"That kind of thing happens when a discerning collector is riding a wave. In the four years ended Dec. 31, the price of contemporary photos -- works by photographers born since 1940 -- soared 80.4%, according to Artprice.com, a French company that tracks auctions."
"Sanders agrees: 'There are too few of us left. Independent bookshops in cities around the country, both new and used, are becomingrelics of the past.… Many cities have only chain bookshops left.Count your riches. Frequent us as often as your pocketbooks can stand.'"
"Iowa City is full of treasures waiting to be found. But these treasures come between bookends, not in a locked chest."
"The oldest book shop in the city—and the oldest antiquarian book-seller in Southern California—specializes in books on California and Western American history, and, more recently, photography."
"The printing press was widely used until the 1960s, when it was replaced with offset lithography and then computerized typography. No longer commercially viable, the old presses were dumped - only to be picked up again by the artists and bibliofiles who would carry on Gutenberg's tradition."
"Famous authors like J B Priestley and George Bernard Shaw gave enthusiastic backing, George Orwell said more guardedly: "The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them."
"Many New England homes are treasure-troves of old and rare books that have increased in value over the years," said Kenneth Gloss.
"Pssst - looking for "The Arts and Architecture of German Settlements in Missouri" by Charles Van Ravenswaay? How about the two-volume "Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant" by Ulysses S. Grant? Maybe your heart is set on "The Drawings of George Caleb Bingham" by Maurice E. Bloch, or - for something completely different - a first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Two Towers."
"With numerous plays, movies, songs and even a restaurant chain taking its name, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” has become an American icon. Now U of L owns a rare first-edition copy of the classic."
"The Russian Cabinet was set Thursday to discuss legislation on the return of a valuable trove of rare books that victorious Soviet troops carried out of Hungary during World War II, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported."
"Mounted in a glass case in a first-floor gallery is what Webber says is his most cherished item: a first edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, the Boston slave from Senegal who became the first African American to be published, in 1773."
"There's also an 1800 passport for the schooner Assistance for Toussaint L'Ouverture, the former slave and Haitian revolutionary general."
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer has sold his archive of manuscripts, letters and books to the University of Texas for $2.5m (£1.3m)."
"More than 10,000 letters are in the archive alongside unpublished stories, essays and notes."
"THE BAY AREA'S leading mystery bookstore, "M" Is For Mystery, won the Mayor's Award in the 10th annual business awards sponsored by the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce and the city of San Mateo."
"Previously, bogus books were simply pirated copies of real versions, sold on the streets for a fraction of bookstore prices. But these days, experts say, scores of business texts in mainland book stores make phony claims of origin or authorship. The contents of some are lifted right out of journals and magazines. Others overstate the number of volumes sold or feature glowing dummy reviews."
"NEW YORK -- The Pierpont Morgan Library, which is closed for a $102 million expansion and renovation, hopes to raise its public profile after it reopens sometime next year."
"Despite the naysayers, books have endured, never relinquishing the romance they hold to modern temptations. On World Book Day, we turn a few pages back and bookmark the present."
"Prices haven't yet reached the eye-popping amounts commanded by original photographic prints, but they are trending upwards dramatically. A first edition of Robert Frank's 1972 The Lines of My Hand sold for $5,060 at an auction at Swann in December 2004, $1,500 higher than its estimated price and $2,500 more than the work had commanded in 2002. A copy of Eikoh Hosoe's 1963 Killed by Roses sold for $1,500 in 1999--in 2004, it sold for $5,000."
"LAS VEGAS - It might seem unfair to King George III, but recently, as I surveyed Liberace's collection of vintage automobiles, fur coats, feathered capes and antique pianos in the Liberace Museum here, I thought of the King's Library in the British Museum. In that great, neo-Classical hall - the oldest room in the world's first national museum - sea shells, astrolabes, ancient coins and chronicles of exploration fill shelves built nearly two centuries ago to house the king's 65,259 books."
"Branch owes about $92,000 in rent. She's not sure if she can keep the store open long enough to collect that much -- the store makes about half that each month. And profits have thinned since developers blocked off an area for a new movie theater, slicing the shopping center in half, she said."
