An archive of close to 7 million documents taken from Saddam Hussein's Baath party headquarters will be temporarily housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.The Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), a Washington, D.C. based group, has been in possession of the archive since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago. After spending time in the basement of the foundation director's parents home in Baghdad and at a U.S. military facility in West Virginia where they were digitized the archive has now been moved to Stanford.According to Richard Sousa, senior associate director at Hoover, the institution's agreement with the IMF...
The Used Bookstore : House of Junk or Secondhand Wonderland
"I can't stand second-hand books. For me, as a literary experience, they are akin to sloppy seconds, a salad bar in a staff canteen at the end of a hot weekday, or a recently-vacated cubicle in a public toilet. Let's be clear: I don't merely have a mild preference for buying brand-new. No, I'm digestively squeamish about used books."...
Cedar Rapids Library, R.I.P.
What the five feet of water that flooded the building didn't destroy the mold and humidity did. Officials now believe that at least two-thirds of the collection is done for.Marie Devries, of the Library's Foundation staff says "It's hopefully something we will never experience again. It's obviously a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There's nothing to compare it to."Fortunately, the only books that escaped the devastation were the children's books.More photos hereStory at KCRG-TV
Poppets on the Bookshelf
Here is a 4 minute journey featuring a bunch of poppets checking out a bookshelf.It is quite a trip. On how many bookshelves can one go from a book on Duran Duran to the works of Neil Gaiman without missing a beat?Poppets on a Book Tour was directed by Alia and KirkpatrickThanks to Omnivoracious for the lead
An Interview With AbeBooks CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum
AbeBooks.com is one of the world's leading marketplaces for new, used, rare, and out of print books with over 13,000 vendors offering over 110 million books. I recently had a chance to interview their CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum. An edited version of the interview will appear in the July issue of Amphora.*********************************************************************************************************Book Patrol - Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, it is appreciated.AbeBooks recently announced its acquisition of Chrislands, a website provider for online booksellers. This comes on the heels of AbeBooks previous acquisitions of Fillz and BookFinder.The earlier acquisitions of...