Home after a great trip to Eugene for the Society of Early Americanists conference and then to New York for various bookish things, including the three book fairs last weekend. The ILAB symposium on provenance, theft, and forgery was excellent, and I will be sure to share the videos as soon as they are posted. I also had the great pleasure of seeing the exhibition of miniature books at the Grolier Club, curated by my friends Pat Pistner and Jan Storm van Leeuwen. If you can get to New York before 19 May, do be sure and visit the Grolier Club and see their show. But don't take my word for it: Sarah Lyall covered the exhibition for the NYTimes on 7 March.
Next up, the Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair in Richmond, 5–7 April.
- An interesting pair of articles in the spring issue of the UVA magazine, both by S. Richard Gard, Jr.: one on the upcoming renovation of Alderman Library, and one on the still-unsolved 1970s thefts of rare books, manuscripts, and a Poe daguerreotype.
- Over at Sammelband, from Kate Ozment, "What does it mean to teach a feminist book history?" And I highly recommend the @GrubStreetWomen Twitter feed: they're tweeting historical profiles of women working in biblio-areas each day in March.
- Adam Hooks and Zach Lesser have launched their Shakespeare Census, to track individual copies of Shakespeare's works printed through 1700 (excluding the folios). Censuses are vital: please help if you can.
- Peggy McGlone writes for the WaPo about planned renovations to the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.
- Oak Knoll Press and the British Library have published a major new edition of David Pearson's Provenance Research in Book History; orders are now being accepted. Also available via Oak Knoll, the catalogues of both the miniature books exhibition noted above and of Five Hundred Years of Women's Work, the exhibition of Lisa Baskin's collection at Duke. I got a look at all three last weekend, and can confirm you'll want to add this trio to your bookshelves.
- Several theft/missing reports: sacramental records from Saint Dominic's Church in San Francisco (stolen from the parish offices); a William Osler letter (see photo); and Walter Crane's copy of an 1894 edition of Canterbury Tales with sixteen painted miniatures (missing in transit from New York to Maryland).
- "CBS Sunday Morning" highlighted Kentucky's Larkspur Press and the American Academy of Bookbinding last weekend.
- USTC is preparing to relaunch on a new platform shortly: check out the beta version.
- Entries for the 2019 National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest are now being accepted.
- In the Concord Monitor, "Archivist warns state records at risk in digital age."
- Over at Manuscript Road Trip, "A Little Bit of Voynich on the Side."
- Daniel Greene has been named the new President and Librarian of the Newberry Library.
- Alison Flood for the Guardian reports on the recent identification of a 15th-century Irish manuscript translation of Avicenna, used as a binding on a 1530s book (see images).
- Caroline Duroselle-Melish writes for The Collation on the scope of the STC.
- Over on Steamboats are Ruining Everything, "On disappearing bookstores" (see also, J Oliver Conroy's Guardian piece "Why are New York's bookstore disappearing?").
- Winnie Hu writes for the NYTimes about "how the NYPL fills its shelves."
- New from IFLA, the results of a survey about using RDA for cataloging rare materials.
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem has displayed a number of Einstein manuscripts, most of which are previously unpublished.
Upcoming Auctions
- Photographica at Chiswick Auctions on 19 March.
- Éditions Originales du XIXe au XXie Siècle at ALDE on 20 March.
- Autographs at Swann Galleries on 21 March.
- Fine Literature at PBA Galleries on 21 March.
