durrow.
- Following the recent confirmation from Houghton Library that a book in its collections was bound in human skin, Paul Needham has written a short essay calling for the binding to be removed and buried.
- Over at The Little Professor, thoughts on deaccessioning from one's personal library.
- SAA president Danna Bell has posted on the SAA blog about "The De-Evolution of the Archives and Archivists List."
- A working manuscript draft of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" sold for $2 million at Sotheby's this week.
- Jennifer Howard reports from the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Retiring UVA historian Sandy Gilliam talked to the Roanoke Times about his long career at UVA.
Reviews
- Horst Bredekamp, Paul Needham et al.'s A Galileo Forgery; review by Massimo Mazzotti in the LA Review of Books. More than a review, though, this is an excellent background piece on the forgeries as well.
- Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling's The Silkworm; review by Harlan Coben in the NYTimes.
- Michael Korda's Clouds of Glory; review by Fergus M. Bordewich in the NYTimes.
- Elizabeth Mitchell's Liberty's Torch; review by Janet Napolitano in the LATimes.
- Kevin Birmingham's The Most Dangerous Book; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- Nicola Barker's In the Approaches; review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.
- Alex Wright's Cataloging the World; review by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings.
- Michael Blanding's The Map Thief; review by Chuck Haga in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
- Lauren Owen's The Quick; review by Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News.
- The Irish Times reports that the oldest known surviving Irish manuscript, known as the First Book of Ussher, will be displayed publicly by Trinity College Dublin for the first time in 2016.
- Mitch Fraas, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in person this week at RBMS, has posted some fascinating findings based on the Americana Exchange lists of top 2013 book and manuscript auction sales, including breakdowns by auction house, century, estimate overperformance, and more.
- From the Harvard Gazette, a story on the conservation of the miniature books created by the Brontë children.
- Over at the Melville House blog, Alex Shephard has an in-depth look at the ongoing Amazon/Hachette feud, and what it means for the publishing industry.
- Continuing the very strange stories coming out of Dublin, All Hallows College is planning to sell art and rare books next month at Sheppard's in Durrow.
- Following the recent confirmation from Houghton Library that a book in its collections was bound in human skin, Paul Needham has written a short essay calling for the binding to be removed and buried.
- Over at The Little Professor, thoughts on deaccessioning from one's personal library.
- SAA president Danna Bell has posted on the SAA blog about "The De-Evolution of the Archives and Archivists List."
- A working manuscript draft of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" sold for $2 million at Sotheby's this week.
- Jennifer Howard reports from the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Retiring UVA historian Sandy Gilliam talked to the Roanoke Times about his long career at UVA.
Reviews
- Horst Bredekamp, Paul Needham et al.'s A Galileo Forgery; review by Massimo Mazzotti in the LA Review of Books. More than a review, though, this is an excellent background piece on the forgeries as well.
- Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling's The Silkworm; review by Harlan Coben in the NYTimes.
- Michael Korda's Clouds of Glory; review by Fergus M. Bordewich in the NYTimes.
- Elizabeth Mitchell's Liberty's Torch; review by Janet Napolitano in the LATimes.
- Kevin Birmingham's The Most Dangerous Book; review by Dwight Garner in the NYTimes.
- Nicola Barker's In the Approaches; review by Ruth Scurr in the TLS.
- Alex Wright's Cataloging the World; review by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings.
- Michael Blanding's The Map Thief; review by Chuck Haga in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
- Lauren Owen's The Quick; review by Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Links & Reviews
- A new theft case out of Vermont: Patrick J. Rooney, 55, of Colchester pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he stole a page from a 1791 volume of early Vermont records from Burlington's Fletcher Free Library and tried to sell it to UVM's Bailey-Howe Library. Following that discovery an investigation revealed that UVM had previously purchased other material from Rooney, including a volume of Chittenden County Road Commissioner records from 1828-1831 which UVM purchased in May 2013 for $625. Last week Rooney was charged with additional counts relating to the newly-discovered thefts, and he failed to appear for his arraignment on Thursday. Court records revealed that Rooney was linked to prior library thefts in 2001, 1994, and 1991. There's a photo of Rooney here, and the Burlington Police Department has posted a list of documents which may be linked. I'll keep an eye on this, but will appreciate any information others have on this story as well.
- Newly-released, the third volume of Galileo's O: A Galileo Forgery. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, but the text is also available online here as PDFs, which is absolutely fantastic to see.
- From David Whitesell on the UVA Special Collections blog Notes from Under Grounds, an excellent post on book (or manuscript) breaking for pleasure or profit.
