Sunday, August 26, 2012

Links & Reviews


- CSPAN-3 will air a 30-minute show on the American Antiquarian Society this weekend. A short teaser video is available here.


- From the Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections Blog, a report on how their experiences with microfilming have shaped their digitization strategy.

- A historical library in the Libyan city of Zliten was destroyed this weekend by extremists, according to media reports.

- Erin Blake is seeking a catchall term for ... well, I'll let her explain it: "I really wish there were an easily-understood format-neutral phrase for what might be called the “study of technologies for the creation and circulation of objects bearing intentional marks for the purposes of interpersonal communication." The query has prompted some good responses on ExLibris and on Erin's blog post.

- Mike Widener has another excellent post on provenance and the importance of sharing knowledge and experience. And from Princeton, Steve Ferguson notes an 1826 French prize binding.

- From Lew at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, some great examples of early American printed book labels.

- Jennifer Howard posted her second and third reports from her Rare Book School time this summer: "Digital Materiality, or learning to love our machines" and "CSI: Rare Book School".

- Lisa Jardine will head University College London's Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities.

- Many early publications of the Rhode Island Historical Society are now available online via the HathiTrust.

- James Capobianco posted a fascinating conundrum this week: can you solve this mystery?

- Jefferson sketches a pasta mold. Yep.

- An extremely cool project: somebody took the manuscript images posted to Flickr by the Walters Art Museum and transformed them using the Internet Archive's BookReader interface. Browse 'em. A fantastic example of how Creative Commons use licenses enable great things to happen. [h/t @wynkenhimself]

- Joseph Esposito's "E-books and the personal library" is worth a read.

- Margaret Mitchell's estate has donated a 50% share of the trademark and literary rights to Gone with the Wind to the archdiocese of Atlanta.

- McSweeney's is having a sale, and it's a good one, too.

- Over on the Fine Books Blog, Nate Pedersen's started interviewing bibliomystery authors. His first subject is Carolyn Hart.

Reviews

- Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper; review by Mark Hudson in the Telegraph.

- Andrew Robinson's Cracking the Egyptian Code; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.