The library of Thomas Jefferson, which is the library that made up the backbone of the early Library Congress, has arrived at LibraryThing.Using E. Milicent Sowerby's five-volume bibliography as their guide a group of sixteen catalogers took four months to enter nearly 4,900 titles and 187 of Jefferson's reviews.Now all the bells and whistles of LibraryThing are available for one of the greatest libraries ever assembled in this country; all those clouds and stats are now in play.Tim Spalding the founder and guiding light of LibraryThing frames the significance of this best when he says "On LibraryThing it's not just...
Books and History in the Work of Nicola Dale
Time creates history and time changes history. From existing texts visual artist Nicola Dale painstakingly carves a new history, both for the texts themselves and for the those of us lucky enough to consume them.A Secret Heliotropism, 2006. Hand cut found book; full color, 320 pagesUsing a Walter Benjamin quote from his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ as a starting point Dale took a copy of “The People’s Century” and a very small pair of scissors and transformed the 320 page history book from a mass produced object to a unique piece of book art. Over the course of...
Hand em Over
"Hand Over Those Two Books""When I Read These Three Novels I'll be Able to Conquer the World!"The cover of issue #23 of From Beyond the Unknown.The Sci-fi comic ran for 25 issues from October 1969 to December 1973.See all 25 covers hereThanks to Bookish Monkey for the lead
The Marriott Library Goes Robotic
The University of Utah's main library has installed the largest automated book retrieval center in North America. The new robotic book storage and retrieval system holds 2 million books and frees up 80,000 square feet of prime library space.Machine Details:-Rail-mounted robotic retrieval cranes move up and down four aisles. -Each aisle is 130 feet long, 35 feet tall, and holds 19,181 bins.-Has its own heating and air-conditioning system-Built by HK SystemsBook Details:-"Older and less used materials" are stored in the Automated Retrieval Center (ARC)-The books are stored by size not call number and it takes between 5 to 10 minutes...
Goodreads Rising as the Year Ends in the Book Social Networking World
2007 will go down as the year book social networking got shot out of the canon and as the year comes to a close we see Goodreads rising, Shelfari stumbling and LibraryThing coasting along.Goodreads ended the year with an estimated $750,000 infusion via a group of angels consisting of "six influential Internet pioneers." Murmurings could be heard back in October when Marc Hedlund at O'Reilly Radar commented on how he and a bunch of his friends were corralled into joining Goodreads. Hedlund confessed his love for LibrayThing's blog but admits he isn't very fond of its product. Hedlund ended the...