- The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize have been announced: Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy, Jeff Pasley's The First Presidential Contest, and Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The winner will be announced in May.
- Over in the LATimes, Carolyn Kellogg's "Younger book dealers are diving into the antiquarian trade" is a good read.
- Some excellent news for ESTC: UC Riverside has received a $405,000 Mellon grant to fund upgrades and the addition of collaborative features to ESTC.
- On the AAS blog, Molly O'Hagan Hardy on Evans-TCP and some of its potential uses.
- Richard Ovenden has been appointed Bodley's Librarian. Delightful news!
- Author Naomi Novik recently testified to Congress about copyright and fair use. Her arguments are well worth a read.
- Alexis Coe at Buzzfeed has posted her list of eight book folks "killing it online." All folks you should be paying attention to, for sure.
- New from the College Art Association, a report which suggests we're all probably under-using fair use.
- A new exhibit at the Yale Law Library focuses on the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging to bring out details on early bindings.
- On the APHA blog, Irene Tichenor on the centenary of the death of Theodore Low De Vinne, which will be marked by a Grolier Club exhibition.
- In the New Yorker, George Packer writes on Amazon and its overall impact on the book world.
- The University of Southern California has been awarded a five-year, $1.9 million Mellon grant to support graduate-level training in digital scholarship.
- Steven Koblik, president of the Huntington Library, has announced that he will retire in 2015.
- Seth Parry asks at The Junto, "Are we all book historians now?"
- Over at Open Culture, Josh Jones on the de Caro Galileo forgeries.
- At The Collation, Heather Wolfe on an excellent example of early modern English writing paper.
- Also at The Collation, Goran Proot on the uses of V and U in 17th-century Flemish book titles, and Sarah Werner on transcription style for early modern texts.
- The folks at the Guardian books blog want to know how many books you read at once.
- A fire in some adjacent disused water towers threatened the British National Archives buildings at Kew, but the flames were extinguished quickly.
- OCLC Research issued a report titled "Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?" Dot Porter responds with "What if we do, in fact, know best?"
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; reviews by Al Gore in the NYTimes and Robert Darwall in the WSJ.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; reviews by James Oakes in the WaPo Eric Foner in The Nation.
- Rachel Shelden's The Washington Brotherhood; review by Robert Mitchell in the WaPo.
- Tom Zoellner's Train; reviews by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo and Hector Tobar in the LATimes.
- Joshua Zeitz's Lincoln's Boys; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Lisa Jardine in the Financial Times.
- Newly-released, the third volume of Galileo's O: A Galileo Forgery. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, but the text is also available online here as PDFs, which is absolutely fantastic to see.
- From David Whitesell on the UVA Special Collections blog Notes from Under Grounds, an excellent post on book (or manuscript) breaking for pleasure or profit.
- The finalists for the George Washington Book Prize have been announced: Alan Taylor's The Internal Enemy, Jeff Pasley's The First Presidential Contest, and Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America. The winner will be announced in May.
- Over in the LATimes, Carolyn Kellogg's "Younger book dealers are diving into the antiquarian trade" is a good read.
- Some excellent news for ESTC: UC Riverside has received a $405,000 Mellon grant to fund upgrades and the addition of collaborative features to ESTC.
- On the AAS blog, Molly O'Hagan Hardy on Evans-TCP and some of its potential uses.
- Richard Ovenden has been appointed Bodley's Librarian. Delightful news!
- Author Naomi Novik recently testified to Congress about copyright and fair use. Her arguments are well worth a read.
- Alexis Coe at Buzzfeed has posted her list of eight book folks "killing it online." All folks you should be paying attention to, for sure.
- New from the College Art Association, a report which suggests we're all probably under-using fair use.
- A new exhibit at the Yale Law Library focuses on the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging to bring out details on early bindings.
- On the APHA blog, Irene Tichenor on the centenary of the death of Theodore Low De Vinne, which will be marked by a Grolier Club exhibition.
- In the New Yorker, George Packer writes on Amazon and its overall impact on the book world.
- The University of Southern California has been awarded a five-year, $1.9 million Mellon grant to support graduate-level training in digital scholarship.
- Steven Koblik, president of the Huntington Library, has announced that he will retire in 2015.
- Seth Parry asks at The Junto, "Are we all book historians now?"
- Over at Open Culture, Josh Jones on the de Caro Galileo forgeries.
- At The Collation, Heather Wolfe on an excellent example of early modern English writing paper.
