reeling and writhing

Under Richards or Richard? depends which album you're reading

“Keith Richards, the grizzled veteran of rock’n’roll excess, has confessed to a secret longing: to be a librarian,” says John Harlow in this profile for the Independent. “After decades spent partying in a haze of alcohol and drugs, Richards will tell in his forthcoming autobiography that he has been quietly nurturing his inner bookworm.”

via MobyLives

Richards owns thousands of books, took refuge in libraries as a child of depressed '50s London, and considers the public library 'a great equaliser'. This is a story to warm the cockles of any shusher's heart, and I think Library Aid has found its patron at last. Thanks to Dennis Johnson for the news.

very tiny library

via Rebecca's Pocket

so finely bound

I collected this stunning photograph from The Nonist and blogged it at mulberry road earlier this year.

The kind Nonist has a very good list of links accompanying his covers shot of books from the British Library's online image database. Enjoy, and happy Easter.

all the news that's left before Santa comes

This story is astonishing. Some entrepreneurs are just whitewater rafters, through and through, aren't they?

Ramona snaffled Peter Stothard, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and had a chat to him about newspaper book reviews a couple of weeks ago.

Lynne is a brave, brave person and I hope podcasting will enable me to listen to her broadcast on teh Beeb when it happens in a week or so, and drink champagne.
If there is anyone out there who wouldn't mind translating that Latin from the BBC's head office in the picture for me, I'd be most grateful.

As Jessamyn West says, will these books get all messed up? Via librarian.net, from Vogue Italia.

And if there are librarians out there looking for a testdrive of things to do with the library's new Kindle before it's released to the users, Kathryn Greenhill has a ripper list here.

Finally - Anne Beilby reports on the Text website that the French rights to Gerald Murnane's The Plains were sold to P.O.L. just before he won the Melbourne Prize. One more country besides Sweden in which Murnane can be enjoyed.

a library of news made by many hands

Peta Hopkins reports at the LINT blog that the digitisation 'crowdsourcing' project the NLA has been conducting in recent times, in order to edit enormous quantities of scanned text from Australia's newspapers, has received its most recent review, which can be read here. 

There are pictures on the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program website which give a visual account of the scanning process by which NLA staff have been adding more and more early newspapers to the database, which now holds 4.3 million fulltext, searchable articles. There are, regrettably, no pictures of library users editing scanned text in the comfort of their own homes, but that's not to say that the program is not receiving support from the punters - as Rose Holley says,

Users have demonstrated a willingness to work towards the ‘common good’, to volunteer their time, energy, skill, knowledge and ideas and to be involved long term in a program of national historic significance. The collaborative activity from this new community is enhancing the quality of the data and therefore the accuracy of full‐text searching in a way that the National Library of Australia could never have achieved using its own resources alone.

The Project details page where this report is published also carries a document of comments from those who volunteered to correct text.

Not only can Australians assist the library by going online, registering and helping to correct scanned text of old, often poorly printed newspapers - if you are aware of old papers that are missing from the library's collection, you can assist the work of the Australian Newspaper Plan by checking them against the list of titles, here. (Lists and shots of found titles, here.) The online documenting of both projects make for interesting reading.

a true desktop has landed

Kathryn Greenhill, Emergent Technologies Specialist at Murdoch University (and indeed for most of Australia's libraries) reviews Microsoft's Surface Computer on her remarkable blog, Librarians Matter.

Kathryn went on a tour of the United States and the Netherlands earlier this year as Australia's main library representative in all things 2.0. Not only is she a highly regarded global ambassador in these matters, but this table is EXACTLY what one of my son's former doctors should have had to manage his paperwork.
(His weapon of choice? a terrific secretary and an extraordinarily messy little backpack. I hope no one reading this knows who I mean, as he is a fantastic specialist.)

When I can find the article where the original research was quoted in which practitioners from the Mayo Clinic were surveyed some years ago to ascertain what kind of screen would best match the way they used documents, I will link to it. And I will send this picture to the specialist if I can find his email address, I think he will appreciate it.

