Library News for Rare Books

Remembering Howard Nemerov

It's been a busy time these last few months, and I have several updates to post!

I thought I would start by posting this moving poem by Howard Nemerov, two-time Poet Laureate and esteemed professor of English here at the university from 1969 to 1991. I never had the chance to meet him, but he was a dear friend of Joseph Tucker, who quoted the poem below, on the spur of the moment, at his 92nd birthday party last weekend. It reminded us all of how connected we are, and how dependent upon each other.

Professor Nemerov is well represented in Special Collections. His personal papers -- including drafts, with manuscript revisions, of this poem -- are housed in the Manuscript Unit. His personal library forms part of our book collections, and his university-related activities are documented in the University Archives. We welcome scholars and friends of Professor Nemerov to stop in for a visit anytime.

The Dependencies

This morning, between two branches of a tree
Beside the door, epeira once again
Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap.
I test his early-warning system and
It works, he scrambles forth in sable with
The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows
The meaning of. And I remember now
How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came
Back as they do about this time each year,
Grey squadrons with the slashes white on wings
Cruising for bugs beneath the bellied cloud.
Now soon the monarchs will be drifting south,
And then the geese will go, and then one day
The little garden birds will not be here.
See how many leaves already have
Withered and turned; a few have fallen, too.
Change is continuous on the seamless web,
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts;
When like the spider waiting on the web
You know the intricate dependencies
Spreading in secret through the fabric vast
Of heaven and earth, sending their messages
Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds,
The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.

    [Mr. Tucker's birthday addendum: "...to eat!"]

From: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (University of Chicago Press, 1977)

Sneak Preview: Arnold Catalog & Event

Last week we sent our exhibition catalog to the printer. I found one last (?) typo even as our amazing designer, Susan Ellsworth, was extricating it from my hands. Thank you, Susie, for everything! And thank you to everyone here who contributed essays, read and proofread, made great suggestions, or otherwise has supported the collection and our activities over many years. These various folks appear one way or another in the catalog, so please click here to see a pre-publication PDF!

Copies of the printed catalog will be available at an upcoming afternoon of two presentations, followed by a reception and exhibition viewing. Hope to see you there!

Language, Signs, Meaning, Applications: a Meeting of Arts and Sciences in the Philip Mills Arnold Semeiology Collection
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
4:00pm
Ginkgo Reading Room, Olin Library, Level 1
Reception to follow

Speakers:

Literary Studies in the Age of Data
Matthew Wilkens, Postdoctoral Fellow, American Culture Studies Program
An introduction to the data-driven techniques that are currently transforming scholarship in the humanities. Examples include text mining, geolocation, data visualization, and network analysis.

From Physical Language to Physical Action: Using Acting Techniques to Improve Human/Robot Interaction
Annamaria Pileggi, Senior Lecturer, Performing Arts Department
This talk will present ongoing research in which actor training techniques are applied to robots in interaction with humans, featuring a short video of a performance piece performed by robotic and human actors.

Two New Books: Keats and Housman

Last week I enjoyed having lunch with Joe Tucker, a longtime library friend and appreciator of fine presses, poetry, and letterforms. Over the years he and his late wife, Jean, have given many wonderful items to the WU collections, including a number of books from the Golden Cockerel Press. On this visit, he sent along two volumes—a Doves Press edition of Keats’s poetry (1915) with a handsome Doves binding of dark blue goatskin, the covers and spine compartments tooled in gold with a single fillet, and Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1929), printed by the Alcuin Press.

The Keats is especially great for us because it complements what we’ve termed our “Triple Crown” Collection—the output of the Kelmscott, Doves, and Ashendene presses, along with process material, proofs, and correspondence acquired by the Libraries in 2000. We have two copies of the Keats in standard issue with limp vellum bindings. This one, with its binding designed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and dated 1915, provides additional information for scholars.

The department has a few Alcuin Press titles, but I have to admit that I’m not so familiar with this press. In trolling around our catalog and collections, I was surprised to find that our Manuscripts unit holds a small collection of Alcuin Press proofs and specimens. The collection, one of several included among the Isador Mendle papers, was purchased with funds donated in Mr. Mendle’s memory by his son and daughter-in-law. It's a nice group, and it includes a history of the Alcuin Press printed in a variety of typefaces.

So, Mr. Tucker has provided a second enjoyable afternoon—I’ve perused Keats and Housman, dipped into the holdings of another unit in my department, and learned more about another of the English fine presses. Thank you! And many thanks for continuing to enrich our collections.

