"'With the rise of selling books on the Internet, many traditional brick-and-morter stores are closing,' said owner Owen Kubik in a press release issued Wednesday. 'But we decided to buck the trend. Yes, we sell books online, but we decided to have a local presence as well where people could actually see, touch and feel a book before buying it.'"
"Google is making waves in the publishing industry by offering free PDFs of out-of-copyright books."
"Classic literature fans will be able to download Dante's Divine Comedy, access Aesop's Fables and get hold of other popular classics and rare books that are no longer subject to copyright through Google's Book Search service."
"AN HISTORIC library once frequented by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx has had its future secured thanks to a heritage grant of almost £100,000. "
"Chetham’s Library in central Manchester, the oldest surviving public library in the English-speaking world, was founded in 1653 in a 15th century building, but water has seeped into the masonry over the years, causing major unseen structural problems. "
"An aged manuscript of a classic Irish play, long thought lost even by the renowned playwright who wrote it, has made its way to Princeton University as the gem of a momentous collection of Irish theater donated by 1953 alumnus Leonard L. Milberg."
"Al Ain: The Zayed Central Library of the UAE University has set up a new section for special collections, such as rare books, course material and curriculum guides."
"The section was inaugurated yesterday by Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, during UAEU's annual staff congregation."
"'In the used book business there's really two styles of bookstores,' said Tom, the President of Dean's Books in Topeka. 'One's antiquarian that deals more with first additions and rare books, and then we're the other type which is more just modern fictions and pleasure reading, but non-fiction as well.'
"Dean's Books is the oldest used bookstore in Topeka."
"ON the night of November 4, 1966, Florence was struck by the greatest catastrophe in its modern history. The banks of the rampaging River Arno burst, submerging parts of the city beneath 6m of mud and floodwater. The torrent damaged 14,000 works of art and millions of rare books, providing the director of Florence's institute of conservation, Umberto Baldini, with the greatest challenge of his career. "
"...David Gontz has a passion for local history. In his home, old and rare Pennsylvania German history books line antique bookshelves. Rare local documents protected by glass frames line his living-room walls, along with his wife’s art work. "
""Gontz would spend hours researching books through card catalogs. In the early ’60s, he started collecting rare books. His collection now includes works by early American printers Benjamin Franklin and Christopher Sauer, a premier (Pennsylvania) German printer of the 1740s.
"Dreamers and winners of the Friends of the UCSC Library’s 40th Annual Book Collection Essay Contest for UCSC students were recently recognized at an awards ceremony held at McHenry Library. "
"Tyler Cushing (Crown College) took first place for his subject Self-Injury; Misty Peterson (Porter College) was awarded second place for The Art of My Books; and Andrew Skewes-Cox, (Porter College) garnered third place for Forever Young. All of the students received cash prizes. Winners of the 12th Annual High School Book Collection Essay Contest also took home cash prizes for themselves and bookstore certificates for their schools. "
"This was a book lover's dream: According to its Web site, Oxfam is the largest retailer of secondhand books (including rare books and antiques) in Europe, selling some 11 million each year. In 2005, a 17th-century treatise on economics brought in some $30,000 at auction."
"Here I found unique titles such as "Recollections of a Westminster Antiquary" by Lawrence E. Tanner, keeper of the library muniments of Westminster Abbey, 1926-1966, for $7, and "Memoirs of a Victorian Cabinet Maker" by James Hopkinson, 1819-1894, discovered by his granddaughter in an old trunk in 1966 and published in 1968."
"Only a brass plaque hints at the treasures inside the tidy white house with forest green trim at 2005 T St. in Sacramento: Barry Cassidy Rare Books, est. 1975, it says."
"All the walls of the two-bedroom home are lined with musty books that smell of a different era -- there's a book about manners from 1899, a book in French on sex and marriage from 1911, and a two-volume set on Ulysses S. Grant from 1868."
Nice Card Catalog !
"Thousands of rare books and manuscripts at the Jamia Milia Islamia University would soon be available in a digital format."
"The varsity has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing for digitisation of rare books and other cultural treasures in the institute’s Zakir Hussain Library."
