For writers it is the blank page, for artists it is the blank canvas but for a growing number of altered book artists the starting point for their work is the printed page.Norwegian artist Annette Mangseth has created an impressive body of work using the pages from old books as her canvas. Mangseth, working under the banner of Carambatack Design, infuses 19th century pages with colorful scenes, reinventing age old texts with a little playful pop surrealism.Girl on a Swing 8.2" x 11.6" acrylic paint, ink and marker on a printed page.I Fly Over Rain Clouds8.2" x 5.9 " Acrylic...
ABA Misguided In Their Support For An Internet Sales Tax
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) is once again calling on its members to contact their governors to support a sales tax on online sales.In the template letter they provide their booksellers to send to their governor they say the "sales tax shortfall will grow worse each year as online shopping grows. The Wall Street Journal reported that online sales this holiday season grew by a remarkable 19 percent. In contrast, retails sales this holiday season only rose 3.6 percent."Wouldn't you rather get in on the "remarkable" growth of online shopping than to try and deter it?I understand that having to...
BookTrust and Nestlé Pull the Plug on Book Award
It was just last month that Sean Taylor, one of the winners of the 2007 Nestlé Children's Book Prize, refused to accept the cash award because of the "questions surrounding Nestlé’s marketing of breast-milk substitutes."Now word comes that after 23 years Booktrust and Nestlé have parted ways.Katherine Solomon, Booktrust's PR person, claims the parting was "mutual and there was no hostility" and that it was a "natural time to conclude."Nestlé says it is "moving its community support towards the company strategy of nutrition, health and wellness," and would like to focus on healthy eating plans for primary schools. I hope...
The Library of Congress Hits the Jackpot on Flickr
No one saw this coming.The plan was simple enough. The Library of Congress teamed with Flickr for a pilot project called The Commons, which basically consisted of LOC opening a Flickr account and uploading a little over 3,000 images (the LOC houses 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials!)The goal was to address two of the major challenges the library faces:1. "how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and2. "how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity."The result was astonishing and could arguably be...
Book Scavengers
scav·enge: to take or gather (something usable) from discarded material.There are hundreds of them. They have gangster names like Tommy Books and Leprechaun and roam the streets of New York in the wee hours of the morning looking for books. Nothing is off limits - dumpsters, garbage cans, anyplace that might hold a discarded book is fair game. They gather as many as they can hold and then head to the corner of 12th of Broadway and wait.What are they waiting for?9:30am. For this is the time The Strand bookstore opens and they can turn their found objects into cash!This...