Rare Books in the News: January 14, 2011

Bishop Marty Sigillito: A New Filing Suggests Indictment Is On the Way
We get asked about this almost weekly since publishing the feature, White Collar Crime, last summer, so here goes: Federal authorities have NOT yet indicted Anglican American Bishop Marty Sigillito, who stands accused by dozens of folks for running a multi-million-dollar ponzi scheme. But the FBI has indeed seized tons of his fancy stuff (country home in Marthasville, Persian rugs, rare books, etc.) And to justify that seizure -- which Sigillito's lawyers have called a "frightening" abuse of power -- the FBI filed a declaration last month that pretty darn well resembles an indictment.

Columbia Library’s Jewish holdings get Boost
The $4 million endowment from the Norman E. Alexander Foundation, founded by the late businessman-philanthropist who attended the school in the 1930s, established a Library for Jewish Studies that bears his name. The gift includes three new endowments: the university’s first-ever Jewish studies librarian; a General Jewish Studies Collection, part of the Area Studies Collections; and a Special Collection in Judaica.

E.C. Schroeder named Beinecke Librarian
University President Richard Levin announced the appointment of Edwin C. Schroeder as Librarian of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Associate University Librarian in an e-mail to the Yale community this afternoon. Schroeder, who has worked as a catalog librarian at Sterling Memorial Library since his arrival at Yale in 1989, will serve a five-year term effective Jan. 1.

National Gallery curator gets top Chester Beatty Library post
The head curator at the National Gallery has been appointed as the new director of the Chester Beatty Library. Fionnuala Croke will take up her role in the library at Dublin Castle on March 1st, succeeding Dr Michael Ryan. The art museum and library houses the collections of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty which includes manuscripts, miniature paintings, prints and rare books from Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. It is a public charitable trust.

Kinsey Collection still a touchy subject
When Jon Vickers was interviewing for his job as the first director of the new Indiana University Cinema, he was told there might be a tricky problem if he was hired. "The comment I heard frequently was, 'You'll have to figure out what to do with the Kinsey Collection, because it's different than all the others,' " Vickers says. "There was an assumption the programmer would work with the collection, but how to do that was a question for everybody."

Aglow With the Fallout Blues
"I liked the idea of making a visual book about invisible things," Ms. Redniss said in her office at Parsons the New School for Design, surrounded by a mess of Moleskine notebooks and large sheets of paper bathed in chemically hued blue. She was showing off an archaic process known as cyanotype—"like a camera-less photographic process"—that helped give the ethereal pages of "Radioactive" their distinctive look.

Ransom Center Receives Grant to Catalog Spanish Comedias Sueltas
The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has received $137,015 from the Council on Library and Information Resources Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives for “Revealing Texas Collections of Comedias Sueltas.” The Ransom Center holds more than 14,000 "comedias sueltas," a generic term for plays published in small pamphlet formats in Spain from the late 17th through the 19th century.

That old computer in your garage is history, not junk!
Before you toss out that really old computer stored in your garage, consider that it might be a historical artifact. At the Computer History Museum’s Revolution exhibit, the computer industry has, for once, been frozen in time. Everything from Digital Equipment Corp.’s PDP-1 minicomputer to the Apple II personal computer is on display. It’s a place you can go if you want to see innovation and all of its connections to the past, said Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and one of the museum’s supporters (Woz is seated third from right).

Treasures
In partnership with Toura, the British Library is launching its first app, ‘Treasures’, for the iPhone, the iPad and Android, making it possible to visit our collections from anywhere in the world. The app includes over 100 highlights from our collections, including literary, historical, music-related and scientific documents - alongside illuminated manuscripts and sacred texts. Each is presented through high-resolution images, allowing the viewer to zoom in and explore in extraordinary detail.

Berkshire vice chair gives $3M of stock to library
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Vice Chairman Charlie Munger gave stock worth nearly $3 million to the nonprofit Huntington Library in southern California. Munger disclosed the gift of 25 Class A shares of Berkshire stock in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Munger has previously made donations to the Huntington. The library in San Marino, Calif., houses collections of rare books, fine art and botanical gardens.

50th Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair 2011
The 50th Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair will be held from January 28 to 30, 2011 – with bibliophile treasures from 100 to 1.45 million euros, a new catalogue design, lectures, a book presentation and an exhibition about “Rare Booksellers in Exile”. Ernst Fischer, Professor at the Gutenberg University (Mainz) is highly regarded for his research on the history of the book and the book trade.

One Text, Many Formats: Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy

Among his many gifts to the Washington University Libraries, Philip Mills Arnold donated an impressive collection of early editions of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. This book, a mix of poetry and prose, was written in the early sixth century A.D. while Boethius awaited execution in a prison in Pavia. It enjoyed wide readership during the first centuries of printing, in both Latin and vernacular European languages. In addition to a number of Latin editions, the Libraries own an early Castilian translation as well as the first Italian translation from 1520, a late-16th century French translation, and later English translations.