"'One of the most exciting features of the new Rare Book Room,” says Kevin Donaldson “is the monthly feature. In September we are promoting The Beat Generation. Sellers will nominate any book listed on Biblio.com and then vote for the best of these books. Winners will be featured in the Rare Book Room, and receive the book listing free in the Rare Book Room for as long as the title is listed on Biblio.com.'"
"Bangalore, Karnataka, India: 'Integrate and Innovate' have been the ‘keywords’ behind the initiatives spearheaded by Oxford Bookstore in the new media. In conjunction with their pioneering business model of being the first integrated offline-online bookstore in India, Oxford Bookstore now launches an interactive SMS service to update booklovers on new releases and bestsellers on their mobile phones. In a strategic alliance with Mobile 365, the global leader in mobile messaging and data services, Oxford Bookstore brings this unique SMS service across India through the shortcode ‘6365.’ "
"In 2006, to celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, APHA will join the Library Company of Philadelphia and the McNeil Center of the University of Pennsylvania for a conference to be called "The Atlantic World of Print in the Age of Franklin." The conference, which is being sponsored by McNeil Center and the Library Company, will be held in September 2006 at the University of Pennsylvania. Due to the generosity of the sponsors, this conference will be free, except for a modest sum for the banquet."
"The Fairfield Historical Society won a matching grant in the amount of $105,931 which will be used to pay for the costs of preparing, packing, and moving the Society's collections to the new Fairfield Museum and History Center, located on the historic Town Green. The project will ensure the safe and secure transport of museum artifacts, rare books and manuscripts, to the new Fairfield Museum and History Center."
"Do you collect comics for fun or profit? Well if you're like most collectors, it's a little of both. Regardless, if you think that one day you may sell some or all of your comics (and it seems many of us do) you may want to learn more about "slabbing." Slabbing is the process of having your comics professionally graded, and then encased between two sheets of hard plastic (some sources identify this plastic as "Barex", but there's some controversy as to what type of plastic it is). A special paper that prevents acidification is tucked into the comic as part of this process. Slabbing protects the comic from weather extremes, mositure, dust, and all the other things that can decrease a comic's value."
"Don Bell, a writer, book collector and owner of a bookstore in Sutton, Que. Bell spent more than two decades in obsessive pursuit of the mysterious Whitehead's story - who was he and what became of him?"
"Bell was the author of the essay collection Saturday Night At The Bagel Factory, which won the 1973 Leacock prize for humour. His new book, The Man Who Killed Houdini, is published posthumously today by Vehicule Press in Montreal."
"New Delhi: A copy of a seventh century Quran and Persian translations of the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana done during the Mughal period are among the around 500 rare manuscripts that will be displayed at the National Museum here after a gap of five years. "
"The manuscripts would be put up at a permanent gallery that will be created especially for such rare documents in two months. "
"'The museum has around 15,000 manuscripts in its collection, out of which around 500 will be put up for display in the manuscript gallery,'" National Museum Director General A K V S Reddy told news agencies here. "
"Within the pages of a rare 450-year-old manuscript sitting in a vault at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia lie hundreds of lines of music that haven't been performed for centuries."
"The choral chants, illustrated with elaborate full-page illuminations, were written between 1554 and 1555 at a convent in present-day Belgium. By next June, the 440-page book and its deteriorating calf-skin covers will be restored, and a group of Australian singers will perform its songs of worship at Halifax's St. Mary's Basilica."
"From an early age Leslie Joshi, the new director of the Powers Library in Moravia, was fascinated by books and all the wonderful knowledge and potential they contained."
“'I think I was first influenced by the fact that my father was a history professor,'” said the Seattle native. “'Our house was always full of books.'"
