The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History
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From Greek and Roman times to the digital era, the library has remained central to knowledge, scholarship, and the imagination. The Meaning of the Library is a generously illustrated examination of this key institution of Western culture. Tracing what the library has meant since its beginning, examining how its significance has shifted, and pondering its importance in the twenty-first century, notable contributors--including the Librarian of Congress and the former executive director of the HathiTrust--present a cultural history of the library. In an informative introduction, Alice Crawford sets out the book's purpose and scope, and an international array of scholars, librarians, writers, and critics offer vivid perspectives about the library through their chosen fields. The Meaning of the Library will appeal to all who are interested in this vital institution's heritage and ongoing legacy.
The Library at Night
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In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a meditation on the meaning of libraries. Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought, oral "memory libraries" kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, and the library of books never written.
Fantasies of the Library
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Fantasies of the Library lets readers experience the library anew. The book imagines, and enacts, the library as both keeper of books and curator of ideas -- as a platform of the future. One essay occupies the right-hand page of a two-page spread while interviews scrolls independently on the left. Bibliophilic artworks intersect both throughout the book-as-exhibition. A photo essay, "Reading Rooms Reading Machines" further interrupts the book in order to display images of libraries (old and new, real and imagined), and readers (human and machine) and features work by artists including Kader Atta, Wafaa Bilal, Mark Dion, Rodney Graham, Katie Paterson, Veronika Spierenburg, and others.
Improbable Libraries
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Public libraries are a cornerstone of modern civilization, yet like the books in them, libraries face an uncertain future in an increasingly digital world. Undaunted, librarians around the globe are thinking up astonishing ways of reaching those in reading need, whether by bike in Chicago, boat in Laos, or donkey in Colombia. Improbable Libraries showcases a wide range of unforgettable, never-before-seen images and interviews with librarians who are overcoming geographic, economic, and political difficulties to bring the written word to an eager audience.
Libraries
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Since nobody photographs libraries as beautifully as Hofer, it seemed only natural to dedicate one of her publications to the splendid and intimate cathedrals of knowledge across Europe and the US: the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum in New york, Villa Medici in Rome, the Hamburg University library, the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Museo Archeologico in Madrid, and Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, to name just a few. Almost completely devoid of people, as is Candida Hofer's trademark, these pictures radiate a comforting serenity that is exceptional in contemporary photography.
The Public Library
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The Public Library presents a wide selection of Dawson's photographs, revealing a vibrant, essential, yet seriously threatened system. Essays, letters, and poetry by a collection of America's most celebrated writers--including E. B. White, Isaac Asimov, Anne Lamott, Amy Tan, Charles Simic, Dr. Seuss, and Philip Levine, as well as the voices of dedicated librarians working today--are woven with photographs of the majestic reading room at the New York Public Library; the one-room Tulare County Free Library built by former slaves, in Allensworth, California; the architectural wonder of Seattle's glass and steel Central Library; and the Berkeley, California tool lending library; among many others.
In the Stacks: Short Stories about Libraries and Librarians
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Libraries, with their miles and miles of books are, for writers and readers alike, the magical portal to new worlds-the source of terrors, delights, and pleasures aplenty. Here, in one volume, noted author and librarian Michael Cart has assembled a fascinating collection of twentieth century short fiction about libraries and librarians.
Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond
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In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to join conversations in other disciplines as well as in the broader culture. People who work in libraries and are sympathetic to, or directly involved in, social justice struggles have long embodied this idea, as they make use of their skills in the service of those causes. From movement archives to zine collections, international solidarity to public library programming, oral histories to email lists, prisons to protests - and beyond - this book is a look into the projects and pursuits of activist librarianship in the early 21st century.
Revolting Librarians Redux
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Revolting librarians aren't defined by what they are, they are defined by what they do. In fact, it's not even what they do, but how they do it--Katia Roberto and Jessamyn West, in the Preface.
This compilation of witty, insightful, and readable writings on the various aspects of alternative librarianship edited by two outspoken library professionals is a sequel to Revolting Librarians, which was published in 1972. The contributors, including Alison Bechdel, Sanford Berman, and Utne Reader librarian Chris Dodge, cover topics that range from library education and librarianship as a profession to the more political and spiritual aspects of librarianship.
This Book Is Overdue!: how Librarians and Cybrarians can Save Us All
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Those who predicted the death of libraries forgot to consider that, in the automated maze of contemporary life, none of us—expert and hopelessly baffled alike—can get along without human help. And not just any help: we need librarians, the only ones who can save us from being buried by the digital age. This Book Is Overdue! is a romp through the ranks of information professionals—from the blunt and obscenely funny bloggers to the quiet, law-abiding librarians gagged by the FBI. These are the pragmatic idealists who fuse the tools of the digital age with their love for the written word and the enduring values of free speech, open access, and scout-badge-quality assistance to anyone in need.
Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays From Progressive Librarian
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Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian presents essays that relate to neutrality in librarianship in a philosophical or practical sense, and sometimes both. They are a selection of essays originally published in Progressive Librarian, the journal of the Progressive Librarians Guild, presented in the chronological order of their appearance there. These essays, some by academics and some by passionate practitioners, offer a set of critiques of the notion of neutrality as it governs professional activity, focusing on the importance of meaningful engagement in the social sphere.
The Archive (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)
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In the modern era, the archive -- official or personal -- has become the most significant means by which historical knowledge and memory are collected, stored, and recovered. The archive has thus emerged as a key site of inquiry in such fields as anthropology, critical theory, history, and, especially, recent art. Traces and testimonies of such events as World War II and ensuing conflicts, the emergence of the postcolonial era, and the fall of communism have each provoked a reconsideration of the authority given the archive -- no longer viewed as a neutral, transparent site of record but as a contested subject and medium in itself.
Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
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Organized and written by renowned scholar and ICP Adjunct Curator Okwui Enwezor, and taking its title from Jacques Derrida's book of the same name, Archive Fever gathers leading contemporary artists who use archival materials in the fabrication of their work. The works take many forms, including physical archives arranged by bizarre cataloguing methods, imagined biographies of fictitious persons, collections of found and anonymous photographs, film versions of photographic albums and photomontages composed from historical photographs. These images offer a wide-ranging subject matter, but are linked by the artists' shared meditation on photography and film as the quintessential media of the archive.
The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy
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The typewriter, the card index, and the filing cabinet: these are technologies and modalities of the archive. To the bureaucrat, archives contain little more than garbage, paperwork no longer needed; to the historian, on the other hand, the archive’s content stands as a quasi-objective correlative of the “living” past. Twentieth-century art made use of the archive in a variety of ways—from what Spieker calls Marcel Duchamp’s “anemic archive” of readymades and El Lissitzky’s Demonstration Rooms to the compilations of photographs made by such postwar artists as Susan Hiller and Gerhard Richter. In The Big Archive, Sven Spieker investigates the archive—as both bureaucratic institution and index of evolving attitudes toward contingent time in science and art—and finds it to be a crucible of twentieth-century modernism.
Disassembling the Archive
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Exceptionally well designed, engaging and mysterious, Disassembling the Archive is a quasi-fictional correspondence with the Amsterdam-based, Indonesia-born artist Fiona Tan. It departs from interpretations of postcolonial identity issues in Tan's work to trace the implications of the archival housing of photographs and moving images. By way of a detour through Siegfried Kracrauer's writing on photography and Jacques Derrida's writing on the Freudian impression, we witness--right before our eyes--the disintegrative and destructive effect of photography on the archive.
What Are Archives?
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This collection of essays breaks new ground in archival studies in the UK where professional archival texts have traditionally concentrated on the how, not the why, of archival work. Studies of the theoretical role of, for example, the archive and the text or the archive and political power, have meanwhile been undertaken in other academic disciplines where there is an established forum for the discussion of related issues. This book invites the archivist to join that arena of debate, whilst appealing to all those interested in archives from other disciplines; the authors encourage archivists to step away from the practicalities of keeping archives to consider what it is they actually do in the cultural context of the early 21st century.
The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History
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The Archive Effect examines the problems of representation inherent in the appropriation of archival film and video footage for historical purposes. Baron analyses the way in which the meanings of archival documents are modified when they are placed in new texts and contexts, constructing the viewer’s experience of and relationship to the past they portray. Rethinking the notion of the archival document in terms of its reception and the spectatorial experiences it generates, she explores the ‘archive effect’ as it is produced across the genres of documentary, mockumentary, experimental, and fiction films.
Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (The Good, the Bad...)
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High standards in art and design have always been part of Penguin's publishing program. Now, on the occasion of Penguin's 75th anniversary, longtime art director Paul Buckley has chosen seventy-five covers that represent the best of what Penguin has produced over the course of the last decade. Giving readers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the complex creation of a book's cover, Penguin 75 includes comments from authors, agents, and editors, as well as the designers and artists themselves.
By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design
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By Its Cover traces the story of the American book cover from its inception as a means of utilitarian protection for the book to its current status as an elaborately produced form of communication art. It is, at once, the intertwined story of American graphic design and American literature, and features the work of such legendary figures as Rockwell Kent, E. McKnight Kauffer, Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig, Rudy deHarak, and Roy Kuhlman along with more recent and contemporary innovators including Push Pin Studios, Chermayeff & Geismar, Karen Goldberg, Chip Kidd, and John Gall.
Children's Book Covers
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This companion to the best-selling Front Cover is the first visual survey of over 200 years in children’s book jacket and cover design. It traces a history that goes from the hand-colored engravings of the 1800s to the digital art of today, and features the work of the most influential illustrators (including Beatrix Potter, Maurice Sendak, and Quentin Blake), plus all the popular series: Babar, Dr. Seuss, Harry Potter, and more. Classics, the latest designs, plus rare finds and first editions make this a must-have book for collectors, designers, and anyone who loves art.
Classic Book Jackets: The Design Legacy of George Salter
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It's said that you can't judge a book by its cover. George Salter, a legendary figure in the field of book design, never subscribed to this belief. For more than forty years, his beautifully drawn and lettered covers served as elegant windows onto the works of such revered authors as Albert Camus, John Dos Passos, Jack London, and Thomas Mann. Salter had the rare ability to reduce the illustrated dust jacket -- a new part of the book package -- to its essential elements. He could visually evoke -- with typography, calligraphy, and pictorial imagery -- the contents of any given book.
Front Cover: Great Book Jackets and Cover Design
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You can’t judge a book by its cover…but some covers simply speak for themselves. The most influential book jacket designs from throughout the 20th century are on display, and the fascinating images track their evolution from throwaway utilitarian “dust jackets” into a powerful modern art form. Three hundred hardcover and paperback book jackets appear in full color, including many from rare first editions seldom seen outside a serious collector’s library. Accompanying analysis commemorates the contributions of top European and American artists like Victor Gollancz, Paul Rand, and Barnett Freedman; explains how cover art styles helped launch such publishing brands as Penguin and Bloomsbury; and explores the impact of today’s digitally designed covers.
Jackets Required: An illustrated history of American book jacket design, 1920-1950
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This fascinating and full-color volume presents a superb collection of 270 jackets promoting a wide range of books--from high-brow novels and biographies to mass-market romances and mysteries--while showcasing the talent of some of the era's most exciting illustrators and designers. Offers a unique resource for graphic artists, illustrators and book lovers.
Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005
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Ever since the creation of the first Penguin paperbacks in 1935, their jackets have become a constantly evolving part of Anglo-American culture and design history. By looking back at seventy years of Penguin paperbacks, graphic designer Phil Baines charts the development of British publishing, the ever-changing currents of cover art and style, and the role of artists and designers in creating and designing the Penguin look—including Penguins, Pelicans, Penguin Classics, and more. Rich with stunning illustrations and filled with details about individual titles, designers, and even the changing size and shape of the Penguin logo itself, Penguin by Design shows how covers become design classics.
The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930
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At the turn of the nineteenth century, book covers were revered as works of art. Publishers commissioned distinguished artists such as Maxfield Parrish and Rockwell Kent to create exquisite covers appreciated by authors and readers alike. The Art of American Book Covers is an entertaining and educational retrospective, lavishly illustrated with more than one hundred full-color plates.
Book Covers in the Weimar Republic
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The Book Cover in the Weimar Republic assembles 1,000 of the most striking examples from this golden age of publishing activity and innovation. Based on the remarkable collection of Jürgen Holstein and his rare collectibleBlickfang, it combines an unparalleled catalog of dust jackets and bindings with Holstein’s introduction to the leading figures and particular energy of the Weimar publishing age. Expert essays discuss the aesthetic and cultural context of these precious fourteen years, in which a freewheeling spirit would flourish, only to be trampled, burned, or driven out of the country with the rise of National Socialism.
Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century
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This book identifies the regime-sponsored, ideologically driven, and systemic destruction of books and libraries in the 20th century that often served as a prelude or accompaniment to the massive human tragedies that have characterized a most violent century. Using case studies of libricide committed by Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and Chinese Communists in Tibet, Knuth argues that the destruction of books and libraries by authoritarian regimes was sparked by the same impulses toward negation that provoked acts of genocide or ethnocide. Readers will learn why some people―even those not subject to authoritarian regimes―consider the destruction of books a positive process. Knuth promotes understanding of the reasons behind extremism and patterns of cultural terrorism, and concludes that what is at stake with libricide is nothing less than the preservation and continuation of the common cultural heritage of the world.
A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom: A Supplement to the Intellectual Freedom Manual
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Collecting several key documents and policy statements, this supplement to the ninth edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual traces a history of ALA's commitment to fighting censorship. An introductory essay by Judith Krug and Candace Morgan, updated by OIF Director Barbara Jones, sketches out an overview of ALA policy on intellectual freedom. An important resource, this volume includes documents which discuss such foundational issues as The Library Bill of Rights Protecting the freedom to read ALA's Code of Ethics How to respond to challenges and concerns about library resources Minors and internet activity Meeting rooms, bulletin boards, and exhibits Copyright Privacy, including the retention of library usage records.
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You
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In this investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas. While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far- reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can- and must-change course. The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.
True Stories of Censorship Battles in America's Libraries
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Intellectual freedom is a core value of librarianship, but fighting to keep controversial materials on the shelves can sometimes feel like a lonely battle. And not all censorship controversies involve the public objecting to a book in the collection—libraries are venues for displays and meetings, and sometimes library staff themselves are tempted to preemptively censor a work. Those facing censorship challenges can find support and inspiration in this book, which compiles dozens of stories from library front lines. Edifying and enlightening, this collection. Tells the stories of librarians who withstood difficult circumstances to champion intellectual freedom. Touches on prickly issues such as age-appropriateness, some librarians' temptation to preemptively censor, sensitive cultural expressions, and criminality in the library.
Censorship: 500 Years of Conflict
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An introduction to the exhibition / Ann Ilan Alter -- The advent of printing / Paul F. Grendler -- Polemical prints during the Reformation / Christiane Andersson -- A new consensus, 1600-1700 / Margaret C. Jacob -- The eighteenth century: control and revolution / Eugene Charlton Black -- The image in France / Michel Melot -- Social purity and freedom of expression / Joel H. Wiener -- The pluralistic society / Joan Hoff-Wilson -- Thoughts on censorship in the world of 1984 / Stephen Spender -- The exhibitition.
100 Banned Books
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100 Banned Books profiles well-known, often classic works that have been censored for religious, political, social or sexual reasons. Each entry gives readers a summary of the work, its censorship history and suggestions for further reading.
Privacy and Freedom of Information in 21st Century Libraries LTR
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The American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom has assembled an all-star cast of writers to explore the challenges to privacy that ongoing shifts in technology have created, and how librarians can address them. Topics Covered in this Issue: • Libraries, Technology, and the Culture of Privacy by Barbara M. Jones • User-Generated Content by Eli Neiburger • Internet Filtering by Sarah Houghton-Jan • Social Networking and the Library by Jason Griffey • RFID in Libraries by Deborah Caldwell-Stone.
What Books by African American Women Were Acquired by American Academic Libraries?
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This study examines the publication, review and collection of fiction and poetry titles written by African-American women, published between 1980-1990 by Association of Research Libraries member academic libraries located in the United States. It is an examination of institutionalized legitimizing social forces and their influence on the collection and sanctioning of knowledge as expressed through academic library collections.
Banned Books
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Throughout history, tyrants, totalitarian states, church institutions, and democratic governments alike have banned books that challenged their assumptions or questioned their authority. Even today, attempts by school boards, local governments, and religious fanatics to restrict our freedom to read continue. The four-volume Banned Books collection focuses on more than 400 works that have been censored for their political, social, religious, or sexual content -- in the United States and around the world.
Preserving Our Heritage: Perspectives from Antiquity to the Digital Age
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Drawing on a multitude of historical texts, this sweeping yet accessible volume provides a broad understanding of preservation for librarians, archivists, and museum specialists, and related LIS and continuing education classes. Cloonan offers readers an overview of longevity, reversibility, enduring value, and authenticity of information preservation. Each section features historical works that form the basis of contemporary thinking and practices. Readings from a variety of fields primarily concerned with the preservation of cultural heritage, including many from hard-to-find publications, shed new light on how to approach contemporary problems.