Boethius left his mark on late-medieval authors. Dante borrowed the prose-and-poetry format for his own Vita nuova, written around 1294, and the Consolation echoes in the Divine Comedy as well. Geoffrey Chaucer, likewise a fan, executed his own English translation of the Consolation, and Boethius’s philosophy finds its way into such works as Troilus and Crysede and The Canterbury Tales.

The early published translations themselves disclose a great deal about the dissemination of Boethius in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The translators hail from a variety of Catholic orders, including Dominicans and Augustinians, a sign of the book’s wide-ranging appeal. In some cases the text alone appears, while in others there is introductory material as well as commentaries and marginal references to assist more motivated readers. Some translators insist on the contemporary relevance of Boethius. The Italian Anselmo Tanzo compares the political situation during Boethius’s time, when the Ostrogoths had conquered Italy, to the contemporary political situation which found the peninsula beset by French invasions.

The text comes in all manner of formats, from beautiful 15th-century folios to pocket-sized duodecimos. Some of the Latin editions contain the lengthy commentary penned by Thomas Aquinas, in a variety of formats: the traditional medieval style, with text at the center of the page surrounded by two-column commentary; Boethius’s text followed by the commentary; or, most strikingly, a few lines of Boethius interrupted by Aquinas’s commentary. These three approaches to formatting challenge us to think today about the approaches to reading the primary text that editors and publishers envisioned as they laid out their books. Typefaces vary too, from late-15th-century Gothic to early Roman types. In some later editions Boethius’s poems appear in italics, a typeface invented in the early 16th century, with the prose text in Roman.

The Libraries have recently expanded their Boethius collection with the acquisition of first editions of two mid-16th-century Italian translations. Together with a third executed by the famed Florentine linguist Benedetto Varchi, these three were submitted as part of a contest organized by Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici of Florence, who wanted to give a copy of Boethius, rendered in modern Florentine, to the Emperor Charles V. Varchi’s translation won, but all three found their way into print with the ducal press of Lorenzo Torrentino.

The publication history of the Consolation of Philosophy raises inevitable questions about the nature of its appeal. Certainly the book addresses a number of universal questions, such as God’s role in the universe, the nature of evil, the function of fortune. The book might not have found such a dedicated readership, however, were it not for the way that Boethius addresses these questions, in the form of a lively conversation between him and Lady Philosophy. She proves to be an entertaining and challenging interlocutor who brings the dialogue to life. Beyond that, however, in offering consolatio to Boethius she fulfills a dream that we all perhaps share, that in moments of great despair a companion will appear who can help us better to face daunting challenges, erasing our loneliness with comfort.

Guest post by Michael Sherberg, Associate Professor of Italian, Romance Languages & Literatures. This essay is included the exhibition catalog Language, Signs, Meaning, Application: the Philip Mills Arnold Semeiology Collection.

Benito Pérez Galdós

We’re currently cataloging a collection of books by the prolific Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós (1843-1920), donated by Professor Joseph Schraibman, a renowned authority who has written widely on this subject.

The collection includes a wide variety of early editions, including Galdós’s series of historical novels (the Episodios Nacionales), his contemporary realist works of social criticism, and plays. Most of the books are represented by multiple editions, which provides a glimpse into the world of popular publishing in late 19th-early 20th-century Spain. Inexpensive paperbacks were produced in large runs, sometimes sloppily printed, with text blocks slanting nearly off the page. These were then bound together, often in two-volume sets, for durability. There was obviously high demand for these books, as print runs often reached the tens of thousands.

Also interesting is the presence of Galdós’s own copyright stamp in many of the books, an indication of the author’s conflicts with his publishers over rights and royalties.

Guest post by Masha Sapp, cataloger in the Rare Book unit and the Libraries' bibliographer for Russian Studies and Romance Languages & Literatures (Spanish and Portuguese).

Rare Books in the News: August 5, 2009

Winnie the Pooh and Photos Too: Rare Images of Christopher Robin on the Auction Block
Within the Fine Books & Manuscripts auction at Bonhams & Butterfields on October 19, 2009 is an archive of rare correspondence and black and white photographs related to the personal life of Winnie-the-Pooh author A. A. Milne, his wife, and his son Christopher Robin. "The Milne family archive provides a rare look into the life of an author and his family. It is fascinating to see photographs of the child that inspired the Christopher Robin character used throughout Milne's books and poems. Bonhams & Butterfields is pleased to offer such a rare piece of children's literary history," said Dr. Catherine Williamson, Department Head, Fine Books and Manuscripts.

Ransom Center's Exhibition Celebrates Bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe
The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, is commemorating the 2009 bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe, American poet, critic and inventor of the detective story, with the exhibition "From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe." This project draws upon the extensive holdings of the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the Harrison Institute/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, with additional materials from the Free Library of Philadelphia and other museums.

Library reveals rare photographs
Rarely seen images from the early days of photography will be revealed in the British Library's first ever major photographic exhibition. About 250 original images, including work by 19th century pioneers William Henry Fox Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron, will go on display in London. Curator John Falconer said it would examine the history of photography. He said its invention "opened up a whole new world of visual communication and personal expression". The show, titled Points of View, will examine the development and influence of photography, from its invention in 1839 up to the growth of the popular amateur market in the early 20th century.

'Modern science? Our manuscripts have it'
In these times of information technology, two youngsters are digging into the past to bring out the fact that all that is being looked upon as modern science or new knowledge is in fact professed in the age-old Indian manuscripts. And, for this, they are making an effort to find handwritten scripts and preserve them. The idea occurred to Anita Joshi and Dinesh Vaidya when they were perturbed find that the patent for the Indian Haldi (turmeric) was taken by the US. Anita, then a student of Sanskrit, came to know about a project undertaken by her lecturer Dr Nirupama Kulkarni about conservation of 'pothis', the religious scriptures. She got herself involved in the project initiated by the central cultural ministry under the National Mission for Manuscripts through the Bhandarkar Institute. The project is now run by the Indira Gandhi Research Centre.

Third Iran manuscript added to World Memory
Administrative documents of Astan-e Quds Razavi in the Safavid Era have been added in the list of the Memory of the World Register. Iran submitted the documented heritage and recommended it for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register. The collection consists of 69,000 pages from the 1589 CE to 1735 CE period (1000-1148 Lunar Calendar). It explores vast geographic areas of Iran, especially Khorasan province, and Afghanistan.

State manuscripts face extinction threat
Invaluable testaments of Assam’s history and culture are now in peril thanks to sheer apathy on the part of the State Government. Absence of any initiative to create the right infrastructure has put at risk dozens of exceptional manuscripts stored at the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies in Guwahati. Enquiries made by The Assam Tribune have revealed that several manuscripts in the form of sachipats have been stored in an environment highly detrimental to their already fragile state. At present, inside a building that has leaking walls and high humidity, these manuscripts are highly valued because of their historic worth as well as their high workmanship.

Getty Exhibition Looks Closely at the Fanciful Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts
Battles, celebrations, and fantastic creatures found in the margins of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts are closely examined in Out-of-Bounds: Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts. On view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, September 1 through November 8, 2009, Out-of-Bounds explores the margins of medieval books and explains their wealth of subject matter: children playing games, romantic pursuits, men battling fantastic creatures, and composite figures—half-human, half-beast—that pervade the blank spaces of the margins or wend their ways through the sinuous foliage of the painted borders.

Special Collections moves out of Hoskins
The UT Special Collections Library has relocated from the aging Hoskins Library building to Hodges Library. “The environmental conditions in Hodges are better suited for a rare book collection,” Jennifer Beals, head of Special Collections, said. “The centralized location in the main library will also provide convenient access for students and faculty.” It took nearly three months to move the entire collection of rare books, manuscripts and other unique research materials to its new home in Room 121 of Hodges. Originally opened in 1931, Hoskins served as the university’s central library until 1969 when Hodges opened. The university built an addition to Hoskins in 1959 in order to provide more space as well as a Special Collections room. While there are no current plans to restore the historic building, Beals said donations are being encouraged to help with the renovation and maintenance Hoskins needs.

Last Chance: Skirball's brilliant comics exhibit ends Aug. 9
The finest collection of original art from the Golden Age of American comic books belongs to Jerry Robinson, the talented and thoughtful artist from the early days of Batman. Many pieces from his astounding archive were plucked from studio trash bins back in the 1940s when he was a young artist in a new publishing sector. Since Februrary, some of the finest of those artifacts have been at the Skirball Cultural Center in an exhibit called "ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938–1950" that is a must-see for fans of American pop-culture, especially now in this era of super-hero cinema.

A rare ol’ look at Doc Shop history
The Baby Apple literati glitterati were spectacularly entertained and educated at an evening hosted by David and Teri Callender and Garland Anderson. The evening began with a talk by the tall, dark and dynamic Howard Rootenberg, a rare-book seller and expert whose enthusiasm and charm was surpassed only by his knowledge. His most compelling talk at Levin Hall was followed by a dinner in the University of Texas Medical Branch Moody Medical Library’s rare book room.

Oxfam is the new Tesco say angry independent bookshops being driven to the wall by charity shop's growth
It's a fate that's already befallen the independent butcher, baker and greengrocer. Faced with the might of a more powerful competitor, smaller high street names have shut up shop. Now the second-hand bookshop is under threat. But this time the competitor is not a supermarket, it's Oxfam. Angry booksellers are branding the charity the 'Tesco of the book industry', accusing it of muscling in on their territory.