"St. John's University in Collegeville commissioned a calligrapher in Wales to head up this unlikely effort seven years ago. Now at the halfway point, the first three volumes of the St. John's Bible are on display through July 3 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. For the first time, most of the dozen scribes and illuminators working on the project recently gathered in Minnesota."
"If lawmakers approve Gov. Bob Taft's proposed state biennium budget that cuts $22 million for public libraries, the Coffman family could be out of luck -- and so could the many others who rely on the library's resources"
"Penrhyn’s Book of the Dead was sold privately two years ago by the heirs of Janet Douglas Pennant. The price was unusually high for such a scroll, in the region of £200,000. What happened next is mystifying."
"The footloose dropout haunted the museums that he later beautified, as de Gaulle’s minister of culture, and he supported himself by trolling the quais for rare books and reselling them profitably to an antiquarian."
"In the province of Bizkaia, the county council will hand out 25,000 booklets with short stories by six Basque writers, as it has done in the previous seven years. This time the booklet includes stories by Juan Manuel Etxebarria, Txani Rodriguez, Jose Luis Urrutia, Jose Javier Gamboa, Iban Zaldua and Arantxa Iturbe, and they are centred on aspects related to Don Quixote."
"Piggott, Ark., a literary landmark? Believe it or not, it is. Hemingway hunted, brooded, and wrote portions of his famous novel, "A Farewell to Arms" and several short stories in the severely quaint town."
"Over the last 20 years, big box retailers in all of these retail niches have rolled into the Toledo area, fighting for market share."
"The latest battleground: books."
"Some 9,000 rare manuscripts are estimated to have been destroyed as Armenians were driven from their homeland in World War I, but about 30 books currently on display in Armenia’s Archive of Ancient Manuscripts are believed to have been rescued by fleeing peasants."
"The James Bond continuation novels by Raymond Benson are now all officially out of print, according to the author himself. The Benson novels join the other out of print 007 adventures by Kingsley Amis, John Pearson, Christopher Wood, and John Gardner. Despite performing to expecations, Ian Fleming Publications has no plans to issue reprints."
"Finals period is almost upon us, but some Harvard undergraduates won’t have to make the trek to Widener to find sources for their research papers."
"Three undergraduates were recognized this week for the outstanding quality of their personal book collections, ranging in subject from Beat literature to standards of American etiquette."
"The library and museum is the largest presidential library in the country, complete with Abraham Lincoln's presidential briefcase and a copy of the Gettysburg Address in the president's own hand."
"Not everyone has been convinced that the portrait, owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), was painted during the playwright's lifetime."
"Now National Portrait Gallery experts in London confirm it is a fake which dates back to the early 19th century."
"Whatever happens, transforming millions more books into bits is sure to change the habits of library patrons. What, then, will become of libraries themselves?"
"Although Saul Bellow resisted being classified as a Jewish writer, his literary achievement in English, to my mind, most closely resembles the achievement, in Hebrew, of the great 19th-century writer Mendele Mokher Sforim."
"MARYLEBONE'S up-and-coming authors have been discovered by a new TV series for book lovers."
"The borough's aspiring literary talents - who meet twice a month at Marylebone Library - have been filmed for the BBC's Page Turners, hosted by Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine."
"As Shakespeare lovers prepare to celebrate the 441st
anniversary of the Great Bard’s birthday,
author Matthew Cossolotto asks: Have we been “barding” up the wrong tree all these years?"
"The media have spent so much time gnashing their teeth over the influence of political bloggers that barely anyone has noticed something equally convulsive happening in the book realm. Despite the on-going panic about a contraction in both the audience for serious literature and the amount of mainstream print coverage books receive, literary conversation is erupting all over the Internet in the form of litblogs."
"Tirupati: The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) is planning to establish the `Sri Venkateswara Book Museum' to highlight the importance of books in the dissemination of knowledge and the spread of values."
