Sunday, January 18, 2015

Links & Reviews

- Max Kutner reports for Smithsonian about a new "rapid-capture" digitization process being used at the National Museum of American History.

- Andrea Cawelti blogs about an 1842 music score printed on (very!) glossy paper she found while cataloging a collection of social dance scores at the Houghton Library.

- Goucher College is raising funds to mount an open-access digital surrogate of the 1816 Philadelphia edition of Jane Austen's Emma and "add contextual materials to create an interactive online experience centered on this exceptional edition." See the project website for more.

- UVA professor Karen Parshall volunteered to process an archival collection and has blogged about the experience for Notes from Under Grounds.

- Jennifer Schuessler reports for the NYTimes on the archival find that prompted Eric Foner's forthcoming book, Gateway to Freedom.

- From Heather Wolfe at The Collation, a nifty early modern color guide found in a manuscript heraldic miscellany.

- The surviving children of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are squabbling over ownership of the civil rights leader's personal Bible and Nobel Peace Prize medal. The NYTimes ran a long piece on the dispute this week, and MSNBC has a followup after the judge declined to issue a ruling this week. A trial could begin as early as 16 February.

- The Harvard Library staff news covers James Capobianco's recent Harvard Libraries staff talk about the history of Harvard call numbers. James' slides are also available.

- Paul Collins talked to Nate Pedersen for a Fine Books & Collections interview about his Duel with the Devil (and offers some hope for us Collins Library fans that perhaps more volumes might be forthcoming!)

- The anonymous Edinburgh book sculptor talked with BBC Scotland about her work.

- At the Hakluyt Society blog, Claire Jowett offers a progress report on her efforts to produce a new scholarly edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigation.

- The annual conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will be held 26-27 November 2015, and will focus on "Bibliographical Innovation and the Legacy of Aldus Manutius." They are currently inviting paper proposals for the conference.

- The Boston Globe highlights the BPL's Digital Commonwealth initiative, which assists public libraries with digitization efforts.

- Christopher Cook's note in The Library on a 1650 book order from an Oxford bookseller's wife is now available online.

Reviews

- Phyllis Lee Levin's The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams; review by Steve Donoghue in the Washington Post.

- James Morrow's Galápagos Regained; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.

- Eric Nelson's The Royalist Revolution; review by Michael Hattem at The Junto.