Independent bookstores just as fun for owners as collectors
Thousands of dusty books line the shelves inside the used bookstore just off of Front Street in Fort Benton. A tomcat prowling about and a couple other cats keep the old building mice-free. When the shop is empty, the owner tinkers around in the back, working on one of the other dimensions of his business. “How does an independent bookstore get by?” says Tom Carrels, who opened the store in 2004. “They cooperate with other things.” River Breaks Basecamp is a used, rare and out-of-print bookstore with some 20,000 titles. It also is a gear shop for river travelers, and Carrels is working to transform the back part of his historic building into a hostile with a few dozen beds.

MSU Librarians Dust Off Rare Books for Exhibit
Librarians at Missouri State University have dusted off their rare books collection, and for the first time, have brought many of those old books out for the public to see. KSMU's Jennifer Moore has details. Some are old, tattered European bindings dating back to the early 1500s. We donned our library voices and took an audio tour earlier of the rare books on display. The head of the Special Collections and Archives, David Richards, walked us through the exhibit, beginning with the British tomb rubbings on display, which date back to the Midieval period.

Rare Books in the News: August 3, 2009

Reprint agreement will make U-M rare books widely available
The University of Michigan will make thousands of books that are no longer in copyright -- including rare and one-of-a-kind titles -- available as reprints on demand under a new agreement with BookSurge, part of the Amazon.com group of companies. The agreement gives the public a unique opportunity to buy reprints of a wide range of titles in the U-M Library for as little as a few dollars. As individual copies are sold on Amazon.com, BookSurge will print and bind the books in soft-cover form. "This agreement means that titles that have been generally unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time," said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries.

Brand New, Again
Rare books dating back to the 17th century will take on a familiar yet somewhat refreshed form when Cambridge University Press officially begins scanning and reprinting original copies from the university library. To celebrate the 475th anniversary of the founding of the press (and 425 years printing books) Cambridge will scan 475 volumes from the library's collection of rare materials, including works by Darwin, Shakespeare, and Charles Babbage. The university hopes to scan an additional 1,000 books by the end of the year, all of which will be available on a print-on-demand basis for $15 to $25.

OSU's main library reopens today after three-year, $109 million renovation
The atria also have two major exhibit spaces. The first showcases a sampling of the library's 250,000-volume special collections of books, posters, wardrobes and historic manuscripts called "Journeys." Three of Ohio State's 10 special collections of rare books and other items, now in several campus locations, will be brought together in Thompson and made available for exhibition and research. "What good is it to have these collections if they are locked up away where no one can see them?" said Raimund Goerler, interim director of libraries.

Hindu students celebrate the `Goddess of Knowledge'
Hindu students and teachers arrived at their schools dressed in traditional Balinese attire Saturday, to pay homage to Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. Across the island, special offerings were placed on books and lontar manuscripts believed to be the earthly throne of the goddess. No classes were held in the majority of schools in Denpasar as most students and teachers gathered at the schools' respective temples. Female students brought beautiful offerings made of colorful flowers and fruits to the school's library and placed them on stacked books draped with yellow and white cloths. Similar offerings were also placed on computers. After completing the offering rituals, the students and teachers prayed together to the goddess. In several schools, religion teachers gave sermons about the meaning of the celebration and the importance of knowledge.

Historic Torah scrolls buried in Ukraine
The Jewish community in a western Ukrainian city buried the fragments of 221 damaged Torah scrolls recently returned by the state. The fragments and damaged Torah scrolls were buried Tuesday in accordance with Jewish law in the Zhytomir Jewish cemetery. The items were returned in late March from the local state archive to the Jewish community two years after they were confiscated by Ukrainian authorities. Activists in the Jewish community, representatives of local authorities and journalists took part in the ceremony on the eve of 9th of Av near the local synagogue building, after which all the Torah fragments were buried at the Jewish cemetery.

Dead Sea Scrolls almost identical to Pentateuch, Haftorahs
For the most part, the Torah and Jewish prophetic portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which can be seen at the Royal Ontario Museum, are identical to the traditional Pentateuch and Haftorahs. But their authorship remains a topic of scholarly debate. So said Dr. Martin Abegg, Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scrolls Studies at the religious studies department at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, and co-director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute. Professor Abegg delivered an enthusiastic speech at the Royal Ontario Museum Signy and Cleophee Eaton theatre last Thursday as part of the Anne Tannenbaum Dead Sea Scrolls lecture series, which coincides with the ROM Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit.