"NEW YORK.- Yeshiva University Museum Presents: Printing The Talmud: From Bomberg To Scottenstein. This remarkable exhibit spans five centuries of Jewish history and assembles an unparalleled selection of Talmud texts published throughout the world."
"The letter comes from a collection of early Americana given to the library by Jay I. Kislak, a Florida real estate investor. He got together more than 4,000 rare books, maps, documents, paintings, prints and artifacts that go to the library. They will have a permanent place at its center, the Jefferson Building across from the Capitol. The exhibit includes a sample 50 objects."
"After decades of gathering dust on library shelves, the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics magazine has suddenly become a very hot commodity. And it's not because vacuum tubes are making a comeback."
"A University of Louisville library has acquired a rare first edition copy of the American classic "Moby Dick," published in 1851."
"University President James Ramsey announced Monday that the Ekstrom Library had acquired the rare book, written by Herman Melville, from a dealer in California for $35,000."
"LONDON: The British Library is facing the possible loss of one of its most important manuscripts, the world's oldest Bible, to a Middle Eastern monastery."
"The fear is raised weeks after the institution was told by a Government advisory panel that a 12th-century manuscript in its collection was looted from a cathedral near Naples during World War II and had to be returned."
"University of Florida is one of the top institutions for comics research, especially following a recent donation of thousands of rare comics to UF’s library. Some experts already see the university as a nationwide leader for comic and animation studies."
"The city's public library system will sell 19 artworks from its collection, including two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, to raise money to buy rare books and other collections."
"The UCLA Library Special Collection's acquisition of the A&M Records Collection will enhance UCLA as a destination for the study of American music and popular culture, scholars say."
"Students may wonder if they've spent too much time in the stacks when they glimpse hundreds of books floating in the air around the staircase that winds through three underground floors connecting the University of California, Berkeley's Doe and Moffitt libraries."
"The manuscript was discovered (actually rediscovered) in 1912 by English book dealer Wilfrid Michael Voynich. It was written in cipher, or code, and done so well that the best cryptologists, including those at the CIA, have been unable to decipher it. The one thing that was finally deciphered was perhaps the key at the end of the manuscript: 'To me, Roger Bacon.'"
" A few years ago, most independent booksellers would probably have scoffed at the idea of selling their books through a digital superstore they perceived more as a competitor than possible partner. But in an ever-shrinking retail book market, more indies are turning to just these sorts of retailers, including Amazon.com and ABEbooks.com (Advanced Book Exchange), to turn a profit."
"The maps have been drawn by those who know the places best -- artists. Using this colourful background for the maps, this unusual atlas of 24 maps has been displayed at an exhibition at the Oxford Bookshop in Connaught Place in the heart of Delhi."
"Nathaniel H. Morison, the first provost of the Peabody institute, called the stacks in the Peabody library "a cathedral of books." Three hundred thousand rare and old books from Special Collections line the balconies."
"Library boards, directors and county officials decide how much of a library's budget should be spent on books versus DVDs. Sometimes books win, hands down. Other times, DVDs take a slice of the funding pie."
"Sawyer collects Bibles. Not just the fancy leather-bound Bibles you can get at any bookstore, but Bibles printed before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock."
"The oldest Bible Sawyer owns is a Waldensian New Testament Bible printed in 1539."
"Fat Cat Books is a Johnson City landmark, and the cats who inhabit it are minor feline celebrities."
"RiverRun Bookstore, nestled in Commercial Alley in downtown Portsmouth, recently passed its third anniversary. Sales are strong, and owner Tom Holbrook believes the store will thrive into the next decade and beyond."
"WASHINGTON - The Helsinki Commission this week heard of the struggle to reclaim a piece of Jewish heritage that has been held for nearly a century by the Russian government."
"Members and friends of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the United States, testified about the Schneerson collection, a compilation of rare religious books and manuscripts owned by the movement's former leaders."
"Five arrangements of Scottish and Irish folk songs by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven will be auctioned from a private collection, The Scotsman reports."
"The 12 leaves of paper scores are stitched together with the original twine, said Thomas Venning, a manuscript specialist at Christie's. It is as it left Beethoven's desk."
