The Harlequin Romance and Nascar: A Marriage Made in the Boardroom

The New York Times ran a story today on the new partnership between Harlequin the publisher of Romance novels and Nascar, the stock-car racing association. The deal calls for a 16 book series with ‘Nascar settings’ with the first and last books to include a cameo by a real life Nascar driver. The vice-president of licensing for Nascar says of the new partnership “It’s probably more of a brand-building and P.R. bonanza for us." He also sees a potential TV series in this.“Booksellers and other publishers are following the Nascar-Harlequin hookup with interest.” (I think we can substitute big-box retailer...

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The Reader as Window Dressing

I am all for mixing it up a bit to try and stay competitive and to keep things fresh but this story has me feeling a little uneasy.Through Saturday, if you're in Hamilton, Montana and walk past the Chapter One Bookstore you will see someone sitting in the window reading. The store is encouraging their customers to do a two hour stint sitting in the front window.There is enough pressure on the "reader" and the bookstore these days that I worry that by displaying a reader in the front window we are perpetuating and reinforcing the 'reader and bookstore as...

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BiblioDog

Photograph by Kenneth Josephson from his History of Photography series. It appeared on the cover of exposure 21:4, the quarterly journal of the Society for Photographic Education, in 1983.Josephson studied under Aaron Siskind, Harry Callaghan and Minor White and taught at Art Institute of Chicago for over 35 years before retiring in 1997. He is probably best known for his 'pictures within pictures' . The Art Institute had a retrospective of his work in late 1999.There is also a nice set of book imagery in Josephson's later series titled Chicago (88-4-246), 1988-2003.

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da Vinci’s Notebooks Digitized: For Some Eyes Only

For the first time in 500 years the text of both of Leonardo's notebooks are available to be viewed side by side. This "electronic reunification" as the Chief Executive of the British Library Lynne Brindley put it of the Codex Leicester, purchased in 1994 for $30.8 million by Bill Gates, and the Codex Arundel which is housed in the British Library, is a product of the British Library program Turning the Pages 2.0.When viewing the Notebooks with Turning the Pages 2 "people can rotate and move the notebooks on the screen, and turn on a magnifying glass to see the...

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March of the Librarians: A Video Tribute to ALA Meeting in Seattle

"Didn't you wonder where your librarians disappeared to last January? Ten thousand of them were in Seattle for an American Library Association convention, and I was there to capture the bizarre congregation on video." nnicckHysterical rendition of the meeting. Good Seattle footage. An instant YouTube biblio-classic.P.S. you can insert any trade show and it works.Thanks to Jeremy from PhiloBiblos for the lead

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