June 2016

Over the past year, Neuhauser has been cataloging VCU Libraries’ trove of books published before 1800, allowing researchers to not only search by author, title and subject, but also now by a wide variety of material features.

“Especially with older books, one thing that’s interesting to book historians like me is the material aspects of the books,” Neuhauser said. “Now that we have opened up the catalog to be searched by material terms, you can, say, look for all of VCU Libraries’ books that have a certain type of paper, or that have a specific type of binding, or have gold tooling, or have gilt edges and things like that.”

From Student catalogs VCU Libraries’ collection of pre-1800 books, greatly enhancing their research value

This was definitely made by Sir Reads-A-Lot.

The Virginia Beach Public Library recently shared a viral photo on Facebook of one of its book displays, featuring a twist on Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” 

And it’s really going to make you appreciate big books. 

From ‘Baby Got Books’ Display Will Make You Want To Tackle Daunting Reads

Until now, the knowledge that ancient manuscripts were used to make cartonnage has presented an ethical quandary to scholars. Books and other artifacts have been destroyed in the hopes of discovering something more precious hidden inside. The stakes are even higher when it comes to Egyptian mummy masks because there are comparably few ancient manuscripts, and certain texts—Plato, the Bible, and Homer—are culturally and financially viable to Westerners. The oldest Ptolemaic fragment of the Odyssey (currently on display at the Met) was retrieved from the cartonnage of a mummy mask. Rumors that mummy masks contain the earliest fragments of the Bible has led some evangelicals to dismantle them at church-sponsored events.

From Are Your Books Secretly Worth Millions? – The Daily Beast

Labeled, not so modestly, the “Gutenberg press of the 21st century” by its creators, the machine sits in a back corner of the shop, humming as it turns PDFs into paperbacks. Customers use tablets to select the titles for print — adding, if they want to, their own handwritten inscriptions — while sipping coffee in the light and airy storefront in the Latin Quarter of Paris. “The customers are all surprised,” said the shop’s director, Alexandre Gaudefroy. “At first, they’re a little uncomfortable with the tablets. After all, you come to a bookshop to look at books. But thanks to the machine and the tablets, the customer holds a digital library in their hands.”

From New Chapter for Classic Paris Bookstore: Books Printed on Demand – The New York Times

Detailed information on journal subscription costs paid to individual publishers by the Finnish research institutions has been released by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and its Open Science and Research Initiative funded 2014–2017 (Kustantajahintatiedot Suomessa 2010–2015).

With this, Finland becomes to our knowledge the first country where annual subscription fees for all individual publishers and all major research institutions have been made available, spanning the years 2010-2015. Similar information has been previously released for some, but not all publishers and research institutions in the UK and US; and related activities are ongoing in several countries (see the recent blog post by Stuart Lawson).

From Scientific journal subscription costs in Finland 2010-2015: a preliminary analysis — rOpenGov

According to research by Candice Huber, books by Bukowski and Kerouac are indeed popular targets for theft from bookstores, along with those by Hemingway, David Sedaris, and The Great Gatsby. All of the books listed are by men, and most by “manly” men. This 2009 list from the UK is slightly different: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book both rank high.

Libraries are a different story. According to Huber, the most frequently stolen library books are the Guinness Book of World Records, which is a favorite around our house,1 and The Bible.

From The most frequently stolen books

Finally, the book-smell industry is moving on and up. The market for products that smell like books is ramping up, with dozens of new products, from Demeter Paperback Cologne (“used bookstore”: paper, violets and potpourri) to Byredo M/Mink (smells like ink); to Kilian Water Calligraphy (“blended to reflect a scent of Chinese ink sliding over rice paper”) to Tokyo Milk Parfumarie Curiosite 17 Paper & Cotton (“coriander, white sage, birch wood, and tundra moss”); and Paper Passion (“the unique bouquet of freshly printed books”).

From Parfumiers are trying to capture the smell of old books / Boing Boing

A library is no longer defined only by the tangible materials it possesses. A book has the capacity for creating memories, but libraries also offer infinite potential for dreaming, growing, planning, discovering, and investigating. A library is a fixed built environment, yet every visit, every interaction offers a distinctive experience. When a library melds the legacy of its past with the possibilities of the future, it is both familiar and comfortable, yet novel and inspiring. Whether a visit is to grab a cup of coffee, a crime thriller, or conversation with a friend, a library is incomparable in its potential to offer assorted solutions to an equally varied group of people. It’s a space that inspires joyful giggles and enthusiastic epiphanies. Yet, it is also unrivaled in its capacity to embrace everyone, regardless of circumstance, even if all they need is a shelter from life’s storm. Today’s libraries are truly community catalysts; they are designed to bring people together and as a result are transforming neighborhoods.

From Libraries of the future | The Gazette

Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.

His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.

From Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted | L.A. Weekly

Astonishingly, a little inquiry proves that the library not only still keeps records of all the books that Burr and Hamilton borrowed (and, mostly, returned) but also has many of the books themselves—not merely the same titles, but the exact same books that Hamilton and Burr handled and thumbed and read and learned from. What’s more, it turns out that, by a series of benevolent bequests, the library also has a few choice and telling letters from Burr and Hamilton and even from Eliza Hamilton—“best of wives and best of women,” as Manuel’s lyrics have it—all speaking around, and eventually to, the famous and fatal affair. So, hearing this news, we quickly—as a writer would have put it in this magazine in Thurber’s day—hied ourselves over to the Society Library’s reading room, and went to work to find out more.

From “Hamilton” and the Books That Hamilton Held – The New Yorker