Friday, November 01, 2013

Links & Reviews

One of these days I will catch up and get back to a regular schedule ...

- There was an appeal hearing this week in the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case; Kenneth Crews of Columbia attended and has posted his notes.

- From the BBC, a "Living Online" report from the Folger Shakespeare Library on its digitization plans and strategies.

- Our friend George Psalmanazar is profiled by Benjamin Breen in The Appendix (drawn from his JEMH article here).

- There's a new CLIR report, Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories. Naturally the report is web-only, but it's available for free download here.

- The Albion iron hand press used by William Morris to print the Kelmscott Chaucer will be sold at Christie's New York on 6 December, with an estimate of $100,000-150,000.

- Dan De Simone has been announced as the next Eric Weinmann Librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

- Newly digitized at Penn, a 1785 mss. inventory of Nicola Rossi's collection of early printed books and manuscripts. See also the later printed version [via Mitch Fraas].

- At the Centre for Material Texts blog, Jason Scott-Warren writes about his hunt for the 850 books of Elizabethan reader William Neile.

- Paul Collins' next book will be Blood & Ivy: The True Story of Money, Murder & the Trial That Shocked Harvard, about the Parkman-Webster murder. It'll be published by Norton and out in 2016.

- The DPLA has announced a million-dollar grant program from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to train public librarians in digitization, metadata creation, and digital technologies.

- Joseph Thomas recently wrote a fascinating piece for Slate on why his biography of Shel Silverstein may never see print.

- At Forbes, Tim Worstall on how Barnes & Noble is suddenly Amazon's biggest roadblock when it comes to getting the books they're publishing in front of readers.

- Nick Basbanes talked about his new book On Paper with Britannica editor Gregory McNamee, with Publishers Weekly's Michael M. Jones (here), and on the Diane Rehm Show (here).

- Nigel Beale has posted an interview with Bill Reese on collecting and selling books.

- In The New Yorker, Annette Gordon-Reed discusses the new "12 Years a Slave" movie and slave narratives as historical evidence.

- A Chicago man who discovered papers related to Richard T. Greener (the first black graduate of Harvard) told a Chicago newspaper that he would "roast and burn" the papers if Harvard didn't offer more money for them.

- The Getty Research Institute has released another 5,400 artwork images into its Open Content Program (bringing the total up to 10,000+).

- The Guardian is running a series of essays on "The 100 Best Novels," which so far have been very much worth reading.

- SHARP seeks editors for Book History.

- Peter Kirwan, an editor for a new volume titled Collaborative Plays by William Shakespeare & Others, writes very cogently about what the volume is designed to do and present.

- Houghton Library curator John Overholt recently appeared on the "You're the Expert" podcast, which makes for highly entertaining listening.

- Robert Darnton discussed "the future of books" with Memphis Flyer reporter Leonard Gill.

- New at Houghton, Kepler's Ad Rerum Coelestium Amatores Universos, the rarest of Kepler's works (just four copies are known).

- APHA has launched a blog on its new homepage. Recommended (even if it does not, at the moment, appear to be RSS-able, which is a bummer, and on which I will be happy to be corrected if someone can send me the feed URL Update: feed is at http://printinghistory.org/feed/).

- There's a new (and quite nice) version of the USTC site. More from Jim Hinck here.

- From Mitch Fraas at Mapping Books, an early look at mapping library markings from looted books.

- Denise Spellberg talked to NPR recently about her book Thomas Jefferson's Qu'ran.

- Keith Houston, whose book Shady Characters I enjoyed very much this fall, has announced that he's now at work on The Book: A Cover to Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time (to be published by Norton in 2015).

- At Medieval Fragments, a few treasure bindings to feast your eyes upon.

- The University of Melbourne has purchased the literary archives of Germaine Greer for ~$3 million, with proceeds going to rainforest restoration efforts.

- New at AAS, the only(?) issue of The Franklin, an early Washington periodical flop.

- From Jordan Goffin at Notes for Bibliophiles, an excellent reminder that, as he writes, "rare materials require the use of all five senses."

- Rebecca Rego Barry highlights the publication of An Inspiration to All Who Enter: Fifty Works from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University Press).

- The University of Illinois has acquired the literary archives of Gwendolyn Brooks.

- At Manuscript Road Trip, a consideration of Otto Ege and his biblioclasm.

- Irene O'Daly writes on images of medieval scribes at work over at Medieval Fragments.

- From the Bright Young Librarians series, Meghan Constantinou of the Grolier Club and Jordan Goffin of the Providence Public Library.

- Over at Typefoundry, James Mosley explores the history of @.

- New at Exeter Working Papers in Book History, a series of posts outlining the library contents of Sabine Baring-Gould.

- Jennifer Schuessler covered the launch of the Emily Dickinson Archive, including a look at the continuing tensions between Amherst and Harvard over the Dickinson materials in their collections. More on that from Sarah Schweitzer in the Boston Globe.

- McGill University has launched an exhibit to display select items from the J. Patrick Lee Collection of Voltaire, newly acquired by the university library.

- At Booktryst, a look at the manuscript of George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation, going on the block at Christie's on 14 November.

- In The New Yorker, Paul Collins examines what may be some early Poe works through the lens of computer-based textual analysis.

- Reading Copy asked booksellers Bill Reese and Allen Stypeck for their predictions about the Bay Psalm Book sale on 26 November. In a later post, Richard Davies asks "Who Will Buy the Bay Psalm Book?"

- The Letterform Archive is fundraising (via Kickstarter) for what looks like a very cool 2014 calendar.

- Ron Charles highlights the launch of the new Shelley-Godwin Archive. More here from the NYTimes.

Reviews

- Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.

- Alan Jacobs' The Book of Common Prayer; review by Adam Shields at Bookwi.se.

- A. Scott Berg's Wilson; review by Hector Tobar in the LATimes.

- Miles Hollingworth's St. Augustine of Hippo; review by Cole Moreton in the Telegraph.

- James WP Campbell's The Library: A World History; review by Clive Aslet in the Telegraph.

- Jeff Greenfield's If Kennedy Lived; reviews by H.W. Brands in the WaPo and John Timpane in the Philly Inquirer.

- Nick Basbanes' On Paper; review by Helen Gallagher in the New York Journal of Books.

- Jill Lepore's Book of Ages; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.

- Richard A. Serrano's Last of the Blue and Gray; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.