Next week, for the second year in a row, the entire Seattle Public Library System will close for a week. In Tacoma, Washington an entry-level job opening for a librarian’s assistant drew 548 applicants within the first week of the job posting. The same song is playing In Orange County, California the Fullerton Public Library has taken matters into its own hands. With Libraries need investment
A Landmark in Book Design
In 1834 John Murray published Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau. It was the first cloth-bound book ever published with a full pictorial cover.In his book The Collector’s Book of Books Eric Quayle says: “By 1834 the battle was won, and it was then that the first fully cloth-bound book appeared which featured pictorial covers. This was a landmark in book design, and must have caused a considerable stir in the publishing world. The idea seems to have been the brain-child of the author, the eccentric Sir Francis Bond Head."The image above comes from Princeton University's recently acquired copy of...
It’s a Book and the first annual Unplug Day
A mouse, a jackass, and a monkey walk into a bookstore....Well not really, but Lane Smith's latest book, It's a Book, features these three characters grappling with the ever-changing world of books and technology.The publisher calls it "a delightful manifesto on behalf of print in the digital age" and it is a welcome addition to the p vs. e debate.To celebrate the release of the book, Macmillan has created the first annual Unplug Day and is urging everyone on August 31st to "unplug. unwind. recharge. read a book!"click to enlarge I'm in.Facebook group for Unplug Day
Church Plans on Burning the Qur’an on 9/11
Here they go again.This time it is the Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Florida who have declared 9/11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, "International Burn a Koran Day." Outside of the guaranteed publicity, The Dove World Outreach Center supplies these ten reasons on why burning the Qur'an is a righteous act. The Church also offers "free shelter and food for women who want to escape from Islam."Their request for a permit to hold the book-burning has been denied by local fire officials but the church still plans on proceeding. In an email to...
The Library of America Goes Wordless: The Novels of Lynd Ward
In what just might be one of the publishing surprises and hi-spots of 2010, The Library of America will release a 2 volume boxed set featuring the six woodcut novels of Lynd Ward.God's Man, Ward's first book published on the eve of the stock market collapse of 1929, was the first wordless book-length novel to be published in the United States. By the end of 1937 Ward would publish five more novels in woodcuts: Madman's Drum (1930) Wild Pilgrimage (1932) Prelude to a Million Years (1933) Song Without Words (1936)Vertigo (1937)If one is looking for the origins of the graphic novel in the United...