"After giving a keynote speech this week at the American Library Association's annual convention, science fiction author Ray Bradbury joined a growing list of international writers and human rights activists in condemning the persecution of Cuba's Independent Library Project."
"The Newberry has a collection of one-and-a-half million rare books and historical documents. It was founded in 1887."
"Hackney is perhaps best known as a former president of the University of Pennsylvania, where he helped raise over $1 billion. Hackney also served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities during President Clinton's first term."
"After 170 years of inhabiting the buildings that housed the pre-revolutionary Senate and Synod, Russia's largest and oldest archive, containing 6.5m manuscripts documenting history from Peter the Great to the Bolshevik coup, is being evicted by the Kremlin."
"'THERE ARE FOUR kinds of collectors," says John Windle, antiquarian bookseller. There are the Jackdaws, named after the bird attracted to bright and shiny objects; the Completists, who will spend 40 years and thousands of dollars obtaining every book ever written about, say, defenestration; the Peter Pans, who collect every book their mother ever read to them; and, finally, the Investors, who buy low and sell high."
"Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau might seem an unlikely home for such a treasure and thousands of other artifacts of the great 20th-century American writer."
"Goodin's collection of 130 photos, 12 rare books and 60 articles will document the arrival of karate in Hawaii with the first 26 Okinawan immigrants and the visits of prominent instructors to the islands, including Kentsu Yabu (1927), Choki Motobu (1932), Mizuho Mutsu (1933), Kamesuke Higashionna (1933) and Chojun Miyaji (1934)."
"The 20th floor of the Myongji building is not only a venue for the Taepyeonggwan club members, but a shrine for humanities scholars here and abroad. It houses what is believed to be the world's largest collection of antique and rare books containing foreigners' accounts of ancient Korea."
"Famed for providing a window on to the world of historical art and literature, the Chester Beatty Library (CBL) last week embraced the future when it officially launched a new multimedia tour on handheld computers aimed at the enhancing the experience of the thousands of visitors that pass through its doors every year."
"The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana meanders in a similar way, but this time, Eco guides us through the aging narrator's lost memory - a hazy legacy of the many books that Yambo, a rare-book dealer in his 60s, has read throughout his life and the circumstances in which he read them."
"Rare documents and books, many from the early years of the American republic, are on display at South Dakota State University through the end of December."
""The premier piece in this collection is the Bill of Rights, an original from the first printing," said Gloriana St. Clair, dean of the Carnegie Mellon libraries."
"A rare, handwritten copy of Le vaisseau d'or, a poem by Quebec's Émile Nelligan, sold for $23,000 at a Montreal auction house Wednesday night."
"Grand Valley State University has acquired the papers of internationally acclaimed writer Jim Harrison, a Michigan native."
"Harrison, an international best selling author, has been published in twenty-two languages. He is the author of five collections of novellas, including LEGENDS OF THE FALL, eight novels, ten collections of poetry, a children's book, three works of nonfiction, and his memoir, OFF TO THE SIDE."
"The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana meanders in a similar way, but this time, Eco guides us through the aging narrator's lost memory - a hazy legacy of the many books that Yambo, a rare-book dealer in his 60s, has read throughout his life and the circumstances in which he read them."
"Google has agreed to meet with representatives of the publishing industry to hear their concerns, but is apparently moving forward with the Google Print project in the meantime. The entirety of Google Library, as the project is known, was expected to take as long as 10 years to complete."
"At 69, McMurtry splits his time between Tucson and his hometown of Archer City, Texas, where he continues to operate a sprawling bookstore, Booked Up. It has four buildings and more than 200,000 used and antiquarian books in a town of 1,850."
"More than 70 years after it began acquiring fine art, the Michigan City Public Library says it’s time to sell.
That’s good news to art buyers from Chesterton to Tennessee, who have expressed interest in works by artists like Dunes painter Frank Dudley and portrait artist Robert Grafton."
"Portzline's overall goal is to support independent bookstores by promoting them as a tourist destination and creating a new travel niche for booklovers. Based on his own experiences leading group literary adventures to New York City and Washington, DC, Portzline's book tells people how to plan "bookstore road trips" with friends, reading groups, schools, libraries and other organizations, whether the group numbers 5 or 50."
"ISTANBUL -- The arrest of a Duke University doctoral student last week on charges of trying to smuggle rare books out of Armenia has stirred concerns among academics and officials and illustrates the quagmire of Turkish-Armenian relations."
"Outbidding stiff competition, the state government spent $656,760 yesterday to obtain 11 rare documents, maps and books from the 17th and 18th centuries, material that the state's director of archives described as "the Dead Sea Scrolls of the settlement of New Jersey."
"Twenty-nine documentary collections in 24 countries have been inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. These additions bring to 120 the total number of inscriptions on the Register to date. They include, for the first time, collections from Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Cuba, Italy, Lebanon, Namibia, Portugal, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States of America. The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, approved the inscriptions, which were recommended by the 14-member International Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme."
"The new Jerwood Center, named for the charitable foundation that pledged the first $925,000 of its $5.9 million building costs, represents a victory of architectural innovation and scholarship over those eager to keep England's Lake District free of anything but the most traditional of building designs."
"Ex-Philadelphia Flyers President Jay Snider is selling his collection of rare books and maps because he wants to start a new one focused on Ben Franklin."
""I can’t imagine living without books. If I go out to dinner at someone else’s home, and they don’t have books visible, I wonder if I want them as friends," said Barbara Farnsworth, an antiquarian bookseller in West Cornwall, Conn."
"Mr Coates said there had been many similar recent dumpings of books by public libraries in Brighton, Liverpool and Hampshire. He said that with 300 public libraries in London, there should have been collaboration to find a better home for the books than the bottom of a skip."
"Pontifell’s limited editions have included books by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Helmut Kohl, James Merritt, Mark Strand, John Updike, and Presidents Reagan, Carter, Ford and Nixon, among many others. Mr. Pontifell has worked on numerous projects with The White House Historical Association, Monticello, and The Smithsonian Institution, and Thornwillow’s books are in the permanent collection of The White House, the J.P. Morgan Library, the Vatican Library, as well as the rare book collections of Harvard and Yale Universities, the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library."
"Lifelong book collector Samuel Gibson hopes to sell more than 10,000 volumes he has collected during visits to book sales, estate sales and bookstores."
"Cage: Well, I had a bad experience, which, you know; I was-- what's the right thing to say? I was robbed. And they took my best ones. They took Action 1 and Detective 27 and Detective 1. And now today they're worth who knows what. But I thought to myself, because I'm not the kind of person that wants to take comics and leave them in a safe somewhere. I'd rather put them on the wall and really enjoy them and look at them. But after that happened I thought maybe it's better not to own them, just to enjoy them from afar, and I sold them."
"From June 17-September 4, 2005, the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) will present The Open Book: Photographic Publications 1878 to the Present, an exhibition of some of the most signi•cant publications in the history of photography. Produced by the Hasselblad Center in Sweden, it demonstrates the role of books as a primary communicator of photographic images."
Pradeep Sebastian:
"The 40 or so pieces I have written over the last few years have explored several aspects of the passion for reading and book collecting. From the large, obvious themes like the lure of first editions and second-hand bookshops to small, fringe asides about reading in bed, bookshelves and book titles. The column has been one long meditation on what the passion for reading and book collecting was centuries ago (so beautifully) called — a gentle madness."
"“In this position, you become a kind of local historian,” Favretto said with relish. “You get to dig around in people’s diaries and old notebooks. And you come to know many people. Recently, I had the pleasure of working with Leon Williams, the first African American to serve on San Diego’s City Council, an important figure in local transportation history and a leader in bringing the trolley to SDSU.”
"So I'm keeping the atlas my mother bought for me when I graduated from college. I'm dumping "They Call Me Assassin," by former pro football player Jack Tatum. The architecture books are staying; they qualify under an Aslett rule that if you make a living from something, it's not junk."
