Sunday, January 22, 2012

Links & Reviews

- Released this week, a tremendous new resource on the history of paper, based on research by Tim Barrett and others: Paper Through Time. The background essay and other materials make for fascinating reading.

- Also new, the Cranach Digital Archive.

- Ann Trubek went inside Cleveland's bibliophilic society The Rowfant Club (one of the few remaining all-male biblio-organizations), and tells the tale.

- From bookseller Ken Karmiole, an essay on "Collecting the Physical Book in the Digital Age."

- A new exhibition at Cambridge University, Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and Their Books. [h/t Mike Widener]

- Sarah Werner has posted her syllabus for her class "Books and Early Modern Culture."

- The Harvard Gazette reported this week on the launch of WorldMap, a new open-source mapping platform.

- In the Harvard Magazine, a look at Brontë juvenilia in the Houghton Library collections.

- Rebecca Rego Barry's essay "A Rare Book Collector's Guide to the College Library Book Sale" is now online at The Millions.

- Over at Past is Present, Tracey Kry highlights the Cardiff Giant, quite a good hoax from 1869 (which happened near where I grew up, and now resides at the wonderful Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown).

- The Poe Toaster failed to make an appearance in Baltimore for the third year in a row; observers now believe that the tradition has probably come to an end.

- A National Churchill Library and Center will be founded at The George Washington University, as part of an $8 million gift to the university from Chicago's Churchill Centre.

- From Ed Pettit at Ed and Edgar, a literacy quiz that he gave this week to a college class.

- The Collation has begun a series of guest posts by Folger interns: the first, by Ashley Behringer, examines the origins of a particular manuscript collection.

- Given the events of this week, if you read one review today, make it Caleb Crain's The Nation piece on William Patry's How to Fix Copyright and Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's Reclaiming Fair Use. Joseph Adelman's Publick Occurrences blog post is also a must-read.

Reviews

- Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle; review by David Mikics in TNR.

- Ian Donaldson's Ben Jonson: A Life; review by Charles Isherwood in the NYTimes.

- John M. Barry's Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul; review by Scott Martelle in the LATimes.

- John Matteson's The Lives of Margaret Fuller; review by Mary Beth Norton in the NYTimes.

- Julia Flinn Siler's Lost Kingdom; review by Sara Kehaulani Goo in the WaPo.

- Richard Bailey's Speaking American; review by John McWhorter in the NYTimes.