Stripping Away the Darkness as Murals Are Reborn
The murals “were supposed to be in harmony with the warm, stone color of the marble,” he explained. With the cleaning, he added, “it was as though we’d switched on the lights.” The ravages of age became apparent in other ways, too. For example, over the years the baby in “Abolition of War” had been obscured and looked like a blemish. Two years ago, when Tishman Speyer, co-owner and manager of Rockefeller Center, hired EverGreene, Mr. Greene spent six months doing nothing but research. “I read the Rockefeller family archives,” he said. (Robert J. Speyer, senior managing director of Tishman Speyer, would not specify the project’s cost, although it is believed to exceed seven figures.)

Austrian has Indiana Jones moment in Mongolia
Digging for buried treasure in the Gobi Desert sounds like the opening scene of an Indiana Jones film. For Austrian-born Michael Eisenriegler, it was a real-life adventure. The 40-year-old amateur archaeologist was in the Gobi over the weekend, helping to unearth Buddhist relics that had been buried for more than seven decades in a remote part of Mongolia. Less than an hour of digging revealed two crates filled with priceless treasure, including rare manuscripts, Buddhist statues and clothing.

Three are 'curators of a colossal collection'
What do George S. Champlin, Robert T. Galkin and Col. Webster Knight have in common? All were stamp collectors. Being men of means, they assembled huge and valuable collections. All three collections are now part of the Brown University Special Collections, housed in the John Hay Library. Now, three other men who are also stamp collectors are the caretakers of the assembled collection, worth an estimated $20 million: Louis McGowan, Thomas Greene and Chester Browning. McGowan is also the president of the Johnston Historical Society, Greene is a noted historian from North Providence and Browning is the retired state photographer and is also archivist for T.F. Green Airport. All are members of the Rhode Island Philatelic Society, the oldest continuously run stamp-collecting club in the United States. Browning is currently president of the society.

UA Acquires Up with People Archives
The University of Arizona Libraries have acquired the organizational papers of the global youth performance and cultural exchange group Up with People. The UA Libraries also acquired are the organizational papers of the Up with People International Alumni Association and the personal papers of its founder and Chairman Emeritus, J. Blanton Belk, and his wife Elizabeth "Betty" Belk. The archives consist of correspondence, news clippings, photographs, videos and other publications. The Belk's personal archive consists also of correspondence, photographs and personal memoirs.

Rare Books in the News: July 31, 2009

USM to house children’s book collection
The University of Southern Mississippi has been awarded the right to be the repository for the archive of an international organization dedicated to children's literature. The Children's Literature Association, an organization of children’s literature scholars in North America, has announced that USM's de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection will receive the archive. USM bid on the right against several other universities with significant literature collections, said Carol Kiehl, dean of libraries.

Books’ new life in academia
The John Rylands Library has collections from other churches, though not many as intact as this. The books were brought down from the tower one by one via a human chain on the spiral staircase. They will now be conserved, boxed, and catalogued. “Church libraries like this are increasingly rare, and Nantwich is a particularly important example,” Mr Potten said. “We all agreed that these important and beautiful books are kept together as a collection,” to maintain for ever the link with St Mary’s and Nantwich.

Culture Digitally Documented
The Polytechnic of Namibia and the Utah Valley University (US) recently signed an agreement in terms of which the Digital Namibian Archive (DNA) was established in Windhoek. The DNA is an innovative project, which will develop a rich digital resource that reflects the diversity of voices and cultural stories of Namibian people. The two institutions, in conjunction with the Namibian National Archives, will digitise images, documents and voices of the Namibian people. The digital archive will make a rich resource accessible on the Internet that reflects the diversity of voices and cultural stories of the Namibian people to individuals throughout the country, the United States and the world. During the signing ceremony, Rector of the Polytechnic Dr Tjama Tjivikua said the project was one of the most important development projects.

Thirty-Five Documentary Properties Added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register
Thirty-five items of documentary heritage of exceptional value have been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. This brings the total number of inscriptions since 1997 to 193. The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, announced the inscription of these items on the recommendation of experts during a 3-day meeting of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme which continues to 31 July in Bridgetown, Barbados. The Director-General also announced the winner of the 2009 UNESCO/Jikji Prize: the National Archives of Malaysia in recognition of its outreach, educational and training programmes in the area of preservation within the Asian region.

Germany's "Song of the Nibelungs" chosen for the Memory of the World program
The 12th century "Song of the Nibelungs" tells the tale of dragon slayer Siegfried, and how he is murdered by Hagen von Tronje, who hides the Nibelung treasure in the Rhine river; of King Gunther and Kriemhild of Burgundy, of Etzel, King of the Huns and of Iceland's Queen Bruenhild. It is a tale of love and revenge, of greed and defeat, of magical cloaks and dragon's blood, and treasures lost forever. The Bonn-based commission says the UNESCO register names the three most important and complete manuscripts of the "Song of the Nibelungs." The documents are kept at the Bavarian State Library in Munich, at Badische State Library in Karlsruhe and at the library at St. Gallen monastery in Switzerland.