But this is not just good for kids (though the low cost table and applications her husband is developing for use in disability sound wonderful). Oh Nooooo. Click through and have a look, it's a thing of beauty all right.

news flash: Readings shop to open at State Library of Victoria

This news, just to hand.

And this as well - I've read three of them, for once, and loved The Pages and Breath as well as this. Might just pick up Ice anyway, because 'I'm worth it'.

(If you'd like a chance to win them all, enter the Readings competition.)

seasonal bruitings

Fancy a round of handheld Villette sometime soon? Nintendo might be able to help. The first thing we do, let's blast all the Reeds, though. (As you can tell, I didn't really read that feed item properly, did I?)

Alison Croggon was there, watching Warne watch Warne, so read all about it.

Tim Howard, of Sterne, has a review of Murray Bail's The Pages in online journal The Quarterly Conversation.

Of Twain, and buttermilk, and important modern neologisms that aren't as new as we thought they were, Jack Pendarvis sings. Via Maud, comme d'habitude.
Maud's been exceptionally helpful, too, evaluating the iPhone as an e-reader.

Steven Conte has put up some nice book covers and written feelingly of other things at the Summer Read blog, while Sophie C got out a new camera and does Melbourne with her usual visual panache.

Since I started on this the other week, there have also been posts from Toni Jordan that are dry, warm and humorous, as one might expect from the author of her witty first novel Addition, and as I leave for the beach and some reading and festivities of my own, the blogging will continue over there, so get on down.

Other spots to watch include of course Ange's fabulous Literary Minded blog at Crikey, Lisa Dempster's book blog at Unwakeable, where she is reviewing her selection from most of the Summer Reads ( see below!), and Mobylives, which seems to get better every week. (Yes, that whale is sure out there.)

And you might like to have a look at Perry's profiles of litbloggers over at Matilda - skip the first one, 'cause you know all about this space, but you will find some new sites of interest. I certainly did. Thanks, Perry.

FOCL (Friends of Colac Library) rock

'This is not what we call democracy
Change your council, change your world,
just you wait and see'

There's a happy ending - do watch the end. Four of these cyber warriors...oh, watch it and listen to the story. Thanks for this, Georg.

you gotta love this hairy city of books

HAH. Only ONE WRONG. On teh first try. I'm arrogant (that's a clue to the one I got wrong.)

Miriam Burstein found some dead cakes here, which reminded her (and others) of Miss Havisham's wedding feast.

Another week, a new blog to read - what fun. Linh Dinh describes her travels around the States in a recent tour, here on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog.

Antipodean SF#126 is now available, link via HorrorScope. TEN fabulous original science-fiction, fantasy, or horror mini-stories of about 500 words each that will entertain, yet won't take hours to read.

To coincide with his tour, Text Publishing will release two Leonard Cohen novels here.(And I say Hallelujah because Google Reader helped me pull a feed off their new website.)

Mark Thwaite alerts us on ReadySteadyBook to a notification site for new DRM-free e-books.

And according to Bud Parr, there's some Pynchon-lite on the horizon.

She's a famous librarian who writes like a dream, she was here very recently (I could not really justify the outrageous price of the seminar without a current job), and she loved the joint. Of Melbourne, K.G. Schneider, the Free Range Librarian, says:

'Melbourne is a lovely city about as old as San Francisco, with similar Gold Rush origins. It’s the first city I’ve been in for a long time that felt truly sui generis.

Some old cities feel like a set piece, some have had their souls rebuilt into chilly commercial canyons, but Melbourne has kept a lot of character (not without proactive help from its citizens). From the Vic Market to the funky little cafes in alleys, Melbourne resists being bottled. Sydney is beautiful and tidier, but Melbourne has broader shoulders and a way of tossing its hair that says, “I’ve been through a lot.”'
(And yes, I've cut the links to her photos there, but you can see them from her site.)

