Thursday, October 25, 2007

Mid-Week Links

There's just too much good stuff this week to save it all for Sunday.

- The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München has received a grant to digitize its collection of incunabula - almost 20,000 copies from 9708 editions. "Over the coming years, one copy of each 15th-century edition held in the BSB will be digitzed. It is intended to start digitization with the ca. 1150 incunabula in German and the ca. 680 editions of which the BSB holds the sole surviving copy in a German library. After that, books printed in the German-speaking countried in the 15th century and books printed abroad will be digitized. Illustrations (mainly woodcuts) will be indexed with an iconographic classification system." Their already-digitized incunabula can be viewed here.

- Yesterday's Washington Post featured a report on the high misplacement rate in the general stacks of the Library of Congress. "Investigators for the congressional library have told lawmakers on a House oversight committee that its review of the retrieval system for the general collection concluded that a 17 percent of materials requested could not be found." Between staff cuts and insufficient funding, I'm surprised the percentage is that low. More from Book Patrol.

- Rare Book Review notes the opening of the new Centre for Conservation at the British Library.

- Jeanne at SpellboundBlog reminds us that it's American Archives Month ... I confess, I'd quite forgotten.

- Ed's got more news from the Poe Wars, including his appearance on a radio show where he calls for a Poe Summit, which sounds like great fun. He also alleges the very serious charge of cooping in the Edgar Allan Poll, where Baltimore has taken a lead.