- The Center for Media and Social Impact has issued a "
Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Orphan Works for Libraries & Archives."
- French scientists are
working to date the Aztec manuscript known as the Codex Borbonicus.
- Jill Lepore writes on the
theft of Justice Felix Frankfurter's papers from the Library of Congress, broadening that to discuss the state of the papers of all Supreme Court justices.
- Longtime friend of the blog Laura Massey has opened her own rare book business,
Alembic Rare Books.
- The New York City Bar Association sale at Doyle New York on 24 November
saw a very high total of $2,369,231, with all lots selling. I'll have more on this sale in the next
FB&C.
- The
NYTimes covers the ongoing dispute over the estate of Maurice Sendak, featuring the first interview with Sendak executor Lynn Caponera. There's more coverage and analysis of this case in the
Connecticut Law Tribune.
- Molly Hardy discusses the
NAIP and its possible uses in bibliometric analysis.
- From Atlas Obscura, "
Lost Museums of New York."
- The Antikythera Mechanism has been
determined to date from around 205 B.C., earlier than previously thought.
- Rachel Nuwer
reports for Smithsonian on the digital reconstruction of Livingstone's diary.
- Terry Belanger's
summary of the "Acknowledging the Past, Forging the Future" symposium, along with a
PDF version of his full report, has been posted on the ABAA blog.
- A collector
left a 13th-century Chinese scroll worth more than $1m on a Paris-to-Geneva train; the scroll remains missing.
- Jennifer Schuessler
covered the "First Editions, Second Thoughts" auction at Christie's this week for the
NYTimes. More coverage from
The Guardian.
- The literary archive of Gabriel García Márquez
will go to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
- The
NYTimes reported on the launch of
Digital Einstein, a digital repository of some 80,000 Einstein-related documents. Walter Isaacon wrote about the launch in a
WSJ essay (which contains some misguided notions about what digitization means for scholars and viewing original documents).
- Andrea Cawelti posted on the Houghton Library blog about
circulating libraries during Jane Austen's time.
- Johanna Drucker has published a new essay, "
Distributed and Conditional Documents: Conceptualizing Bibliographical Alterities."
- Philip Pullman
writes on William Blake in
The Guardian.
- Jennifer Howard
covers the "Failure in the Archives" conference for
The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
- Newly-recognized unpublished Oscar Wilde materials, including a notebook from around 1880, a corrected typescript of
Salome, and a partial draft of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol,"
will be displayed at the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia beginning in late January.
- A letter thought to have inspired Kerouac's
On the Road, long thought lost,
has been found and will be sold by the auction house Profiles in History on 17 December.
- An unpublished libretto by Raymond Chandler has been
identified at the Library of Congress.
- A UK court has
declared that a ban on sending books to prisoners was not lawful.
- Adventures in Book Collecting
highlights collector Estelle Doheney.
- Five books from Oscar Wilde's library
have been identified at the National Library of the Netherlands (KB).
- A manuscript of George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation (which I had the good fortune to see displayed at the Boston Book Fair last month)
has sold to a private collector for $8.4 million.
- The BPL has launched a special collections blog,
Collections of Distinction.
- Candida Moss reports for
The Daily Beast on the
online trade in early manuscripts.
- Sotheby's London will sell
The Felix Dennis Collection, including works by Eric Gill, on 9 December. A Dylan Thomas manuscript and E.H. Shepard illustrations are expected to sell well.
- The Library History Round Table has issued its
annual call for papers for the Justin Winsor Library History Essay Award. Submissions are due by 31 January 2015.
- Tim Parks writes for the
NYRB about
reading with a pen in your hand.
- An 18th-century manuscript map of New Mexico has been
acquired by the New Mexico History Museum.
- A Shakespeare First Folio has been
discovered in the public library of the French town of Saint-Omer. More coverage from the
NYTimes,
Fine Books Blog,
OUP Blog. Eric Rasmussen
talked to USA Today about identifying the book.
- Daniel Akst
connects today's e-book subscription services with the membership libraries begun in the 18th century.
- Eric Kwakkel writes on the uses of
shelfmarks, catalogs, &c. in the medieval library.
Reviews
- Kate Williams'
Ambition and Desire; review by Caroline Weber in the
NYTimes.
- Margery Heffron's
The Other Mrs. Adams; review by Muriel Dobbin in the
Washington Times.
- Andrew Roberts'
Napoleon Bonaparte; review by Michael F. Bishop in the
WaPo.
- Kirstin Downey's
Isabella: The Warrior Queen; review by Kathryn Harrison in the
NYTimes.
- Cary Elwes'
As You Wish; review by Neil Genzlinger in the
NYTimes.
-
Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography; reviews by Bich Minh Nguyen in the
LATimes and Jennifer Maloney in the
WSJ.
- Fredrik Sjoberg's
The Fly Trap; review by Jennie Erin Smith in the
TLS.