Maine Folklife Center: an endangered friend
I first came to Orono in 1972 for what I thought would be a six-month stint volunteering in the folklore archives at the University of Maine. Back in Connecticut, my resolutely urban family was convinced I’d moved to northeast of nowhere and would be eaten by bears. The archives’ founder — Edward D. Ives to the library catalogue, Sandy to everyone else — had made a similar journey northward from New York City nearly 20 years earlier. He had had a job, teaching English at the university, awaiting him. It didn’t pay much, though, and he soon found himself trying to earn a little extra by singing folk songs to community groups.

Porn museum nestled in Las Vegas
As I arrive at the two-story building a few blocks west of the Vegas Strip, I spot a sign on the front door telling visitors that the building no long houses an adult bookstore. Those who came for that may be disappointed to discover that eroticism is viewed in a different light by the building's new tenants, who about a year ago opened the Erotic Heritage Museum. In typically atypical Vegas style, the museum is next to a strip club and just a G-string's throw from Donald Trump's glittering five-star hotel. Although porn is playing on several of the 45 flat-screen TVs, it's not being shown lasciviously in some darkened room. It's part of the museum's educational displays.

Lost Treasures of Timbuktu
But Timbuktu's manuscripts might just change that. The books date from between the 14th and 16th centuries, a time when the town was a thriving trading hub and intellectual center for West Africa. Now, scared that Timbuktu's 50,000 or so surviving books might disintegrate or be sold off to foreign collectors, African and Western organizations are racing to salvage the treasures, preserving them from the ravages of climate, dust and the passage of hundreds of years. Millions of dollars have been spent in laborious conservation and cataloguing of the works. A sleek new museum, completed last April, is scheduled to open to the public in November. The museum will display tens of thousands of Timbuktu's books to the world, and, its backers hope, shatter any lingering notion that Africa has no historic literary tradition of its own.

Russia Must Return Schneersohn Books
During the 1990s, the world was seized with stories of Nazi plunder and heirless property from the Holocaust era. Stolen bank accounts, looted artwork, confiscated real estate and payments for slave labor made front-page headlines, were the talk of congressional hearings and became the subject of international diplomacy. By the end of the decade, billions of dollars had been returned to Holocaust survivors and their heirs. Ten years later, however, the problem remains unresolved. Survivors received a measure of compensation for their loss and suffering, but some countries—like Russia—could be doing more, particularly by returning the vast collection of books and manuscripts of the late Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn.

Salsa musician Ruben Blades visits Harvard archive
Salsa musician and actor Ruben Blades celebrated his 61st birthday Thursday with a nostalgic visit to his archive collection at Harvard University. The seven-time Grammy winner looked through photos, held his old records and chuckled at his change in physical appearance during his first visit to the archive at the school where he earned a master's degree in international law in 1985. "Look at those sideburns," Blades said, looking at a photo of a show 30 years ago. The collection is composed of donations from fans and items that the university purchased on eBay, including a vinyl copy of "From Panama to New York" and a poster of Blades promoting childhood literacy. Blades also pledged to contribute personal items and rare recordings_ like a number with Michael Jackson in Spanish.

Abraham Lincoln Comes Alive at the California Museum
President Abraham Lincoln was a remarkable leader. The contents from his pockets reveal a humble and down-to-earth man. Two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a pocket knife, a watch fob, a linen handkerchief, and a five-dollar Confederate note, these were the objects carried by Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. These are but a few of the items currently in a special exhibit at the California Museum in Sacramento. These items remained with the Lincoln family for more than 70 years after Lincoln’s death. Now, they join the nearly 200 artifacts as part of a special Lincoln collection belonging to the U.S. Library of Congress.

Rare Books in the News: July 30, 2009

Obama taps librarian with Duke ties
A former head of Duke University Libraries has been chosen as the next archivist of the United States. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of David Ferriero to run the National Archives and Records Administration. The 63-year-old Ferriero is the director of research libraries at the New York Public Library. From 1996 to 2004, he served as university librarian and vice provost for library affairs at Duke. When he left for New York, then-Duke President Nan Keohane called him "something of a Renaissance man, who combines a commitment to the life of the mind with a practical and collaborative approach."