"With more than 1,150 pages and more than 160 illuminations, The Saint John’s Bible is the first handwritten and illuminated Bible commissioned by a Benedictine monastery since the invention of the printing press. Saint John’s Abbey and University have partnered with world-renowned calligrapher Donald Jackson, senior scribe to Her Majesty the Queen’s Crown Office at the House of Lords in London, England, to create this masterpiece. "
"Robert J. Wickenheiser, the former president of St. Bonaventure University, is selling his extensive collection of works of English poet John Milton to the University of South Carolina for $1 million. "
"Wickenheiser, a Milton scholar, has spent much of his life putting together his 6,000-volume collection, considered one of the finest of its kind in North America. "
"I was so disinterested in ceramics that I sold two copies of the rare book "Oriental Ceramics" discovered in the Philippines by Leandro and Cecila Locsin. When I got hold of a third and fourth copy in 1999 and actually leafed through them, I realized very late that any study of Philippine prehistory inevitably touched on ceramics. These were so important that the pioneering pre-historian H. Otley Beyer even wrote an article on "The
Philippines in the Porcelain Age" (roughly the 9th to the 16th centuries)."
"After a $4 million renovation of the century-old Carnegie Library is completed in late October, it will become home to the Remnant Trust collection of 850 rare books and handwritten manuscripts by thinkers focusing on the importance of liberty and human dignity. "
"The collection's most ancient items — cuneiform cylinders from the Middle East — are about 4,000 years old, Remnant Trust President Kris Bex said."
"The Government District Library, Dharamsala, which not only houses priceless old books but also several rare manuscripts, is in a shambles. Many books have either been destroyed due to heavy rain or eaten by moths and termites. But the district administration is yet to swing into action to save them. "
"There are as many as 40,000 rare books in the library which was set up way back in 1954 and of these at least 20,000 have been exposed to the vagaries of the weather and the years."
"But if you don't have the money to buy a first edition King James Version you still can get your hands on one at the Christian Heritage Museum, whose owner invites visitors to touch and purchase some of the 20,000 pieces in his collection. "
"Gene S. Albert Jr. isn't selling his prized King James first edition, first issue, printed in 1611. The book, also known as a "he" Bible for a masculine pronoun in Ruth 3:15 that was changed to "she" in later versions, sits atop a bookcase in the loft of the climate-controlled barn near Hagerstown that houses his museum. "
"Nancy Cooper likens opening a box of donated books to Christmas morning; she loves to discover surprises. A life long Villager — and Villager reader — Cooper is an expert in evaluating rare and collectible books. She currently employs her skills at Housing Works Bookstore Café, the non-profit shop whose proceeds help to provide housing, healthcare, job training, and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS (full disclosure: I’m also on staff there). An area under the front counter, labeled “Nancy Books,” is reserved for anything that looks old or unusual enough to require a special look. She instinctively separates the wheat from the chaff, the priceless first edition from the worthless third."
"NEW HAVEN -- A rare books dealer who has been using Yale University's map collection since his undergraduate days has pledged to give his alma mater $100,000 to help bring the massive collection into the modern era. "
"Still smarting from the theft of dozens of priceless maps - some taken by disgraced map dealer E. Forbes Smiley III - Yale hopes to make the collection more secure but also to improve its accessibility to scholars."
"Outwardly, Eva Tihanyi and Robert Giannetti might not seem to have much in common. There are two strong connections that they share, though: a deep love of poetic expression and a strong connection to the Niagara Frontier. "
"Giannetti was born in New York City and later came to this area to earn his Bachelor’s at Niagara University. A life-long businessman, he’s only recently refocused on what is perhaps his true love: literature. A former managing partner of a human resources firm, Giannetti now operates a small rare book business in Atlanta, Georgia."
"Daniel McKee of Cornell University has won the first Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship, which honors winners of the colleges and universities (some three dozen) that already hold their own student book-collecting contests. For his collection, "Educational Books from Japan's Meiji Period (1868–1912)," McKee wins $2500, a trip to New York for the awards ceremony Sept. 16 at the Grolier Club, a one-year membership in the club, and a $1000 donation in his name to the Cornell library. William Miglore of Amherst College won second place for his "Ray Bradbury" collection. He'll get $1000, a trip to the awards ceremony, a scholarship to the Rare Books School at the University of Virginia, and $500 donation in his name to the Amherst library. "
"George Clooney collects motorcycles. Harry Connick, Jr. collects cuff links. Johnny Depp: insects and rare books; Whoopi Goldberg collects Bakelite jewelry and Maxfield Parrish prints; Angelina Jolie: knives; Dolly Parton: butterflies; John Travolta: aviation memorabilia, and on and on. All this is a beautiful coffee table book titled 'What Celebrities Collect!' by Michele Karl (Pelican Press), with color pictures of all."