"Pop-up books were a popular staple in the children's book market in the 1960s and '70s. What most people don't know is that the form has been around for 700 years."
"'A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books' is a handsome and informative exhibit that debuted at the Grolier Club in New York and features the Rosenwald collection of books from the Library of Congress. The collection is the library's "most important book collection after Jefferson's," says Daniel De Simone, curator of the collection. He is also curator of the traveling exhibition, which traces the development of the woodcut in Germany, Italy, and France from Medieval times to the Renaissance."
"Here and there around the country, courageous - and, of necessity, creative - attempts are being made by small bookstore owners to survive in the face of the large chains.
Why bother? Why bother making a point of going into Karon Hasfarim, a private bookshop located in the basement of the memorial center in Tivon? After all, here in the area there are branches of the Steimatzky chain, which is so familiar, and they are more easily accessible. For example: the branch that is located right here in the center of Tivon, and another branch a minute away by car, at the Alonim Mall. At Steimatzky you can get an exchange slip that can be used anywhere else in Israel. Sometimes they have special bargains there. Why make the effort to change habits?"
"The Helsinki Commission heard of the struggle to reclaim a piece of Jewish heritage Wednesday that has been held for nearly a century by the Russian government."
"Visitors to Kroch Library often request to see the Gettysburg address, which is protected within a frame. They can also see the letter Lincoln enclosed when he mailed the copy to Bancroft, which is dated Feb. 29, 1864."
"RAMONA – A Lemon Grove woman has donated nearly 500 books to the Guy B. Woodward Museum because she was impressed with what she saw during a visit here a few years ago."
"Sheila Klippert said she decided it was time to give away her books on women's history, a collection she started 40 years ago. While checking for information about museums on the Internet, she came across the Guy B. Woodward Museum."
"'I'm greatly moved by the music I collect,' he said. 'We both love it. My principal interest... it should be preserved for posterity and for people to come and study.'"
"For that reason, the English-born couple has donated pieces of the collection to Florida Atlantic University libraries since the 1980s, not long after they married. The result is the Richard Beattie Davis Music Collection, which contains about 500 works from Hummel, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and others."
"This month, people can have their book and eat it too."
"The International Edible Book Festival takes place in April at various times and places throughout the world."
"On April 17, Zea Mays Printmaking, in the Florence section of Northampton, will host its second Edible Book Exhibit and Tea. Books will be exhibited at 3, followed at 4 by tea"
"During a reception Tuesday, Bob Ahern of the international studies department yelled with conviction, "Come see the blood in the streets!" Ahern read poetry from Pablo Neruda as part of a reception that celebrated the opening of a photographic exhibit of the late Nobel Prize-winning poet."
"I enjoy collecting rare books. And reading "Finnegans Wake;" it is a lifetime commitment."
"There are other intriguing dictionaries too. Margaret displays "The smallest dictionary…published around 1900, it's 27 millimetres by 18 millimetres, 384 pages and it comes complete with its own magnifying glass. It's very difficult to actually read," Margaret confesses, "(But) it's fascinating that somebody would go to the trouble of publishing and binding something that fits on the end of your finger."
"An exhibition of drawings by the American cartoonist Robert Crumb has just opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London's East End. Crumb will be fondly remembered by those who read hippie comics in the late 1960s as the LSD-inspired creator of Fritz the Cat, Mr Natural, Schuman the Human, and numerous fit-looking, buxom young women."
"He's well-known for handling high-profile national security and First Amendment legal cases against the U.S. government, but Washington lawyer Mark S. Zaid has been collecting comics since 1974."
"With over 100 dealers from the United States and Canada participating in the show, collectors will have a unique opportunity to buy. As one of the first shows of the spring, many dealers will bring fresh material. Serious collectors are likely to discover items they thought unavailable or didn’t know existed."
"The Internet is often considered as a marvel. Marshall Mc Luhan, a communication theoretician foretold that humans will prefer computers instead of books. Currently, there are more than 50 million web sites on the Net, and no less than 817, 447 147 Web users – the majority of whom being in Asia, Europe and North America respectively."
