From the late 1970s through much of the 1980s VHS, which stands for Video Home System, tapes were all the rage. They were the dominant form of home video entertainment and in many ways revolutionized the movie industry. It created the ability to watch movies in the home while also creating the opportunity to produce low budget films for the format. The technology is now beyond obsolete but that doesn't mean there still isn't value to be had. Yale University, the first institution to actively collect in this area, recently announced the acquisition of a collection of 2,700 VHS tapes. Mind you, this is not a collection...
A book-of-the-month club for the infants and toddlers of Washington D.C.
By the time kids reach the third grade in the public schools of Washington D.C. less than half are reading at grade level! I repeat, less then half. We know the equation pretty well and we know that the long term consequences lean severe. Low literacy = higher chance of unemployment and incarceration. Ward 6 DC Councilmember Charles Allen has introduced legislation that would send a book a month to all 41,000 children under 5 that live in the district. “We have households in the District that have hundreds of books and households where the only book in the house may be the phone...
The Banksy of the book arts world surfaces via email
It began in early 2011 when the folks at the Scottish Poetry Library discovered a 'poetree' on a bookshelf. The 'poetree,' a book sculpture comprised of intricately cut pages, had this note attached referencing a Patrick Geddes quote: “ It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree… …We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books…a book is so much more than pages full of words… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas… a gesture (poetic maybe?)" Poetree By November ten of these sculptural gems had popped up all around Scotland...
What Darwin Saw: Sketchbooks from the voyage of the HMS Beagle added to Cambridge Digital Library
Charles Darwin considered it to be one of the most formative journeys of his life. His diary and scientific journal of his time aboard the HMS Beagle, now best known as The Voyage of the Beagle, was a bestseller. It was also on this voyage that the first seeds of his masterwork, Origin of Species, were planted. Now thanks to Cambridge University the entire sketchbooks of Conrad Martens, a shipmate of Darwin's on the HMS Beagle, are available online. Martens made the drawings between the summer of 1833 and the early months of 1835. They "vividly bring to life one of the most famous...
Photoshoot in the Library: Benjamin Von Wong goes to work inside the world’s oldest monastic library
Think Beauty and the Beast and a library beyond your wildest imagination. Then think about how lucky photographer Benjamin Van Wong was to be able to carry out the first creative photoshoot held inside the library at Admont Abbey in Austria. Completed in 1776 Stift Admont is the oldest monastic library in the world, some have dubbed it the “eighth wonder of the world.” It holds 200,000 books and is adorned with priceless frescoes and needless to say made a perfect backdrop. Model Jen Brook, Clothes by Polish designer Agnieszka Ospia, Hair and makeup Bianca Kristin Woltsche More on the shoot at Benjamin Van Wong's blog, What...