Beijing blogging kicks off Summer Read

Just quietly - Alice Pung's posts from Beijing on the State Library's Reading Victoria blog, part of the Summer Read program, should not be missed:

I am writing from Beijing, city of lights at night – rubies of car tail-lights down one direction and diamonds of headlights up the other. There are so many roads here. They say the National Bird of China is the Construction Crane, because two thirds of the world’s cranes are here. This country is developing like a bewildered adolescent going through a rapid growth spurt, with no time to stop and consider their physiological marvels. Here, there are massive architectural marvels standing side by side, all vying for attention; like a teenager displaying their designer clothes.

It looks like I will be able to have a great summer break myself, with all those authors blogging up a storm. Last year's blog made for great reading too. So do get that feed; there were some hiccups with it initially but it seems all right now.

* And as noted below, Lisa Dempster is off and away with reviews of her reads from the SLV list at her blog, Unwakeable. Lisa is editor of the Melbourne Veg Food Guide, and has suitably commenced with Charmaine O'Brien's Flavours of Melbourne.

the rarin' librarian (w)rap

Gracious, what a rarin' librarian she always is. I am determined to read all of Jessamyn's posts without fail from now on.
In her most recent one she gives a wrap on her speaking engagements for 2008 and provides links, as is her generous way, to her totally revamped and updated Library 2.0 presentations given recently in Albany, New York.

I'm only just starting to mooch through it all, but noticed, apropos of nothing, that her profile on GoodReads is provided here in this presentation she gave recently on Library 2.0 and Readers' Advisory services, which (among other things) gives you some idea of how this site works without having to join. (Why are so many social networking sites like that? ecch.)
I got an invitation from a writing friend to join Goodreads this week, and emailed him back, asking, really? He then confessed that the "Invite a Friend" facility there is a bit tricksy - he had sent out over 1000 invites, which annoyed him no end.

So I was wary of signing up at all - I"m now able to look inside, thanks to Jessamyn.

But of course there is much, much more in those Albany talks, especially on this "Great Big HTML page". Do consider, particularly if you want a concise comparison of the usability issues of basic Web 2.0 tools anytime (about halfway down the page.)
And for something completely different - I might just include her "Ask Mefi" widget sometime, from which I found a link to this article from the NYT.
(Just in case you were wondering what else you might need in order to become a household god/goddess at some time or other.)

sumer is icumen in

The State Library's Summer Reads blog kicks off this Friday - the launch was held last week, and the blog is nearly there. An even mix of fiction and non-fiction titles this year marks a definite shift away from the 2006 inaugural program, evocatively titled "20 Novels Set Close To Home". (I always thought that was going to be difficult to sustain indefinitely, myself.)

Titles to check out on the 2008 list include Toni Jordan's Addition and Sophie Cunningham's Bird (both of which I have read and liked), Nam Le's collection of stories, The Boat, and an anthology of Australian science fiction which looks pretty darn cool.

Who are these guys? do we know any of these names? speak now, or forever hold your peace. Link via ReadySteadyBook blog.

If you are interested in work in translation, it might be fun to follow ReadySteadyBook blogger Mark Thwaite's progress through the reading for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2009 - he will be blogging about it here.

Probably the very last interview for Studs here. And some notices, here.

MTV is taking the attitude that if it cannot beat illegal users of its material, it will join them. Link via ReadWriteWeb.

Finally - Peacay has some great shots of 'old' Sydney, here.

i know what you read on All Hallows

Carrie Frye has had a series of Halloween stories running over the past week at Terry Teachout's blog, as well as providing a link to the Britannica Blog's Haunted Library series.

Bridgeport Public Library: Some library staff members say they have encountered a ghost in the 6th or 7th floor stacks near the historical materials in this 1927 building. The entity, which they have nicknamed Lola, is said to be friendly and helps find missing items. Former Director Michael A. Golrick said that something opened the garage door that the delivery van uses three times during the night of February 22–23, 2006, causing alarms to go off. A policeman who searched the building during the second alert said he heard someone “turning pages” on the 6th floor.