- Also at The Collation, Goran Proot on the uses of V and U in 17th-century Flemish book titles, and Sarah Werner on transcription style for early modern texts.
- The folks at the Guardian books blog want to know how many books you read at once.
- A fire in some adjacent disused water towers threatened the British National Archives buildings at Kew, but the flames were extinguished quickly.
- OCLC Research issued a report titled "Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?" Dot Porter responds with "What if we do, in fact, know best?"
Reviews
- Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction; reviews by Al Gore in the NYTimes and Robert Darwall in the WSJ.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; reviews by James Oakes in the WaPo Eric Foner in The Nation.
- Rachel Shelden's The Washington Brotherhood; review by Robert Mitchell in the WaPo.
- Tom Zoellner's Train; reviews by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo and Hector Tobar in the LATimes.
- Joshua Zeitz's Lincoln's Boys; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.
- Timothy Brook's Mr. Selden's Map of China; review by Lisa Jardine in the Financial Times.
Sunday, February 02, 2014
Links & Reviews
Lots of updates this week:
- The BSA, Caxton Club, and the University of Wisconsin Libraries are hosting a symposium on 26 April, "Bibliography, Collections, and the History of Science." Speakers will include Michael Shank on stop-press corrections in early modern astronomy, Florence Hsia on Bodleian Librarian Thomas Hyde, and Nick Wilding on the Galileo forgeries. Worth noting: Richard Lan will speak during the afternoon session.
- New at The Appendix, a fascinating index to the published articles. If you're not already reading this great publication, you should remedy that right away.
- The University of Missouri has discovered that some 600,000 books in an offsite storage facility have been damaged by mold. More here from Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle.
- Aaron Brunmeier recaps the recent Liverpool conference on Libraries in the Atlantic World.
- On 5 March, Bonhams will sell books from the collections of the Los Angeles County Law Library.
- The Robert Livingston/Richard Henry Lee draft petition to the British people written in July 1775 sold for a whopping $912,500.
- Andrew Scrimgeour, dean of libraries at Drew University, writes on marginalia in the NYTimes.
- At The Appendix, Benjamin Breen highlights a sorcery manual (now online via the Wellcome Library).
- Over at Student Science, a look at the high-tech efforts being made to hunt for palimpsests in the texts housed at St. Catherine's monastery in Egypt.
- A manuscript leaf, one of a number stolen from the Archdiocese of Turin in 1990, has been returned to Italy.
- The Vatican Library and four Japanese historical institutions will work together to inventory, catalog, and digitize the Marega Papers, an archive of some 10,000 documents related to the persecution of Christians in Japan during the 17th-19th centuries.
- The BL has uploaded more than 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts from its collections.
- BookFinder.com has released its annual list of most-searched-for out-of-print books at BookFinder.
- Your must-read of the week is Sarah Werner's "It's History, Not a Viral Feed," about those annoying context-less photo-sharing Twitter accounts.
- The Boston Globe profiled Lisa Fagin Davis about the stories she's been telling over at the Manuscript Road Trip blog.
- The BSA, Caxton Club, and the University of Wisconsin Libraries are hosting a symposium on 26 April, "Bibliography, Collections, and the History of Science." Speakers will include Michael Shank on stop-press corrections in early modern astronomy, Florence Hsia on Bodleian Librarian Thomas Hyde, and Nick Wilding on the Galileo forgeries. Worth noting: Richard Lan will speak during the afternoon session.
- New at The Appendix, a fascinating index to the published articles. If you're not already reading this great publication, you should remedy that right away.
- The University of Missouri has discovered that some 600,000 books in an offsite storage facility have been damaged by mold. More here from Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle.
- Aaron Brunmeier recaps the recent Liverpool conference on Libraries in the Atlantic World.
- On 5 March, Bonhams will sell books from the collections of the Los Angeles County Law Library.
- The Robert Livingston/Richard Henry Lee draft petition to the British people written in July 1775 sold for a whopping $912,500.
- Andrew Scrimgeour, dean of libraries at Drew University, writes on marginalia in the NYTimes.
- At The Appendix, Benjamin Breen highlights a sorcery manual (now online via the Wellcome Library).
- Over at Student Science, a look at the high-tech efforts being made to hunt for palimpsests in the texts housed at St. Catherine's monastery in Egypt.
- A manuscript leaf, one of a number stolen from the Archdiocese of Turin in 1990, has been returned to Italy.
- The Vatican Library and four Japanese historical institutions will work together to inventory, catalog, and digitize the Marega Papers, an archive of some 10,000 documents related to the persecution of Christians in Japan during the 17th-19th centuries.