"Understanding the complex components of Vedic scriptures has been an exercise, both dear and facile for him. He does not stop with understanding the idea but starts interpreting it in the most authentic and indisputable of forms. His recent mind-boggling research into the intricacies of ancient Sanskrit texts in Pondicherry has resulted in bringing out the first volume of a rare edition."
"The 'H.H Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Project to Preserve Al Azhar Scripts and Publish Them Online' said today that the project's website www.alazharonline.org has received tremendous international interest with more than 30,000 visitors from all over the world in the last three weeks, 45 % of them from the US alone."
"Years ago, in the basement of Yale University's rare-book library, I stumbled upon two Louis XV armchairs that once belonged to Gertrude Stein. They were upholstered in needlepoint by Alice B. Toklas according to Picasso's designs. Those chairs long haunted me."
"MOBILE, Ala. - While books on tape remain library favorites, tech-savvy patrons have something new to borrow - audio books and e-books for listening on home computers or handheld devices like iPods."
"Samuel Gibson's eyes light up as he runs his fingers along the cover of 1861 edition of "Washington and The Generals of the American Revolution." He points out the craftsmanship that went into the intricately tooled cover and the spine as he opens the book and gingerly turns its pages."
"The New York Public Library will launch a digital audio book collection allowing cardholders to download audio books from the Internet, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week."
"Many colleges and universities are moving library collections off-campus. Others are curtailing book buying in favor of digital resources. Not Chicago."
"The University Board of Trustees has approved a $42 million plan to expand the University Library by more than 3.5 million volumes and create by June 2009 one of the nation’s largest university collections of materials under one roof at the center of the Hyde Park campus."
"For 50 years, Charles Miner has been collecting rare books that either are about Chicago or written by Chicago authors -- from Theodore Dreiser to Sara Paretsky."
"A trove of documents considered to be the Holy Grail of early New Jersey history will be auctioned at Christie's later this month and state archivists are trying to scrape together a pot of money in hopes of snapping them up."
"Buried in the dump were more than 400,000 fragments of papyrus — bits of documents, pieces of scrolls and pages from old books written between the 2nd century B.C. and the 8th century and preserved ever since in the hot, dry climate."
"LONDON: A nearly 500-year-old map from the first set to identify the New World as "America" and depict the Pacific Ocean was sold Wednesday for a record $1 million, an auction house said."
"HYDERABAD: In tune with the modern advancements, Osmania University has embarked on a project to digitise books and manuscripts of its main library, which is a treasure trove of over one lakh titles and 4,000 manuscripts."
"But experts say Torahs are stolen more often than you'd think. Geoffrey Haber, rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, learned the hard way in 1998, when a burglar swiped two scrolls from his synagogue in Englewood, New Jersey. They were recovered by an NYPD Torah-theft task force in a sting operation after the thief, a maintenance man working in the neighborhood, tried to sell the scrolls to a New York rabbi, claiming they were part of an inheritance."
"Public libraries spend less than 10 per cent of their budget on books and are losing borrowers at such a rate that they will all have closed in 15 years, according to a former managing director of Waterstone's bookshops."
"White Plains, NY – Seth Kaller, one of the most respected American historic document dealers, will display a rare signed copy of The Emancipation Proclamation at White Plains’ first Juneteenth Heritage Parade and Festival."
"A previously unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach has been discovered by researchers in Germany.
The vocal piece was found among papers removed from the historic Anna Amalia Library in Weimar before a devastating fire there last September."
"Every now and then, a friend will drop off a book to David Lieberman. The book may be tattered and torn, but he will find a way to restore it."
"Panjiayuan in southeast Beijing is extremely popular with vendors, scholars, and migrant workers alike due to the rare or antique books sold there.
It seems that no one cares about the appearance of their booths, and buyers often find what they want there, and even occasionally come across rare and lucrative items."
"That guest book, which will be one of the highlights of the Antiquarian Book Fair in London this week, records them all from the 1960s through to 1987, about the time the restaurant was sold to new owners. David Hockney drew the plate, the coffee cup and glass at his dinner table while another artist, Felix Topolski, a Polish émigré and friend of George Bernard Shaw, did a charcoal sketch of a wine bottle."