"BOSTON -- Harvard University did not discriminate against a library assistant who claimed she was repeatedly turned down for promotions because school officials saw her as ''a pretty girl'' whose attire was too ''sexy,'' a federal jury found Monday."
"The quest for a first edition or an out-of-print titleonce meant spending hours in secondhand bookstores — serene, musty places crammed floor to ceiling with books. Collectors loved the serendipity, the thrill of the hunt. You never knew what you'd come across."
"Then the Internet transmogrified a pleasantly inefficient market into a system of astonishing efficiency."
"Bookstore Tourism is a hot new travel niche for bibliophiles that started out as a grassroots effort to promote independent bookstores and support literacy efforts. It encourages booklovers to organize day-trips and other literary outings to cities and towns with interesting, fun and unique bookshops that people in their own communities may not get to visit regularly."
"Amazon announced it has acquired BookSurge LLC, a global leader in inventory-free book printing and fulfillment based in Charleston, South Carolina. BookSurge maintains a catalog of thousands of titles that can be printed on-demand and are available for sale on Amazon.com. BookSurge offers its inventory-free book fulfillment network to publishers through BookSurge Publisher Services and to authors through BookSurge Publishing. In addition, retailers, wholesalers and distributors can leverage the BookSurge Direct wholesale platform."
"CDI Systems of Jerusalem, a developer of online publishing solutions, has announced the launch of what it says is the world's largest online Jewish library."
"Otzar Ha-Hochma contains over 16,000 Jewish books, and roughly four million pages. The titles include thousands of extremely rare books that have not been published for hundreds of years and are now accessible to everyone."
"Uslan's collection, which included rare original copies from the Batman series, eventually climbed to 50,000; he donated 35,000 of the comics to Indiana University's rare book collection."
"Strolling among the playbills, he confesses that it was hard to edit down his collection to 100 pieces, and he points out the hard-to-find broadside hawking the arrival of the first elephant in America in 1797, a rare playbill for renowned early-18th-century magician Isaac Fawkes, and a circa-1620 piece that beautifully depicts armless dulcimer player Pietro Stadelmann plucking his instrument with tiny feet. And then there's Jay's hero – and e-mail namesake – Mathew Buchinger, the armless, legless calligrapher, magician, trick bowler, and, according to the 1726 bill, 'greatest German living.'"
"Thousands of people lined the cobblestone streets of fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen’s birth town today to welcome royals and celebrities marking the 200th birthday of Denmark’s most beloved and famous author."
"The songs have passed down from generation to generation without the slightest change in tune and lyrics, according to Ap Dawpel. “It is close to the heart of the Talops because it is like a priceless inheritance and has been blessed by many great Lamas,” he adds. The songs, hand written on ancient scrolls, are registered as a property of the Talo monastery."
"Armagh library housing one of Ireland's finest collections of historical documents may be moved because of budget pressures."
"The Irish and Local Studies Library's status is being reviewed because of the drive to cut costs at the Southern Education and Library Board."
"The centre is used by academics and visitors and its website is frequented by individuals from across the world."
"The sepia-toned 1803 manuscript is a focal point of "Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America," a mind-expanding exhibit about westward movement that's beginning a 10-week run at the Montlake museum."
"The university is seeking to rationalise its vast book collections, which have grown over the years in 40 libraries, including the one built by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1602, which draws hoards of tourists as well as scholars from around the globe. At the same time Oxford plans to create a "hybrid" library of books and online resources and is digitising its 19th century books in collaboration with the search engine Google."
"The Conference will be a place where you can soak up the reflections of Southern culture and history in all it’s glory, it’s shame, it’s conflicts, it’s progress. You can hear the voices of poverty, of striving and of triumph. And you can comfort yourself with stories of healing and lessons learned. But most
significantly, you will get an accurate picture of the Southern soul: black, white and beautiful mulatto."
"Hans Christian Andersen might havebeen surprised to learn that, more than a century and a half afterthey were turn out in his native Denish, his fairy tales would still be popular in China."
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