In Flagrante Collecto: Caught in the Act of Collecting
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According to author Marilynn Gelfman Karp, collecting is a calling; and those who are driven to collect unloved objects are the purest collectors of all. In this literary and sophisticated celebration of humble objects, Karp shares her passionate insights on what she calls the "rapture of the capture."
To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting
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From amassing sacred relics to collecting celebrity memorabilia, the impulse to hoard has gripped humankind throughout the centuries. But what is it that drives people to possess objects that have no conceivable use? To Have and To Hold is a captivating tour of collectors and their treasures from medieval times to the present, from a cabinet containing unicorn horns and a Tsar's collection of teeth to the macabre art of embalmer Dr. Frederick Ruysch, the fabled castle of William Randolph Hearst, and the truly preoccupied men who stockpile food wrappers and plastic cups.
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
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Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit--some of the displays in David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century "wonder cabinets" that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science.
Mongo: Adventures in Trash
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When journalist Ted Botha moved to New York from South Africa, where people constructed homes out of what others considered trash, he decorated his apartment with furniture he found on Manhattan streets. Soon he realized he wasn't the only person finding things of value in the garbage, and he began roaming the streets meeting all kinds of collectors, united by their obsession with mongo-any discarded item that is rescued from the trash. Here is Botha's remarkable record of his travels among collectors, who are as varied as the kind of mongo they seek.
A Collection a Day
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Ever since she was a young girl, artist and illustrator Lisa Congdon has been obsessed with collecting. Having amassed a curious collection of objects, on January 1, 2010, she embarked on a year-long project: a daily documentation of arrangements of these items, posted online. "Most of the collections are real and exist in my home or studio; those I will photograph. Some are imagined; those I will draw or (occasionally) paint." With 365 collections, plus peeks into her home and studio, this book has over 400 pages of inspiring content. The book comes packaged in a collector's tin where you can store your own precious collections
Collections of Nothing
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Part memoir, part reflection on the mania of acquisition, Collections of Nothing begins with the stamp collection that King was given as a boy. In the following years, rather than rarity or pedigree, he found himself searching out the lowly and the lost, the cast-off and the undesired: objects that, merely by gathering and retaining them, he could imbue with meaning, even value. As he relates the story of his burgeoning collections, King also offers a fascinating meditation on the human urge to collect. This wry, funny, even touching appreciation and dissection of the collector’s art as seen through the life of a most unusual specimen will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the unappeasable power of that acquisitive fever.
Scrapbooks: an American History
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Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective and rich in emotional content, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative.
Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence
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Drawing on history, science, journalistic reportage, philosophy, religion, and personal memory, as well as conversations with experts in various fields whom he meets during his odyssey, Foy finds answers to his questions: How does one define silence? Did human beings ever experience silence in their early history? What is the relationship between noise and space? What are the implications of silence and our need for it—physically, mentally, emotionally, politically? Does absolute silence actually exist? If so, do we really want to hear it? And if we do hear it, what does it mean to us?
Silent Spaces Candida Hofer / Rui Xavier
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The Portuguese filmmaker Rui Xavier spent two years shadowing the world-renowned photographer Candida Höfer, known for her haunting pictures of libraries, museums, theaters, and opera houses. Xavier's film--a DVD is included with the book--shows the artist as she takes pictures, works in the studio and at home, and prepares exhibitions in far-flung locations including Düsseldorf, London, and São Paulo. Xavier has created a dense and empathetic portrait of the artist; confident in the power of his visuals, he has made a film without words.
Manifesto for Silence
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This book makes an urgent demand for silence. The ability to think, to reflect, and to create are all highly dependent on regular access to silence. Yet in today's noisy, 24/7 society silence and quiet are under threat. And the business world only makes this worse with cynical marketing strategies abusing the power of noise: ever-diminishing oases of calm are hard to find.Stuart Sim argues that we need more, not less, silence. He explains why silence matters, where it matters - in our environment, in religion, philosophy, the arts, literature and science - and why the human race will suffer if we do not make space for it.
Noise
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Noise is a social nuisance, a cause of deafness and high blood pressure, and an all-around annoyance. But what is noise really? As Kosko simply states, "Noise is a signal that you don’t like." It occurs at every level of the physical universe, from the big bang to blaring car alarms. Today, noise is considered the curse of the information age, but, in fact, not all noise is bad. Debunking this and many other commonly held beliefs about noise, Kosko gives readers a vivid sense of how deeply noise permeates both the world around us and within us. Along the way he covers many compelling topics, from noise’s possible role in the ice ages to noise pollution laws, the use of noise to generate synthetic speech, and Hedy Lamarr’s contribution to noisy wireless communication.
Teach Yourself - Meditation
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This practical introduction to meditating demystifies this ancient art to make it accessible. An entirely new chapter explains the relationship between mind and body, helping you use meditation to foster physical health, spiritual well-being, and stress management. Teach Yourself Meditation includes step-by-step exercises to you progress.
Letter to a Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, and Other Ephemera Found in Libraries
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Readers of physical books leave traces: marginalia, slips of paper, fingerprints, highlighting, inscriptions. All books have histories, and libraries are not just collections of books and databases but a medium of long-distance communication with other writers and readers. Letter to a Future Lover collects several dozen brief pieces written in response to library ephemera―with "library" defined broadly, ranging from university institutions to friends' shelves, from a seed library to a KGB prison library―and addressed to readers past, present, and future.
Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates
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Endlessly diverse and appealing, bookplates (also called ex libris, Latin for "from the books of") are small decorative labels to be pasted inside a book's cover to express personal ownership. Originating in their modern printed form in 16th-century Germany, where books were highly valuable and treasured, bookplates became an art form practiced by artists across Europe and beyond. This book traces the fascinating evolution of bookplate design over time and across national boundaries, showcasing 100 key examples of ex libris art.
Forgotten Bookmarks: a Bookseller's Collection of Odd Things lost Between the Pages
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t's happened to all of us: we're reading a book, something interrupts us, and we grab the closest thing at hand to mark our spot. It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover. Eventually the book finds its way into the world-a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell?
The Book on the Bookshelf
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Books on bookshelves -- ch. 2. From scrolls to codices -- ch. 3. Chests, cloisters, and carrels -- ch. 4. Chained to the desk -- ch. 5. Press of books -- ch. 6. Studying studies -- ch. 7. Up against the wall -- ch. 8. Books and bookshops -- ch. 9. Bookstack engineering -- ch. 10. Shelves that move -- ch. 11. Care of books.
The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future
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The era of the printed book is at a crossroad. E-readers are flooding the market, books are available to read on cell phones, and companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple are competing to command near monopolistic positions as sellers and dispensers of digital information. Already, more books have been scanned and digitized than were housed in the great library in Alexandria. Is the printed book resilient enough to survive the digital revolution, or will it become obsolete? In this lasting collection of essays, Robert Darnton—an intellectual pioneer in the field of this history of the book—lends unique authority to the life, role, and legacy of the book in society.
The Smithsonian Book of Books
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Through more than 300 illustrations from library collections around the globe, you'll discover a wealth of book lore in these pages and gain a new appreciation for the role of books in human society, from our earliest attempts at writing and recording information to the newest electronic books; from sumptuous illuminated and bejeweled medieval manuscripts to Gutenberg and the invention of movable type; from the diverse arts and crafts of bookmaking to the building of magnificent libraries for housing treasured volumes; from the ancient epic of Gilgamesh to the plays of Shakespeare and the tales of Beatrix Potter; and from the earliest illustrated books to revolutionary science texts.
The Nature of the Book
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Introduction : the book of nature and the nature of the book -- Literatory life : the culture and credibility of the printed book in early modern London -- "The advancement of wholesome knowledge" : the politics of print and the practices of propriety -- John Streater and the Knights of the Galaxy : republicanism, natural knowledge, and the politics of printing -- Faust and the pirates : the cultural construction of the printing revolution -- The physiology of reading : print and the passions -- Piracy and usurpation : natural philosophy in the Restoration -- Histories of the heavens : John Flamsteed, Isaac Newton, and the Historia cœlestis Britannica
The Book History Reader
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An essential collection of writings examining different aspects of the history of books and print culture. Arranged in thematic sections, bringing together a wide range of contributors, and featuring introductions to each section. This book is a resource for all those involved in publishing studies, library studies, book history and also those studying English literature, cultural studies, sociology and history.
Scribes, Script, and Books
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In this detailed overview of the history of the handmade book, Avrin looks at the development of scripts and styles of illumination, the making of manuscripts, and the technological processes involved in paper-making and book-binding.
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: and Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts
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The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world’s greatest and most brazen smugglers. An inspiring account of Haidara’s heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali’s—and the world’s—literary patrimony.
Regina Anderson Andrews: Harlem Renaissance Librarian
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The first African American to head a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), Regina Andrews led an extraordinary life. Allied with W. E. B. Du Bois, Andrews fought for promotion and equal pay against entrenched sexism and racism and battled institutional restrictions confining African American librarians to only a few neighborhoods within New York City. Andrews also played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance, supporting writers and intellectuals with dedicated workspace at her 135th Street Branch Library. After hours she cohosted a legendary salon that drew the likes of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Her work as an actress and playwright helped establish the Harlem Experimental Theater, where she wrote plays about lynching, passing, and the Underground Railroad. Ethelene Whitmire's new biography offers the first full-length study of Andrews's activism and pioneering work with the NYPL. Whitmire's portrait of her sustained efforts to break down barriers reveals Andrews's legacy and places her within the NYPL's larger history.
An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege
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What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships. Born to a family of free people of color, Greene changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter white society. In her new world, she dined both at the tables of the highest society and with bohemian artists and activists. She also engaged in a decades-long affair with art critic Bernard Berenson. Greene is pure fascination―the buyer of illuminated manuscripts who attracted others to her like moths to a flame.
The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American library
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In 1950 Ruth W. Brown, librarian at the Bartlesville Public Library, was dismissed from her job after thirty years of exemplary service, ostensibly because she had circulated subversive materials. In truth, however, Brown was fired because she was active in a group affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality.
Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite
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The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau. Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem's honored “Righteous Among the Nations”) and yet so little known.
The Library: Design Collaborations in the Public Schools
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The nonprofit L!brary Initiative, created by the Robin Hood Foundation, has been working since 2001 to enhance student literacy and overall academic achievement by collaborating with school districts to design, build, equip, and staff new elementary school libraries.
The Library: The Glasgow School of Art
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This special edition explores Charles Rennie Mackintosh's interior and architectural masterpiece, the Library within The Glasgow School of Art's Mackintosh building. Photographs, architectural drawings, sketches and short essays by Brian Carter, Paul Clarke, Karl Heinz-Schmitz and Peter Rich consider the details and sum of this much loved space in all it's glory prior to the disastrous fire in 2014.
Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light
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Henri Labrouste is one of the few nineteenth-century architects consistently lionized as a precursor of modern architecture throughout the twentieth century and into our own time. The two magisterial glass-and-iron reading rooms he built in Paris gave form to the idea of the modern library as a collective civic space. His influence was both immediate and long-lasting, not only on the development of the modern library but also on the exploration of new paradigms of space, materials and luminosity in places of great public assembly. Published to accompany the first exhibition devoted to Labrouste in the United States--and the first anywhere in the world in nearly 40 years--this publication presents nearly 225 works in all media, including drawings, watercolors, vintage and modern photographs, film stills and architectural models.