"As hundreds of old and rare books are wasting away at Calcutta University’s Central Library, the city’s scholars, book lovers and the university alumni have started a debate on how to save the priceless volumes."
"CHARLES Nalder has found the literary equivalent of a needle in a haystack. He has stumbled upon a Carey in a book pile."
"Close to 10,000 researchers armed with MA degrees in Sanskrit, Literature or History are marching to institutions, libraries and villages to document an estimated 25 lakh ancient manuscripts. Leading this nationwide project to document details like material, script, language, subject, place of availability and number of pages is the National Mission for Manuscripts of the Department of Culture."
"But the most striking works come from the Golestan Library, the former Royal Library of Iran. Pages from a famous moraqqa or "patchwork [album]" in which rare paintings and specimens of calligraphy were originally collected by Jahangir, the Mogul emperor of India (1605-1627), are on view for the first time since the 1936 London "Exhibition of Persian Art." A double page with a royal banquet in a garden painted in the 1470s or 1480s and a sheet with a camel fight are both signed by Behzad, an artist whose name has the same resonance in Iran as Leonardo's in the West."
"CAIRO The long-awaited online library of Al-Azhar, the oldest and highest Sunni institution in Egypt, (www. alazharonline.org) that aims to promote a moderate image of Islam by making Al-Azhar’s holdings of manuscripts available online is now accessible for those interested in knowing more about Islam."
"Sitting in a case in the British Library's new Hans Christian Andersen exhibition is a 19th century translation of The Green Duckling. The what duckling? Yes, this version of The Ugly Duckling must have seemed pretty incomprehensible to any Victorian children unfortunate enough to receive the mistranslated gem in their Christmas stockings. But as Kristian Jensen of the BL says: "Andersen's tales have something special that carries them through translations, adaptations and even mistranslations."
"AUSTIN - Papers belonging to Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and related to Deep Throat - now revealed as former FBI man W. Mark Felt - will likely be delivered to the University of Texas Ransom Center this fall, Director Tom Staley said."
"William J. Schull, a 1946 Marquette graduate, and his wife, Victoria, are donating 10 new titles, most notably a first edition set of Jonathan Swift's novel, "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World," better known as "Gulliver's Travels."
"Edmonds dealer Steve Sibra, who collected Spider-Man comics as a kid in the 1960s and grew up to run a comic book store for 12 years, now uses the shows as a way to unload some of his collections and hunt down the older comics that are his specialty. His biggest sale was a 1956 comic book featuring the first appearance of The Flash -- an issue he sold for $15,000."
"Although he planned to spend much of his time adding to his collection of rare and antique books on the subject of birth defects and cataloging them in his already extensive personal library, Beckwith has been rather busy of late being honored for lifetime achievement with several prestigious awards."
"The range of the Bancroft's collection of books, records, photographs and artifacts is breathtaking, and so is the volume. The manuscripts alone take up 35,000 linear feet of space, which means that in the unlikely event they were laid end to end they would stretch more than 6.628 miles."
"A Japanese bank has given the University of Pittsburgh's library system a collection valued at more than $1.5 million.
The Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. collection contains 64,199 volumes in Japanese and Western languages spanning the mid-19th to the late-20th centuries. Topics include banking, social sciences, politics and a history of the company."
Read article.
"Documents in the home have fared the best because American and Cubans have worked together since 2002 to preserve thousands of letters, manuscripts and photographs. The originals remain at the hacienda, but microfilmed copies will go to Boston's John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, which has the world's primary collection of Hemingway documents."
"The University of Cincinnati will return a piece of history this month when it sends a rare German book back to Germany."
"The book, titled Die Andachtige Pilgerfahrt, or "The Devout Pilgrimage," by Vincentius Briemle, was published in Munich, Germany. A World War II GI brought it to the United States. The book is a two volume account containing descriptions of travel to the Holy Land in the 1700s."
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