- The BL has uploaded more than 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts from its collections.
- BookFinder.com has released its annual list of most-searched-for out-of-print books at BookFinder.
- Your must-read of the week is Sarah Werner's "It's History, Not a Viral Feed," about those annoying context-less photo-sharing Twitter accounts.
- The Boston Globe profiled Lisa Fagin Davis about the stories she's been telling over at the Manuscript Road Trip blog.
- I'm delighted to see that the New York Society Library has completed their cataloging of the John Sharp Collection. See their blog posts on the collection here and here.
- A guest post by Thijs Porck at medievalfragments, about scribal abuse in the middle ages.
- At The Junto, Roy Rogers explains his new shelving system for his personal library. Which reminds me, I meant to share the one I came up with for my own. Someday!
- A couple security alerts from the ABAA this week, mostly involving fraudulent credit card transactions. See the full reports here and here. The books are well described, so if you've seen them or recognize them, contact the ABAA Security Committee.
- UVA English professor Brad Pasanek is interviewed for the Ploughshares "People of the Book" series.
- A guest post by Thijs Porck at medievalfragments, about scribal abuse in the middle ages.
- At The Junto, Roy Rogers explains his new shelving system for his personal library. Which reminds me, I meant to share the one I came up with for my own. Someday!
- A couple security alerts from the ABAA this week, mostly involving fraudulent credit card transactions. See the full reports here and here. The books are well described, so if you've seen them or recognize them, contact the ABAA Security Committee.
- UVA English professor Brad Pasanek is interviewed for the Ploughshares "People of the Book" series.
- At medievalfragments, Irene Daly notes M.R. James' work as a scholar of manuscripts and how that played into his ghost stories.
Reviews
- Valerie Martin's The Ghost of the Mary Celeste; review by John Vernon in the NYTimes.
- Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation; review by Lydia Millet in the LATimes.
- Douglas Egerton's Wars of Reconstruction; review by Eric Foner in the NYTimes.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Alan Taylor in the WaPo.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by John Stauffer in the WSJ.
- Randy Sparks' Where the Negroes are Masters; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacob's The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography; review by Matthew Mason at Fare Forward.
- Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation; review by Lydia Millet in the LATimes.
- Douglas Egerton's Wars of Reconstruction; review by Eric Foner in the NYTimes.
- Greg Grandin's The Empire of Necessity; review by Alan Taylor in the WaPo.
- David Brion Davis' The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation; review by John Stauffer in the WSJ.
- Randy Sparks' Where the Negroes are Masters; review by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo.
- Alan Jacob's The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography; review by Matthew Mason at Fare Forward.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Year-End Links & Reviews
I hope you've all had lovely and restful holidays, filled with good books and good cheer. I'm back in Charlottesville now after a trip home upstate New York, and am spending the last days of 2013 tidying up and trying to close out the year on an organized note. Here are some end-of-year links and reviews for your enjoyment:
- Rachel Donado reported on the political aspects of the Girolamini thefts scandal in the NYTimes on 22 December, focusing on former Italian senator Marcello Dell'Utri.
- An American judge has ruled that Sherlock Holmes (or at least anything featured in any Holmes stories published prior to 1 January 1923) is no longer protected by U.S. copyright law. Read the full opinion.
- New in the "Bright Young Librarians" series, Colleen Theisen of the University of Iowa.
- To mark the centenary of A.N.L. Munby's birth (which occurred on 25 December), the Cambridge Incunabula Project blog noted some of the many donations of incunabula and other rare materials Munby donated to the Cambridge libraries during his lifetime.
- Photographic negatives from the 1914-17 Shackleton Antarctic expedition were recently found by a New Zealand team. See the photos.
- In The Guardian, writers comment on their favorite ghost stories.
- Art historians in China have concluded that a calligraphic scroll sold by Sotheby's as the work of Su Shi (1037-1101) is, rather, a 19th-century fake. The work sold for $8.2 million in September. Sotheby's says it stands by its attribution, but will investigate.
- Over on the Houghton blog, a look at the first book published in Antarctica, Aurora Australis.
- From October, but new to me (via Sarah Werner and John Overholt), from the MSU Provenance blog, "What Counts as Provenance Evidence?"
Reviews
- William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays; review by Gary Taylor in the Washington Post.
- Kevin Peraino's Lincoln in the World; review by Stephen Budiansky in the Washington Post.
- William Seale's The Imperial Season; review by Fergus Bordewich in the WSJ.
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