Munster City Library: Architekturbüro Bolles-Wilson + Partner
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Monograph documenting the architecture of Münster City Library in Germany by architecture firm Bolles-Wilson+Partner.
Library Builders
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Nearly 50 libraries are presented and analysed in this visual inquiry into the future of these establishments as information technology takes on a greater role in disseminating knowledge. Among the many library types presented here are the national: Dominique Perrault's Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Colin St John Wilson's British Library; the city: Richard Meier's City Library in The Hauge, Bolles-Wilson's Münster City Library, bruder DWL architects' Phoenix Central Library, Mecanoo's Almelo Public Library; and the academic: Sir Norman Foster and Partners' Squire Law Library, Cambridge and Hodgetts + Fung's unorthodox Towell Library at UCLA. Other prominent architects featured include: Josè Ignacio Linazasoro, Moore Ruble Yudell, Antoine Predock, Aldo Rossi, Moshe Safdie, Schwartz/Silver, Scogin Elam and Bray, and James Stirling Michael Wilford & Associate
The Library of Congress: The Art and Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building
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Designed by John L. Smithmeyer and completed in 1897 at a cost of under seven million dollars, the Library of Congress is enhanced by the art of over forty sculptors and painters. The planning and construction are detailed in John Y. Cole's essay, followed by discussions by Henry Hope Reed, Richard Murray, and Thomas P. Somma of the decorations, paintings, and sculptures. The volume concludes with a study of the restoration by Barbara Wolanin, a chronology, a glossary of architectural and decorative terms, and a biographical dictionary of all the artists, architects, and designers who worked on the building.
Libraries: Architecture and Equipment
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Library: an Unquiet History
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Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge. Now they are in crisis. Former rare books librarian and Harvard MetaLAB visionary Matthew Battles takes us from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries and on to the Information Age, to explore how libraries are built and how they are destroyed: from the scroll burnings in ancient China to the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia to the latest revolutionary upheavals of the digital age.
Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow
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Americans tend to imagine their public libraries as time-honored advocates of equitable access to information for all. Through much of the twentieth century, however, many black Americans were denied access to public libraries or allowed admittance only to separate and smaller buildings and collections. While scholars have examined and continue to uncover the history of school segregation, there has been much less research published on the segregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South. In fact, much of the writing on public library history has failed to note these racial exclusions.In Not Free, Not for All, Cheryl Knott traces the establishment, growth, and eventual demise of separate public libraries for African Americans in the South, disrupting the popular image of the American public library as historically welcoming readers from all walks of life.
Libraries in the Ancient World
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The first libraries appeared in the Near East in the third millennium BC and continued to flourish throughout antiquity. This attractive study draws on a variety of sources to discuss library buildings, holdings, systems, users and patrons and explores the relationship between libraries and education, literacy and leisure. Subjects include the Library of Alexandria, public and private libraries in the city of Rome, ancient publishing and early monastic libraries.
The Library: A World History
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A library is not just a collection of books, but also the buildings that house them. As varied and inventive as the volumes they hold, such buildings can be much more than the dusty, dark wooden shelves found in mystery stories or the catacombs of stacks in the basements of academia. From the great dome of the Library of Congress, to the white façade of the Seinäjoki Library in Finland, to the ancient ruins of the library of Pergamum in modern Turkey, the architecture of a library is a symbol of its time as well as of its builders’ wealth, culture, and learning.
Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America
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Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay in this collection examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century.
The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History
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From Greek and Roman times to the digital era, the library has remained central to knowledge, scholarship, and the imagination. The Meaning of the Library is a generously illustrated examination of this key institution of Western culture. Tracing what the library has meant since its beginning, examining how its significance has shifted, and pondering its importance in the twenty-first century, notable contributors--including the Librarian of Congress and the former executive director of the HathiTrust--present a cultural history of the library. In an informative introduction, Alice Crawford sets out the book's purpose and scope, and an international array of scholars, librarians, writers, and critics offer vivid perspectives about the library through their chosen fields. The Meaning of the Library will appeal to all who are interested in this vital institution's heritage and ongoing legacy.
Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity
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The Dynamic Library: Organizing Knowledge at the Sitterwerk--Precedents and Possibilities
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THE DYNAMIC LIBRARY presents essays in translation from an interdisciplinary symposium on the classification and organization of knowledge held at Sitterwerk, St.Gallen, in 2011. Home to over 25,000 volumes on art, architecture, design, and photography, the Sitterwerk's Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) began with the bequest of book collector and connoisseur Daniel Rohner (1948- 2007). The question of how to systematically organize this idiosyncratic collection into a publicly accessible library was a fundamental concern, and a solution was found in a dynamic system of organization powered by RFID technology, which relies on digital tracking.
Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge
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Melissa Adler embarks upon a detailed critique of how cataloging systems have delimited and proscribed expressions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in a manner that mirrors psychiatric and sociological attempts to pathologize non-normative sexual practices and civil subjects.
The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge
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In The Book of Trees, data viz expert Manuel Lima examines the more than eight hundred year history of the tree diagram, from its roots in the illuminated manuscripts of medieval monasteries to its current resurgence as an elegant means of visualization. Lima presents two hundred intricately detailed tree diagram illustrations on a remarkable variety of subjects—from some of the earliest known examples from ancient Mesopotamia to the manuscripts of medieval monasteries to contributions by leading contemporary designers.
Reinventing the Wheel
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Now available in paperback, this delightful book spins the history of the information wheel, as inventive and instructive as intriguing, that has been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything from time and space to military history to recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers and in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design. From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders,Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.
Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display
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Cabinets of curiosity, glass-enclosed cathedrals stuffed with sea shells, butterflies, lizards, birds, animals, and exotic marvels of all kinds -- our Victorian forebears went to extraordinary lengths to acquire and display the strange fruits of the earth. Their carefully organized collections helped shape our vision of the natural world and form the social and architectural construction of knowledge we confront today. In this beautifully illustrated book, historian Carla Yanni brings together the history of architecture and the history of science in an engaging study of how the Victorians approached the housing and display of scientific artifacts.
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
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Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit--some of the displays in David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century "wonder cabinets" that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science.
The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries
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Large-scale wall charts were fundamental tools of classroom instruction throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Collected here for the first time in one deluxe volume are over 100 of these vintage educational posters now important relics in the history of science, art, and design. From the anatomy of a tulip or an apple tree to that of a hedgehog or starfish, the botanical and zoological images in this collection are captivating with their curious visuals and intricate details
Cabinets of Curiosities
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Unicorns’ horns, mermaids’ skeletons, stuffed and preserved animals and plants, work in precious metals, clocks, scientific instruments, celestial globes . . . all knowledge, the whole cosmos arranged on shelves. Such were the cabinets of curiosities of the seventeenth century, the last period of history when one could aspire to know everything.
100 Diagrams That Changed the World
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100 Diagrams That Changed the World is a fascinating collection of the most significant plans, sketches, drawings, and illustrations that have influenced and shaped the way we think about the world. From primitive cave paintings to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to the complicated DNA helix drawn by Crick and Watson to the innovation of the iPod, they chart dramatic breakthroughs in our understanding of the world and its history. Arranged chronologically, each diagram is accompanied by informative text that makes even the most scientific breakthrough accessible to all.
Library Classification Trends in the 21st Century
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Library Classification Trends in the 21st Century traces development in and around library classification as reported in literature published in the first decade of the 21st century. It reviews literature published on various aspects of library classification, including modern applications of classification such as internet resource discovery, automatic book classification, text categorization, modern manifestations of classification such as taxonomies, folksonomies and ontologies and interoperable systems enabling crosswalk.
Look Inside: Cutaway Illustrations and Visual Storytelling
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The cutaway illustrations in this book allow our eyes to see what usually remains hidden. They open up houses, bodies, and objects, and allow the individual parts to comprehensively explain the whole. Look Inside features infographics that cut up or take apart their subjects and make them transparent. The resulting cross sections and interior views present precise detail in multiple layers.
Open Here: the Art of Instructional Design
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Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design displays an entertaining array of the most ingenious, stupid, beautiful, and horrible visual solutions that instruction designers and illustrators have invented to help us handle modern technology and everyday products.
Public Libraries and Resilient Cities
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Public libraries are keystone public institutions for any thriving community, and as such can be leaders in making cities better places to work, play, and live. In this important book, noted urban planner and librarian Dudley shows how public libraries can contribute to “placemaking,” or the creation and nurturing of vital and unique communities for their residents. Using case studies and other information from the field, the author Shows how public libraries can address pressing urban and environmental sustainability issues through smart urban design practices, making contributions to economic regeneration, and a commitment to social equity.
Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration
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Based on the work at the Stanford University d.school and its Environments Collaborative Initiative, Make Space is a tool that shows how space can be intentionally manipulated to ignite creativity. Appropriate for designers charged with creating new spaces or anyone interested in revamping an existing space, this guide offers novel and non-obvious strategies for changing surroundings specifically to enhance the ways in which teams and individuals communicate, work, play--and innovate.
The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together
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Tharp uses her decades of experience to explain why teamwork is a superior way of working for some of us and inevitable for almost all of us. The essential lessons of group effort: Tharp takes readers through the most common varieties of collaborations, including working with a partner, with institutions and middlemen, outside your expertise, in a virtual partnership, with a friend, with someone who outranks you, and how to deal with toxic collaborators.
Makerspaces: Top Trailblazing Projects
Spaces that have been designed to allow users to create, build, and learn new projects and technologies, makerspaces employ a variety of tools such as 3-D printers, AutoCAD design software, and even open-source hardware like Arduino Kits. Developing a community around shared use of space and equipment, a tenet of the makerspace movement, fits squarely into libraries' mission. Bagley examines nine makerspaces in public, academic, and school libraries, describing their design and technical decisions in depth and showing how each is doing something unique and different, under a wide range of budgets and project offerings. Enabling readers to quickly gather information about these trailblazing projects, Bagley's guide Defines the makerspace, and describes why it fits perfectly into the library's role as community center.
IDEO Method Cards
Keep people at the center of your work! Ask them how to help. Look at what they do. Learn from the facts you gather. Try it yourself! Ideo has become a leader in design by keeping people at the center of the design process. Each card describes one method and includes a brief story about how and when to use it. This is not a "how to" guide. It's a design tool meant to help you explore new approaches and develop your own. Use the deck to take a new view, to inspire creativity, and to communicate. The cards are divided into four categories: Learn, Look, Ask, and Try, making it easy to reference, browse, sort, and share the cards.
Invitation to the Party: Building Bridges to the Arts, Culture and Community
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By offering strategic collaborations and efforts to develop and sustain nontraditional audiences, this book will directly impact the stability and future of America’s cultural and artistic landscape. Donna Walker-Kuhne has spent the last 20 years developing and refining these principles with such success as both the Broadway and national touring productions of Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk, as well as transforming the audiences at one of the U.S.’s most important and visible arts institutions, New York’s Public Theater. This book is a practical and inspirational guide on ways to invite, engage and partner with culturally diverse communities, and how to enfranchise those communities into the fabric of arts and culture in the United States.