The list reads like a US library X-Files, and it sounds like quite a few librarians want to believe the truth is out there. At the old Bernardsville Public library in New Jersey, the resident spook, Phyllis, was so active that staff issued her a library card, saying that Phyllis “was not put on our computer with the rest of us mortals, but her card is always available should she choose to use it,” while one fairly superstitious librarian in Pittsburgh has claimed that books play 'hide and seek' on the shelves.

There are, reassuringly, a couple of libraries on the campus of Pennsylvania State University that have more robust manifestations, including a 'grumbling voice' in the laptop library and 'transparent girls thumbing through books, disembodied glowing red eyes, bookcarts that move without anyone present, and all sorts of other phenomena'.
If there's a haunted Oz library out there, do share.

rocking in the free world

I didn't get there - but Alison, as always, brings it on home. What a session. After her scintillating readings and discussion at MWF of Akhmatova, though, she was a natural choice for conversing with Patti Smith.
(Now I can't quite believe I've introduced myself to someone who has interviewed Patti Smith, can I.) Be sure to cross to Alison's link to read Chris Boyd's interview too.

Moving right along, from First Monday, the information management online journal, comes this article about Google and the Open Content Alliance digitisation initiatives.
Author Kalev Leetaru is interested in why no comparisons of both have been made to date, and claims that:

While the academic community has lauded OCA’s “open” model and condemned the proprietary Google, all is not always as it seems. Upon delving deeper into the underpinnings of both projects, we find Google achieves greater transparency in many regards, while OCA’s operational reality is more proprietary than often thought.

(Link via Creative Economy Online.)

Comics on a DVD? OH NOES. On the other hand, perhaps I would be able to obtain that Disney comic with Donald as Jason trying to win the Golden Fleece, that I remember from my earliest years. Yes, that was my earliest exposure to the tale of the dragon's teeth, I'm afraid. (From the Journal of Electronic Publishing).

what's on my table, mabel

From the Bedside Books Club quarterly meet this evening, here's my list of table reads, which was available there in hard copy. Here, of course, it comes with links to reviews and other descriptive noises, where available.

And my totally personal categories for this rather idiosyncratic list are - recent good reads, anticipated good 'uns, and desired rereading.

It was important to me at the time of writing the talk a couple of weeks ago to include rereading. It remains important, not just as the component of a talk, but also as a practice. It won't happen overnight, but by gum, it's going to happen.

Recently delighted by:

Adamson, Robert. The Goldfinches of Baghdad (poetry)

Carey, Peter. Theft: A Love Story

Cheever, John. The World of Apples

Cunningham, Sophie. Bird

Elliott, Will. The Pilo Family Circus (most of the reviews for this contain spoilers, though I'm delighted to see it was published in the UK in 2007, after release in Australia in 2006. Just read it.)

Falconer, Delia. The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers

Ford, Richard. The Lay Of The Land (third of Ford's Bascombe trilogy - all three come recommended)

Gray, Robert. Afterimages (poetry)

­__________. The Land I Came Through Last (memoir)

HEAT magazine

Hollinghurst, Alan. The Line Of Beauty

Hyland, M.J. How The Light Gets In

__________. Carry Me Down

Island - 'a magazine of excellence and variety'.

Jach, Antoni. Napoleon’s Double

Johnson, A. Frances. Eugene’s Falls

Knox, Sara. The Orphan Gunner

Kureishi, Hanif. Something To Talk About

___________. The Buddha Of Suburbia

___________. Midnight All Day (stories)

Malouf, David. The Great World: "that  rarity, a novel of genuinely epic scope" - and I agree with Publishers' Weekly there.

Miller, Alex. Conditions of Faith

Mitchell, David, Number9 Dream

(Cloud Atlas is also magnificent).

Moore, Lisa. Alligator

O’Connor, Andrew. Tuvalu

Stow, Randolph. Visitants

Van Loon, Julienne, Road Story

Wright, Alexis. Carpentaria

Looking forward to:

Ballard, J.G. Complete Short Stories

Conrad, Joseph. Youth

Some more Pynchon

Jackson, Shirley.The Lottery

­_____________.We Have Always Lived In The Castle

Jach, Antoni. The Layers Of The City

Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain (recommencing and FINISHING)

O’Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia

Yates, Richard. Revolutionary Road (will it be coming to a theatre soon near you, though? I wonder.)

