The smell of a freshly printed book is the best perfume in the world. - Karl LagerfeldI think that to be able to wear the smell of a book is something very chic. Books are players in the intellectual world, but also in the world of luxury. - Gerhard SteidlIt should come as no surprise that Lagerfeld first mentioned the idea of a book scent to German publisher Gerhard Steidl.Karl Lagerfeld should know about such things. His library is world renowned and contains hundreds of thousands of books. That's right, hundreds of thousands of books!Wallpaper* Magazine then commissioned master perfumer...
A Google Pictionary
Sure, we're close to the end of the printed dictionary, for it is perhaps the ultimate printed matter for digital replacement. Now what if we replace the words with images? Welcome to Google book a project by Ben West & Felix Heyes. In Google book, West and Hayes provide a visual rendering of the Google-first mentality that currently permeates and dominates our culture's search for information. Here's what they did :They took the 21,000 words that were in the dictionary they chose and entered each word into Google. The first image that was returned became the visual equivalent.The resulting PDF was...
Hail to the Book! A couple of booksellers get physical
"if they are [books] to be of any use they must be as living friends or acquaintances and the whole art of forming and keeping a library consists in treating them on this footing alike mentally and materially" - from Books in the house by Alfred William Pollard, 1904In this video, London booksellers Adrian Harrington and Jonathan Kearnes take us on a 15 minute tactile journey focusing on the physical, irreplaceable nature of the book object. Whether it is Harrington tying together the long history, from Dickens to Harry Potter, of books being the launching pad for cultural stardom to...
Have you hugged your bookmobile today?
Today, right smack in the middle of National Library Week, is National Bookmobile Day! It's time to celebrate the more than 900 bookmobiles that roam our communities providing essential services to those facing economic, geographic, or physical challenges that prevent them from being able to visit a brick and mortar library.John Amundsen's piece at American Libraries, Bookmobiles: A Proud History, a Promising Future provides a nice overview of these vital mobile institutions:Bookmobiles have a proud history of service dating back to the late 1850s, when a horse-drawn collection of books began making the rounds in Cumbria, England. Here in the...
Did Borders die from a lack of technology? – The Billboard of the Week
Now on sale at Borders amazon.com. Amazing billboard for Aaron Shapiro’s latest book Users Not Customers, a business book focused on how industries must transition intelligently to the digital marketplace.Shapiro also hired a bunch of ex-Borders employees to set up roving book stands in New York City to promote and hand-sell the book. Piece in Adweek - Agency CEO Hires Laid-Off Borders Workers to Sell His Book