LSD: the Library of Julio Santo Domingo
The Library of Julio Santo Domingo, now on long-term loan at Harvard's Houghton Library and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is one of history's greatest collections dedicated to the concept of altered states through drugs, art, sex, magic and rock and roll. This two-volume set is richly illustrated with hundreds of images from the library.
Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger
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The Folger Shakespeare Library was dedicated on the Bard's birthday, April 23, 1932. The library houses 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, and 60,000 manuscripts. It welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year and provides professors, scholars, graduate students, and researchers from around the world with access to the collections. It is also a vibrant center in Washington, D.C., for cultural programs.
Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books
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As words and stories are increasingly disseminated through digital means, the significance of the book as object—whether pristine collectible or battered relic—is growing as well. Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books spotlights the personal libraries of thirteen favorite novelists who share their collections with readers. Stunning photographs provide full views of the libraries and close-ups of individual volumes: first editions, worn textbooks, pristine hardcovers, and childhood companions.
Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books
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What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests, curiosities, tastes, and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? Unpacking My Library provides an intimate look at the personal libraries of twelve of the world’s leading architects, alongside conversations about the significance of books to their careers and lives.
Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: sheet music from the collection of the Los Angeles Public Library
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Culled from the Southern California Sheet Music Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, this unprecedented anthology tells the story of Los Angeles through its songs. Featuring the elaborately designed covers of more than one hundred pieces of vintage sheet music, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles spans 1859 to 1959, offering a rare musical window into Southern California history from mythic Missions to infinite oranges, from rumbling railroads to romantic Ramona . . . and there's Hollywood history, too, harmoniously noted by its music and film industries.
My Ideal Bookshelf
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The books that we choose to keep --let alone read-- can say a lot about who we are and how we see ourselves. In MY IDEAL BOOKSHELF, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. Contributors include Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Alice Waters, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Miranda July, Alex Ross, Nancy Pearl, David Chang, Patti Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Dave Eggers, among many others. With hand-rendered images of book spines by Jane Mount, and first-person commentary from all the contributors.
Barnard Zine Library
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A zine documenting the history and purpose of the Barnard zine library.
The Book of Lost Books: an Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read
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Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres. Contains details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and the influential, from the time of cave drawings to the late twentieth century. Here are the true stories behind stories, poems, and plays that now exist only in imagination.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime
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The Island of Lost Maps tells the story of a curious crime spree: the theft of scores of valuable centuries-old maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada. The perpetrator was Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr., an enigmatic antiques dealer from South Florida, whose cross-country slash-and-dash operation had gone virtually undetected until he was caught in 1995–and was unmasked as the most prolific American map thief in history. As Miles Harvey unravels the mystery of Bland’s life, he maps out the world of cartography and cartographic crime, weaving together a fascinating story of exploration, craftsmanship, villainy, and the lure of the unknown.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
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Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.
The Missing Pieces
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The Missing Pieces is an incantatory text, a catalog of what has been lost over time and what in some cases never existed. Through a lengthy chain of brief, laconic citations, Lefebvre evokes the history of what is no more and what never was. Lefebvre’s list includes the page written by Balzac on his deathbed (lost); Spinoza's Treatise on the Rainbow (thrown into a fire); the final seven meters of Kerouac’s original typescript for On the Road (eaten by a dog)
Books, Boxes and Portfolios: Binding, Construction, and Design Step-by-Step
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In this introduction to the techniques of bookbinding, Franz Zeier guides readers step-by-step through projects for making a variety of boxes, portfolios, book covers, photograph albums, mats, and sewn and adhesive.
Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms
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In as little as an afternoon, beginners will be on their way to folding, gluing, and sewing handmade books in a variety of shapes and styles, from rolled scrolls to Jacob's ladders, folded flexagons to case bindings. Complete with photographs of the author's own master books and statements by more than 40 established book artists, this collection is sure to inspire.
Beautiful Bookbindings : a Thousand Years of the Bookbinder's Art
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Over 100 of the most beautiful bookbindings from the last 1000 years are showcased in this highly illustrated book that provides a world view of the development of the bookbinding craft. Arranged chronologically, these beautiful and often surprising works of art present a clear visual record of the progression of the craft through the ages. By juxtaposing bindings from different countries from the same period, differences and similarities, and the transfer of styles and ideas, are highlighted.
Re-Bound: Creating Handmade Books from Recycled and Repurposed Materials
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Re-Bound is a beautiful book on bookbinding with a fun green twist-all the projects use recycled and upcycled materials. This book shows you how to take everyday materials from around the house, flea markets, thrift stores, and hardware stores and turn them into clever and eye-catching hand-made books.
The Penland Book of Handmade Books: Master Classes in Bookmaking Techniques
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Every year Penland, the innovative school where crafters from around the world come to hone their skills, offers a master class in the art of bookmaking that’s simply without equal. Fortunately, it’s available to everyone, thanks to this technical and inspirational guide that showcases ten contemporary book artists who have taught at the institution. Four hundred illuminating photographs highlight the crafters as each one demonstrates all the details of his or her particular expertise.
Bookcraft: Techniques for Binding, Folding, and Decorating to Create Books
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Books are a central part of life, and have been with us for around 2,000 years. Although most books we use are produced commercially, many of us are drawn to the book form in its various guises, and are interested in exploring how to make books of our own, whether as a vehicle for telling stories, as scrapbooks, or as notebooks and journals.
This guide provides the essential ingredients for designing and making your own books, from simple binding and finishing techniques to complex complete products. Projects are designed to suit a variety of skill levels from beginner to advanced, and use a step-by-step approach to learning the necessary skills.
Woven and Interlocking Book Structures from the Janus, Steiner and Gefn Presses
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Using the instructions from the book “Woven and interlocking Book Structures” Audrey Holden, assistant to Claire Van Vliet at Janus Press, created models of the books. This boxed set included the book and all the models.
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