Want to reread:

Ashton-Warner, Sylvia. Spinster

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre

Hazzard, Shirley. The Great Fire

De Kretser, Michelle. The Lost Dog
(Conflicted about this one and need to understand if its mannered style was a problem, and if so, why.)

Maguire, Emily. The Gospel According To Luke
(rereading is in order, to reconsider the judgments I made about it in a review in 2006.)

The first half of The Magic Mountain

Toibin, Colm. The Master

(This links to Toibin's website, one of the most accessible and interesting author spaces  I've found anywhere online.)

Winton, Tim. The Riders

Wordsworth’s early edition of The Prelude of 1799, in only two books rather than twelve -raw, brief and arresting, and still available from Norton along with the 1805 and 1850 versions.

What I am also looking forward to  if I can handle the suspense:

Bei Dao – poetry and fiction. (Prominent Chinese poet who visited Australia in 2007).

Enright, Anne. What Are You Like
(reviewed by James Wood in 2000.)

R.F. Foster, Luck and the Irish: A brief history of change, 1970-2000

Harmon, Joshua. Quinnehtukqut
A debut novel by a teacher of writing from  Vassar.

McCann, A.L. The White Body of Evening
Recommended somewhere by Ian Syson.

Murnane, Gerald. The Plains

Grace Paley and Ann Patchett – anything! I need to catch up with them.

Portis, Charles. True Grit
A 1968 classic ‘comic Western’ which was reissued with an afterword by Donna Tartt recently

Silvey, Craig. Rhubarb (shortlisted for the Vogel around 2003)

‘Silvey shows amazing maturity and confidence for such a young writer. This offbeat love story about a blind girl and reclusive cello maker has a strong affection for its eccentric cast of characters and a ripe Australian sense of humour.’ That’s what the Vogel judges said. James Ley saw it differently at the time.

Zagajewski, Adam. Another Beauty
Colm Toibin describes Zagajewski as 'the best prose essayist alive'.(Critical Mass blog)

Read ‘em all already? Then have a sticky here sometime, and
don’t forget to check out Donald Barthelme’s suggestions while you are there…

(Apologies to those reading in feedreaders, I have updated this today.)

lucifer's sensibility iz going down the tubes

It is lucky Twitter wasn't around in Eliot's day - Milton is up for some serious dissociation over there.

Jennifer Mills is travelling in the States and blogging, vividly as usual, all about it here.

It sounds like Eddie Campbell's parents' attic is the perfect archive away from the archive. That's one graphic artist whose parents bought some good books, isn't it?

On the subject of children's books, this small but well-formed Vintage books blog came to my attention via WeHeartBooks, a sweet site dedicated by bookselling mums to young readers and their parents everywhere. (Found via a MWF blog alert, of all things. Love this searching stuff.)
The only truly amazing kids books I own in collectors' terms, though, are two pristine Ant and Bee reprints we found on Brunswick Street about six years ago, bought for the future with my daughters' blessing - we all felt they was something we could not leave in the shop. They are no longer worth about $300 each, but even when they were, mine were not for sale, they are to read with little people only. (And serious comedians of course.)

Finally, do keep an eye out for what Boynton finds in that NLA Newspaper archive, because it's bound to be gold.

a zest for poetry

In October, Chris Wallace-Crabbe will run a program on the history and appreciation of poetry at the Australian Poetry Centre at Glenfern, St. Kilda: said program will run for six weeks, at a cost of $300 to non-members of APC.

