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Nicolas Grospierre’s Infinite Library

The Never-Ending Corridor of Books  The Never-Ending Corridor of Books and the Never-Ending Wall of Books are two components of The Library project by Nicolas Grospierre. Both are installations comprised of photographs placed in light boxes and shown in mirrors to create the illusion of endlessness. The Library project is not the representation of a specific library, but rather an attempt at representing the very essence of the idea of a library. It is loosely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ novel The Library of Babel, where the author describes the universe as an “infinite and cyclic” library. The project is thus an attempt...

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Of Interest: Morrissey, The Talmud, The Occupy Movement “Explained” and The Best of Early Vanity Fair

"The solution to all predicaments is the goodness of privacy in a warm room with books" - Morrissey He is near the top of most lists ranking the world's best songwriters and his tenure with The Smiths had a monumental impact on the 1980's music scene yet by reading his Autobiography one has to shake their head in disbelief at the resistance his road to success has endured. The polluted record industry and corrupt legal system weigh prominently in the book. The radio stations wouldn't play his music and an ex-Smith band mate took him to the cleaners via a less than fair...

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Reading with Chad Gowey

Holiday Parking, November/December 2013 Chad Gowey is a freelance illustrator working out of Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and seems to have a knack for picturing books. His work as appeared in numerous publications and books including the publishers Chronicle Books, David R. Godine. He also does has regular gig for Bookmarks magazine in which all these illustrations have appeared. Next to the illustration title is the issue it first appeared in.   Down East Dockside, July/Aug 2014 Rowhouse, May/June 2014 The Understudy, November/December 2012 Hard Water Paperback, January/February 2013 Summit, March/April 2014 End of Summer, September/October 2013...

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In the Stacks of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Frontispiece.  The works of Mr. William Shakespear in six volumes, 1709 Back in August the Folger Shakespeare Library unsealed their almost 80,000 digital image archive! An absolute treasure-trove of material related to Shakespeare, the collection contains books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more for your online perusal.  Through the Digital Image Collection, you can: Compare 19th-century productions of Shakespeare with today's through historic photographs and promptbooks Look at letters written by Queen Elizabeth I Examine rare paintings in "up close and personal" detail Read diary entries from over 200 years ago and much more I trust this won't be the last time...

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Mining newspapers for poetry

What to do you get when you partner up a digital humanities projects librarian with an associate professor of computer science and engineering? Answer: Something good. At the University of Nebraska Elizabeth Lorang, research assistant professor and digital humanities projects librarian in the University Libraries has teamed with Leen-Kiat Soh, associate professor of the computer science and engineering, and a couple of students students to develop software to recognize poetry from digitized newspapers. “Millions of poems were published in newspapers. Looking at them will shift the way we understand poetry in the United States.” says Lorang. Similar to text-mining applications, where specific words and...

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