"The first fundraiser planned by the Worcester Public Library Foundation will be held in September. The goal will be to raise monies to begin the crucial restoration of rare materials. An evening program with a dinner and readings by several authors with Worcester or Massachusetts connections will be offered. Among the authors who will read from their own books are Dennis Lehane, author of “Mystic River,” John Dufresne, Adria Bernardi and Thomas Christopher Greene. "
"At this point, only the village's paper collection — which includes rare books, manuscripts, newspapers and drawings — is kept in a climate-controlled room in The Center For Shaker Studies, a newer building that was constructed in 2000."
"Similarly, the 10,000 three-dimensional pieces in the collection require special conditions to ensure that they remain in excellent condition. Spear sees the grant as a major step forward in the challenging conservation process."
"Brothers Joel and Sam Hyde are going through their own divorce of sorts, as Joel leaves Hyde Bros., Booksellers behind, to open up Every Other Book, a used bookstore set to open at noon Tuesday at 3208 Crescent Ave."
"Once sold for a dime or a quarter, rare pulp issues featuring a story by L. Ron Hubbard, Edgar Rice Burroughs or Raymond Chandler go for $500 to several thousand dollars at PulpCon. Often featuring attention-grabbing cover art and classic inside illustrations, the pulp fiction magazine has been transformed into mega bestsellers like "Battlefield Earth" and "Harry Potter" or Hollywood blockbusters like "Star Wars" and "Pirates of the Caribbean."
"When Berkeley's Black Oak Books closed its North Beach branch in San Francisco this summer, there was no hassle dealing with the thousands of volumes that made up the used-book inventory. "
"Black Oak cut a deal with Powell's Books, the world's largest independent purveyor of used books. Powell's has eight stores in Portland, Ore., making the city a mecca for used-books lovers, and a Web site (www.powells.com) that's become the go-to destination for anyone seeking a hard-to-find tome. "
"In April of this year, Biblion Ltd., and Biblio.com, one of the world's largest marketplaces for used, rare, and out-of-print books, announced their mutual decision to work together to redevelop the Biblion.co.uk online strategy. After 3 months of production and beta-testing, the www.biblion.co.uk was taken live with the new platform in early July."
"But the library's collection of more than 6 million volumes, growing at a rate of 80,000 per year, has long been too much for the Klementinum to handle. For the past 10 years, the library has tried to relieve the strain by storing its overstocked books in a facility in Hostivař in Prague 10. In 1997, it began converting some of its book collection into electronic format to free up additional shelf space."
Read this article.
"Shakespeare's genius for theatre wasn't limited to writing. Behind the scenes, he pulled strings to ensure that his company was the most successful troupe in London, writes James Shapiro."
"In 1971, the eyes of the world were focused on New Haven, where members of the Black Panther Party were on trial for the killing of a suspected police informant. It had all the elements of intrigue, along with the added voltage that came from occurring in the middle of one of the country's most turbulent periods."
"During the trial, which was closed to cameras, only one man was allowed to create a visual record of courtroom events, Woodbury resident and noted portraitist Robert Templeton (1929-1991).
Now, approximately 20 of Mr. Templeton's drawings from the trial have been acquired by Yale University for inclusion in its Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library collection."
"One day my journeys led me to one of the great eccentrics of the America book trade
- Mr. Samuel Kleinman."
"Sam Kleinman's Schuykill Book Shop (or Book Service) was located near the corner of Lancaster and Belmont Avenues in West Philadelphia, not too far from our apartment. The neighborhood had seen better days (probably the last "better days" were before World War Two). It was a storefront shop, painted dark green. The display widows looked like they had not been changed since those long gone "better days". The books, posters, ephemera, and what nots in the window were broken, faded, stained, and warped. Everything had sort of deteriorated to an almost uniform light blue gray color. The show window itself, probably not having been cleaned within the last decade, seemed to have a similar color."