I am not at all crazy about the way APC has used Wordpress to organise this news and information site, so be prepared for the link here (to APC Buzz) to run something quite different as time passes (and in fact the information page at the APC website suggests its e-mag, Zest, is a temporary service anyhow. But WOT, NO PERMALINX??? I don't like the snapshots all over the index page, either. The tabs at the top of the homepage are much easier to use.)
So just in case you can't find this news in a few weeks time without scrolling down that page at Zest, here's what will be covered:

A six week course on the art of poetry and its long history, ranging from pre-literate cultures in which it had story-telling and choric roles down to our own time. We will look at how Classical cultures, Christianity, the rise of printing and of the electronic media affected poetry’s themes and its forms. The course will also show how Australian poetry rose out of Western traditions, and speculate on where poetry might be going next. Some key poems will be looked at in detail, but the broad, changing picture will be kept in mind. All interested readers or writers are welcome.

The text is John Leonard, ed., Seven Centuries of Verse in English (OUP, Melbourne), which is in print and readily available. Other materials will be provided at times for discussion.

Book early as numbers are limited.

There is also a terrific report at the Director's Desk section of the APC blog, from Teresa Bell, on her recent overseas trip, where she inspected national poetry centres in Ireland and the UK, and at Southbank found that the budget at the UK Saisons Poetry Library includes funding to employ TWELVE librarians (as well as purchase all the publications to keep them busy, eh).

She has come home dreaming of many things for Melbourne's Centre for Books and Ideas, and for our national Poetry Centre - it sounds like her trip was very fruitful.

on the side of the user

This is one of the occasional pleas from Jessamyn West, one of the original revolting librarians, to OCLC to get real about the digital divide and public libraries, among other things.

I was lucky enough to meet Jessamyn when she was in Melbourne last year, at Mr Tulk with an enterprising bunch of new librarians. I continue to find her blog engrossing - I've yet to read Revolting Librarians Redux, but in both incarnations it made quite a stir.

What I love about her work is that she is constantly evaluating what may or may not work in the bright shiny world of library tech from the perspective of the people who have to use it, be they librarians or clients. Her approach is practical rather than deliberately iconoclastic, and most refreshing.

what a picture

Emdashes reports regarding a new blog at the New Yorker that has a rather apt provenance: as one of its authors says, "We like to think of the book bench as a state of mind, too: a place for considering literary matters great and small—and for occasionally baring our teeth." I'm subscribing.

Over at Libraries Interact Kathryn Greenhill (of Librarians Matter) announces a prize for the booklover or librarian whom the Gale publishing company decides can best justify their love for books in song and video.

And this is just here because it's a damn good read, being something of a classic post from a great Australian blogger. Note the blog saving the accommodation crisis, slap bang in the middle. Rock and roll will satisfy my soooo-oul.

i do love a good book deal

I went and commented on this post when I first saw it in my reader, then revisited after Maud linked to it. There are now 350-odd comments, and they make for good reading for anyone who was interested in the State Library's Text Appeal literary speed-dating events in early 2007.

I have managed to find Marieke Hardy's fabulous article about this too - no surprise that our royal Ms Fits has cracked an International Bloggie, either. About bloody time. And what a funny blog awards page, no permalinks??? that freaking page goes on forever.

Anyway. Rachel Donadio's NY Times article, which she refers to in her post, is also quite funny:

For most people, love conquers literary taste. “Most of my friends are indeed quite shallow, but not so shallow as to break up with someone over a literary difference,” said Ben Karlin, a former executive producer of “The Daily Show” and the editor of the new anthology “Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me.” “If that person slept with the novelist in question, that would probably be a deal breaker — more than, ‘I don’t like Don DeLillo, therefore we’re not dating anymore.’”

All important material to consider, if you feel a row over The Corrections is brewing between you and a loved one sometime soon. (And I'm not suggesting that's the subject of the last link, either - it's just a damn good post on that book, and other matters.)

borrowers alive, and occasionally buying as well

$85,000 from lending rights to one Australian author is not too shabby, is it?
Susan Wyndham is enjoying speculating who that author might have been in 2007. (The Age rather drily informed us on the weekend that said author remains anonymous).

