The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, located on Georgia Tech’s campus in Atlanta, is sponsoring a series of three FREE lectures beginning NEXT TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021.
Information about the three-part lecture series, and a link to register, is here.
Hat-tip to Wynne, with the Friends of the Alphabet, Atlanta’s Calligraphy Guild
Chicago-based writer Stephanie Sylverne recently posted this interesting bit o’ book history on her website Ephemeris.
Posted at I Love Libraries’ Facebook page via Mikel Wilson’s Facebook page
Marketing specialist Seth Godin has lots of provocative ideas about lots of things.
Including books. As in “the probable future of the printed book as the preferred container for ideas and stories.”
Godin’s recently posted his current reflections on the likely future of the (printed) book to his blog.
Found via Book Riot
Before books were mass produced and easier – and more costly – to replace when stolen, librarians had to resort to emphatic security measures to keep their stock from wandering off, never to return.
Netherlands-based medievalist Erik Kwakkel took these photos in one of her country’s libraries, and his efforts were picked up by The Paris Review.
You can find more information about chained libraries (and links to primary sources) at Wikipedia.
Contributed by alert librarian, bibliophile, and Atlanta Booklover’s blog follower Anne Vagts
Anthony Daniels’ recent tribute to the printed book, posted at The New Criterion as the first of a series entitled “The Digital Challenge,” is the most rational essay on the subject that I’ve read this year.
Daniels mentions several points I haven’t seen in similar screeds about books and book-loving. He also aknowledges what is surely true: that reading is, for most book-lovers, an addiction that shares certain characteristics possessed by all other addictions.
As is often the case, the readers’ comments about Daniels’ humane and thoughtful essay are also worth a read.
Found via Anecdotal Evidence
Someone at the Darien Public Library snapped this photo last year on a trip to the American Library in Paris.
Priceless!
Found at shh! no running in the library!
Most Americans have probably already learned that earlier this month Encyclopedia Britannica announced that the current printed edition of the encyclopedia will be the final one. Mr. Google will point you to a host of news articles and commentary (like this one from the blog of The New Yorker).
Britannica is neither the first nor the last familiar encyclopedia to abandon the codex for the computer. The rationale for digitizing time-sensitive reference works like encyclopedias is ever more irresistable, and it’s hard to argue with the sheer ecological argument of refusing to fell additional trees for subsequent editions of an encyclopedia that’s required numerous revisions since it was first published in (wait for it:) 1768.
Still, we felt it somehow necesssary to register here at the Booklover’s Blog this heartbreaking-if-inevitable turning point in the history of the book, if only because for many bibliophiles, perusing (in addition to referring to) Britannica is among the fondest memories of our early reading careers.
Britannica’s nostalgic value among readers (well, readers of a certain age, perhaps) is so strong that we predict that booklovers (and second-hand bookstore owners) are going to be snarfing them up from library book sales any time a public library divests itself of whatever edition it happens to own. (Lucky the booksale browser who stumbles upon a discarded set of the highly-regarded 11th (1911) edition!)
In any case, the death of the printed Britannica feel like another omen of the End of An Era (in this case, the Gutenberg one). Let us hope the marketing gods keep the licensing fees for the Britannica’s electronic versions within the range of public library budgets.
4/18/2012 Postscript: Britannica put together this nifty compilation of the media coverage of its announcement:
Today’s featured poem at The Writer’s Almanac is Joyce Sutphen’s “Bookmobile.”
“Library After an Air Raid, London, 1940” (photographer unidentified)
Found at A Work in Progress
Michael Stearn Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and inventor of the electronic book, died this week at age 63.
The importance of Project Gutenberg to the history – and to the future – of books would be difficult to overemphasize.
Librarians, archivists, and computer-owning bibliophiles have Hart to thank for his visionary project to enlist the aid of thousands of volunteers around to globe to eventually digitize (and proofread) the texts of every copyright-free book ever published – and make these e-books available to anyone free of charge. (Hart launched his project before Google and Amazon.com decided they’d try something similar as a way of making money off the idea.)
Hart’s obituary is here. Wikipedia’s entry about Project Gutenberg is here.
Found via Shelf Awareness
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