Exhibit traces history of Hoover Institution with rich display of artifacts
It seems like an odd milestone — 90 years — for Stanford's Hoover Institution to burrow into its archives for a richly detailed exhibit that seeks to tell the story of how it all got started and why it still matters. Most groups might just wait for a more traditional centennial blowout. But 10 years shy? That would have been like celebrating America's bicentennial in 1966. But there's a good reason for the institution's timing, and it has much to do with one of the key aims of its retrospective exhibit: highlighting the special role played by the think tank's namesake and founder, President Herbert Hoover, until his death in 1964. At age 90.

Classic guide for writers marks 50th anniversary
Strunk’s “Elements of Style” probably would have vanished for good had not someone stolen one of the two copies in the Cornell library in 1957 and sent it to White. In his “Letter From the East” column for July 15, 1957, White trumpeted “the little book,” recalling its “rich deposits of gold” and eloquently ruminating on the valuable lessons he learned, lauding Strunk and his devotion to lucid English prose. Jack Case, an editor at Macmillan, was enticed by the column and eventually persuaded White to revise, expand and modernize Strunk’s book. Cornell’s archival holdings include White’s letters back and forth with Case about the project, as well as his original note-filled 1959 manuscript. Cornell also possesses three copies of Strunk’s original 1918 edition and White’s Underwood typewriter.

‘Moveable Feast’ Is Recast by Hemingway Grandson
Hemingway committed suicide before he could write that book. Seán [Hemingway], an associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who had previously edited anthologies of Hemingway’s writings on war and hunting, worked with manuscripts now housed in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. His new edition, which will be in bookstores as early as this week, is made up of the 19 chapters that Hemingway wanted to include, in the order he had placed them. The remaining 10 chapters are moved into a section called “Additional Paris Sketches.”

"Pope's Library" to Reopen in 2010
The Vatican Library, which has been closed for renovation since July 14, 2007, will be opening its doors again in 2010. The library's prefect, Monsignor Cesare Pasini, announced this Sunday on Vatican Radio. On the occasion of the reopening, the first volume of a "History of the Vatican Library" will be published, he reported. As well, the prefect said, a congress will be organized, with a presentation by researchers who will explain their work over the past 50-60 years, and how the library is a place of investigation.

Help Us Catalog: University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts Collection Going Online
From the Article: The University of Michigan Special Collections Library needs help cataloguing its vast Islamic Manuscripts Collection. But the library doesn’t plan to hire an expert. Instead, almost all of its 1,250 pieces are being scanned in-house to put the work on the Internet. And the library hopes interested scholars will get involved. [Snip] “It will be presented to the public in Wiki or blog-type interface, so people can comment on what they see. In that way, we hope we can get help from scholars all over the world in identifying the manuscripts and cataloguing them properly,” said Peggy Daub, director of Special Collections.

Twitter helps prayers find their way to Wailing Wall
For centuries, people have stuffed prayers written on scraps of paper into the ancient cracks in the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. In recent years they could fax or e-mail their prayers — and now they can tweet them, too. The Western Wall now has its own address on the social networking service, Twitter, allowing believers around the globe to have their prayers placed between its 2,000 year-old-stones without leaving their armchairs. The service’s founder, Alon Nil, says petitioners can tweet their prayers, and they will be printed out and taken to the wall, where they will join the thousands of handwritten notes placed by visitors who believe their requests will find a shortcut to God by being deposited there.

Civil Rights Activists Champion Google Book Deal
A proposed settlement allowing Google to digitize millions of books will have huge benefits for minority populations and their access to valuable information, a group of civil rights leaders and educators said Wednesday. The Google book settlement, scheduled to be reviewed in an Oct. 7 court hearing, would allow Google to scan and make available scores of books, including millions of out-of-print titles. The digitized books will give minorities and poor people new access to titles that were formerly only available at large university libraries, supporters of the deal said during a forum at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C.

A is for Acquisition, B is for British Library, C is for Conservation
The British Library has acquired the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, a rare medieval English 'model' or 'pattern' book dating from c.1500, with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), independent charity The Art Fund, Friends of the British Library and National Libraries and other individual donors. The manuscript had been in the library of the Earl of Macclesfield since around 1750, and until recently its existence was completely unknown. From today (30 July), it will be on free public display in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library.

The last word: Unless a buyer emerges, Prairie Avenue Books will close
Prairie Avenue Books, a retail anchor on South Wabash Avenue and touchstone institution for architects in Chicago and around the globe, will close this September unless a buyer scoops up the entire business from longtime owners Marilyn and Wilbert Hasbrouck. The decision to close, Wilbert Hasbrouck said, came a few weeks ago and was prompted by concurrent economic issues and personal choices. “My wife and I have reached the age where we’re not up to coming here every day. There were a couple of other things, too. We couldn’t deal with the sales tax in Chicago,” he explained. “According to what we call the ‘Al Gore law,’ you don’t have to pay sales taxes if you buy on the Web.