And while Max Barry certainly isn't English, he might be pleased to hear about this.
A spokesperson for MLA, the UK government's advisory body for libraries, claims that due to the cheaper prices of books,
"people who couldn't afford books before and borrowed them are now buying them on the high street."

I occasionally worry about what will happen when all the old Australian Book Reviews crumble to dust, as there is no comprehensive digital preservation policy operating for it at present. I'm not quite sure I should be so concerned after reading bits of the Companion to Digital Humanities (Blackwell, 2004) which has been published online.

In chapter 37, a general introduction to issues of preservation in humanities computing, Abby Smith writes:

Preservation by benign neglect has proven an amazingly robust strategy over time, at least for print-on-paper. One can passively manage a large portion of library collections fairly cheaply. One can put a well-catalogued book on a shelf in good storage conditions and expect to be able to retrieve it in 100 years in fine shape for use if no one has called it from the shelf. But neglect in the digital realm is never benign. Neglect of digital data is a death sentence. A digital object needs to be optimized for preservation at the time of its creation (and often again at the time of its deposit into a repository), and then it must be conscientiously managed over time if it is to stand a chance of being used in the future.

(Link via Grand Text Auto, where the publication of a new Companion to Digital Literary Studies is also announced.)

where content is king

From Jessamyn West, this link to a post by Rochelle, a librarian in the States who is asking some very sensible questions about the download system on the Kindle, and how its digital content management affects lending between family members, or in libraries.
Bud Parr reports that a Brooklyn bookshop employee has won the Brooklyn Public Library's startup competition grant of $15,000 to start her own bookstore.
On visiting Jessica's blog to read about this happy news, I find she's added a section to her links list of bookseller blogs.
(In usual Blogger style, the links list is not visible on separate post pages, only on the home page.)
So if there are bookshops out there wondering how they do it in Brooklyn, I recommend you start on this page, on the right, and work your way down.

a few library things

Over at the Great Victorian Summer Read blog, author blogging is in full swing. One of my favourite posts is here, from Alex Miller - really belongs in a biography, I'm sure that's where it will end up one day.
I did get a bit hot under the collar when I read Max Barry's post about libraries though. He sure got me big time.

Meanwhile, the Library of Congress has got all down and dirty with Flickr, in case you hadn't heard already - for those pictorial bloggers out there who would like some free copy, cop this.The beauty of this initiative is that all images in the LOC Flickr collection are already cleared for copyright, so you are saved the trouble of trawling through the general collection to check what's clear and what's not.

In other library news, the next anthology of Best of Technology Writing is now online at digitalculturebooks, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Library. It can also be purchased in hard copy.
Link via if:book.

new victorian sunscreen is a book

And it's on again - Reading Victoria has a new name and a smart new blog. The Summer Read at the State Library of Victoria has been launched for 2007-8.

There are no huge surprises on the program, apart from a reduced Celebrities and Critics section, nicely repackaged and retitled as 'Reviewers' Views', and including, this year, Good Reading Magazine editor Alison Pressley and ABC books interviewer Ramona Koval. (I note however that there is a "Celebrities Reading Day" slotted in for Australia Day.) But first prize for most evocative contribution to the Reviewers' section definitely goes in my book to Claire Sutherland, books writer for the Herald Sun:

My teenage summer holidays always meant a banana lounge, sunglasses and an eventual book-shaped white patch on my torso. The white patch could have been left by anything from Stephen King's latest frightfest to a George Orwell novel (I devoured his entire canon in an Orwell orgy one Christmas holidays. Geek? Moi?).

Bless her boots, she also states a firm preference for the meaty, rather than the escapist, summer read, and has named Matt Condon's recent Snowy tract, Trout Opera, as her seasonal viand. (She could, of course, follow that up with Dorothy Porter's El Dorado from the list, if the brain is still feeling undernourished. What a pleasure to see a verse novel on a list like this.)

Along with the books (of course), the best new feature, in my opinion, is the introduction of author posts to the Summer Read blog, which augurs well for a continued increase in popularity in the application of this special new sunscreen called  Victorian reading (as well as some respite from UV rays while people are online posting comments.)