"The Virginia Historical Society was established in 1831. The first president of the VHS was Chief Justice John Marshall. In the beginning, the society's aim was to collect rare books and acquire rare Virginia memorabilia. The current building was built by the Confederate Memorial Association. In 1946, with the aid of historian Douglas Southall Freeman, the Confederate Memorial Institute and the Virginia Historical Society merged. Last month, the VHS celebrated its 175th anniversary."
"Naturally, in this town of achievers and suburban sophisticates, there’s a great bookstore right downtown, the quirky and genuinely independent Montclair Book Center at 221 Glenridge Avenue, with scuffed wooden floors and many stacks of new, used and rare books. "
"But she’s a different kind of nerd. Brainy, pretty and ironic, Rebecca Wagner blows away the stereotype of the pasty-skinned white male with a closet full of comic books that once defined this convention that is expected to draw 100,000 over its four days."
"In recent years Hollywood has discovered the amazing power of word-of-mouth or “viral” marketing that fans like Wagner represent. That’s made Comic-Con a magnet for film studios and TV networks that bring their stars to San Diego to interact with fans and to hype upcoming high-profile releases with sneak previews and giveaways. "
"And I met some guy when I was a comic book collector, who was like, 'You know, it's all the same guys.' And it is; they're going back and forth. Some of them work for the two companies at once. Half the good writers went from Marvel to DC. And Dead Man, he's a spirit. He inhabits other people's bodies. But Man-Thing's better than Swamp Thing."
The Gin Blossoms: "Bill Leen, who had opened a rare-books store, had begun writing songs with Wilson. Johnson soon joined them."
‘'‘We got together every Tuesday for six weeks,' Johnson says, ‘and it went so well that we decided it was time to call Jesse.'”
Read this article.
"The most hidden words and diagrams of Archimedes' greatest works now are coming to light inside a particle accelerator here. Scientists in the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory slowly are scanning an X-ray beam half as thick as a human hair over the ancient parchment in hope of recovering his thoughts from more than 2,000 years ago. "
"What they're working with is 'the ugliest manuscript I have ever seen,' said William Noel, curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, home of the Archimedes palimpsest — meaning a document containing hidden text. "
"Bookbinding is an old craft, but it's far from dead. In Toronto, three crafters at Don Taylor Bookbinder work every day to restore old books or create hand-bound albums and boxes. Kate Murdoch has worked at the small studio on Queen St. W. for 20 years, after apprenticing under Taylor. She spends her days bringing old books back to life. "
"Mary Barile, a doctoral student in theater and an avid book collector, has donated several gifts: a collection of cookbooks dating to the 1820s, a dictionary by painter Thomas Cole and a collection of magazine journals from the 1830s."
"At least a few of Barile’s gifts counted toward the campaign total, but to her, that’s secondary."
“I think the whole point of collecting is sharing what you have,” Barile said. “And the best way to do that is to donate books to Ellis (Library).”
"IT’s more than just a space to pore over textbooks or hunt down dusty reference volumes for a college research project. The University of Mumbai ’s Rajabai Tower Library is more a book museum, boasting some rare and valuable tomes. The exhibition of some of these interesting volumes at the Rajabai Tower, to celebrate the University’s 150th year, is the perfect way to marvel at some of the treasures that the library preserves."
"Most of the special collections in the library today were received from private donors. Among these are a stack of letters and newspaper articles by Dr B R Ambedkar, the East India Company’s books received in 1864 by the British Government, ex-vice chancellor Dr John Wilson’s collection of books on Oriental Studies and Dr Aroon Tikekar’s 2,100 antiquarian books, which he donated to the library last year. "
"Blair Hedges, an avid collector of Renaissance prints along with animals, has devised a clever method for figuring out just how old some of these prints are. Historians have been unable to determine exact dates for hundreds of early prints and books, and Hedges thinks the answer lies in science."
"But not everyone in the world of rare books and prints has embraced this guidance from an outsider, published in June in a British scientific journal that they ordinarily never would read."
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