Between 1847 and 1869, when the last rail was laid completing the intercontinental railroad, scores of men, women and children hit the trials heading west to begin a life. It was the 19th century pursuit of the American dream.Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869 is an online exhibit sponsored by the American Memory project at the Library of Congress. It features the overland diaries and letters of those that risked it all to find a new life in the west. The exhibit includes 49 diaries in their entirety, over 40 maps and over 80 photographs and...
The Visual Library of Last Resort –
"a tremendous amount of printed material disappears from the public sphere of information when it exits the library.""The Reanimation Library is a small, independent library based in Brooklyn. It is a collection of books that have fallen out of mainstream circulation. Outdated and discarded, they have been culled from thrift stores, stoop sales, and throw-away piles across the country and given new life as resource material for artists, writers, and other cultural archeologists."reanimation library"The Reanimation Library acts as a laboratory for investigating how the representation of analog information can be integrated into a digital environment. We understand that to a...
The Bookselling Dilemma of the Modern Age
This is the cover of the current issue of The New Yorker. It's called “Read-Handed” and was done by Adrian Tomine.He is about to open the bookshop, she is about to receive the book she ordered on Amazon. Who feels worse?It is a spectacular graphic representation of the independent struggle; the struggle that both the independent business owner and the independent-minded consumer face in todays book marketplace.To get a get a better view of the image, and to see Tomine's other book-themed illustrations click here ("Read-Handed" is the 5th image on the first row).
Biblio.com to Offer Bookhound Software for Free
UPDATE : Luke Lozier, co-founder of Bibliopolis, has alerted me that Bookhound is now available for free to ALL booksellers not just Biblio.com members.**********************************************************************AbeBooks.com has Home Base, Alibris has its reincarnation of Bookmate and now Biblio.com has Bookhound.Biblio.com will begin offering the Bookhound inventory management tool for free to its sellers. The Mac version will be released first with the PC version to follow in July. Bookhound, a product of Bibliopolis, has been around for over 10 years and is currently used by many leading bookshops and booksellers both here in the U.S. and around the world.From the press release:"BookHound...
IndieBound or Bust
That's the title of Jim Milliot's piece for Publisher's Weekly on the unveiling of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) new marketing “movement/revolution” initiative, IndieBound.The good news is that it replaces Book Sense which has failed miserably in helping independents remain competitive in the fast changing world of bookselling. The bad news is that IndieBound won't fare much better.What is IndieBound? Here is their Declaration:When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare...