A green Morocco bound book with a lovely floral border stamped in red and gold by Rivière

A mid-century advertising pamphlet for “Low Cost Homes” in Akron, Ohio with an illustration of two women outside a house

The endpapers of “The Happy Prince and Other Stories” by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Charles Robinson

The cover of “Manual of Weeds” by Ada Georgia (1919) with a cover design of dandelions stamped in orange and green on blue (?) cloth

A few of the sights from the Akron Antiquarian Book & Paper Show, not including the Nonesuch edition of William Morris’ selected writings that I walked away with.

OSU’s leaf of this Maghrebi Qur’an manuscript, formerly owned by the Lima Public Library (one of the primary recipients of Ege’s leaves).

A perfectly self-conscious book object!!

The opening of the prospectus with the text about “handling books in a cleanly manner” with a circular stain from the bottom of a bottle/glass on the facing page.

An opening of the prospectus with the text about “handling books in a cleanly manner” with inky fingerprints and a dripping stain in the bottom margins.

An opening of the prospectus with the text about “handling books in a cleanly manner” with a dog ear, a laid in flower, a portion of a page cut away, and handwritten marginal notes in Italian.

An opening of the prospectus with the text about “handling books in a cleanly manner” with inky/greasy fingerprints in the bottom margin.

The prospectus from the Grabhorn Press’ 1925 edition of Richard de Bury’s “Philobiblon” (a medieval text all about books) includes chapter 17, “Of handling books in a cleanly manner, and keeping them in order” with ironically, intentionally added fingerprints, laid in flowers, marginalia, etc.

A colorful printed silk square with a cartoon depicting US and Allied leaders carrying Kaiser Wilhelm II to a fiery grave. Uncle Sam looks on with a shovel. The caption reads “Uncle Sam is ready to bury the chief of the barbarians/Uncle Sam e pronto a seppellire il capo dei barbari”

A close up of the gravestone, which reads “To the Violator of Belgium; To the Murder of Defenseless Women and Children; To the Executioner of the Innocent Victims on the Lusitania; To the Slaughterer of Unarmed Civilians; To the Arch Foe of Democracy, Rapacious Robber of all Nations’ Liberty; To the Champion Barbarian of all the Ages, Soaked with the Blood of Innocents crushed by Brutality; This stone of everlasting disgrace is dedicated; by the free people fighting for justice, liberty, and lasting peace on behalf of all humanity.

The most interesting archival object of the week: this gorgeously printed silk propaganda cartoon aimed at Italian Americans, glorifying the US’s role in WW1. Presented by a student and discussed in the grad seminar on decolonization embedded in our department this semester.

Preserving the Craft: Baskerville’s typographic legacy lives on as punches go online for first time Hundreds of rare steel punches used to create the original Baskerville typeface have been digitised and made freely available online, allowing unprecedented insight into the work of one of Britain’s m...

Congratulations to my fabulous colleagues on the Small Performances project and the clever people at @camdiglib.bsky.social on launching the Baskerville Punches collection and associated RTI embedded viewer www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/bask...

Blood
Phlegm
Yellow bile
Black bile

In 1900, German colonial authorities hanged Mangi Molelia for resisting their expansion into what is now Tanzania. A few days ago, his great-grandson Tony Molelia visited German to pray with Mangi Molelia's bones, held in one museum, and to wrap himself in the cloak his murders also stole.

And so we as a community repeat again and again… yet university administrations etc. are so obsessed with THE NEXT BIG TECH that they refuse to listen to what their actual faculty, students, and researchers are actually telling them they need.

So little is online, AND digital surrogates are not capable of reproducing the physical experience of handling cultural heritage/historical objects in real life. The crackle of the turning pages, the smell of the glue or the parchment/paper, the nuances of the binding structure, and on and on and on

Has anyone studied how researchers and academics use library catalogues? I'm struggling to find any literature on researcher (not student) information needs and information seeking behavior. Any leads?

My focus is rare books/archives/special collections, but I'm looking broadly right now.

*Hasegawa* Settan’s woodcuts are so vibrant and full of life—every individual figure has a different expression, outfit, activity, etc. and we can learn/observe so much about daily life in early 19th-c. Japan from examining these illustrations. More than 600 woodcuts in this work alone!

A woodcut by Hasagawa Settan showing people shopping for plants in c. 1830s Edo.

A woodcut by Hasagawa Settan showing people shopping for plants in c. 1830s Edo.

A woodcut by Hasagawa Settan showing people shopping for plants in c. 1830s Edo.

Plant shopping in c. 1830s Japan!

Woodcuts by Hasagawa Settan (長谷川雪旦, 1778-1843). In 江戶名所圖會, a collection of plates and description of the important places in Edo.

In the Herman J. Albrecht Library of Historical Architecture, on deposit at OSU libraries.

Hugh Thomson’s famous 1894 “peacock” edition of Pride & Prejudice, marred by reinforced book cloth spine and corners that cover the design.

Absolutely DEVASTATED and yet enthralled by this past librarian’s “conservation effort” which resulted in the marring of this most famous of cover designs and yet also yielded a very interesting book object

Every Opening Ceremony, but this one in particular, has Eurovision levels of camp/wtf is happening and I love it.

Notgeld—local currency made in Germany during the Weimar Republic.

A table with a full-size facsimile of Audubon’s Birds of America and a smaller reproduction, both open to the flamingo plate. The flamingo was so big that Audubon had to depict it with its neck bent at a low angle in order to fit it, at a 1:1 ratio, on the page.

Got our Audubon facsimile out for class as a reminder that size matters!

A woodcut bookplate design in a circular shape, with a ship in water and the name “Frank H Whitmore”.

A woodcut bookplate design of a tree growing from and round a broken pot, on a hill or mound, with a gated wall in the background.

A woodcut bookplate design with an orange circular border saying “Medieval” and the alphabet, with an image of a scribe writing at a table.

A woodcut bookplate design of a man posed next to a tree stump, reading.

Other Rockwell Kent bookplate highlights:

A hardcover book from 1937 with a plaid design. It’s a paper-wrapped case binding? With book board covers… what is the name of this?

The engraved title page of an English Bible printed in 1616. It’s a folio-sized Geneva Bible, one of the most significantly Early Modern English translations of the Bible, printed by Robert Barker.

A postcard depicting Cleveland’s Terminal Tower (which we called Tower City growing up) dating ca. 1905. There are streetcars in front of the skyscraper, which was built 1926-7.

A woodcut bookplate design by Rockwell Kent in 1930, depicting a woman posing in an ornate touched ca. 1880s (?) style dress. The name printed below miss lady is “Nana.”

Books + postcard + fabulous bookplate design I saw at work recently! book historians, chime in on printing technique of the postcard—would this be multicolor halftone? Traditional lithography? Also, descriptors for the style of the plaid bookbinding? Decorative paper boards…?

Details in alt

It’s not enough to say Abolish ICE. It’s not enough to vote no on ICE funding. It’s not enough to confront Kristi Noem or Greg Bovino with Stern Words.

If you are a leader, what are you doing to protect your community? How are you using your power, privilege, and position to confront this threat?

A Founding Father of NPR Worries About Its Fate

Bill Siemering, founding program director of NPR, author of its mission statement, has asked me to inquire if any profs might be interested in a Zoom class visit? No honorarium necessary. Bill founded All Things Considered, Fresh Air, won a MacArthur, etc.

The semester starts in a week and we already have 85 class sessions scheduled in Special Collections. Departments from Biology to Landscape Architecture to Spanish to Theatre, all coming to use rare books and archives! Huzzah!

But agreed on all of your points. In a way it’s also just evidence of use, which we treasure in historical forms but penalize women/queer folks for in our own…

I wear nails of many different kinds! My takeaways: normal polish marks books, especially darker colors (almost like crayon/colored pencil look on paper). Dip and acrylic, which are fused into a solid under a UV light (?don’t ask me about the science) don’t, in my experience. Idk about shellaq!

My niece and nephew (4 and 7) have been LOVING this of late and it’s as good as it was when I was a kid!

A photo of a folder with advertisements and catalogs for printing supplies.

First day back in office—mid-century printing and type catalogs. Could be worse!

Here's what it looked like on my return to work this morning - beautiful red brick gabled building of Girton's Hall, with a dusting of snow on the grass in front.

JOB ALERT!

3-year postdoc at @girtoncollege.bsky.social - research anything you like in History, Archaeology or Anthropology in a wonderful, welcoming scholarly community.

PLEASE SHARE! Closes 12 January

www.girton.cam.ac.uk/job-vacancie...

Evelina by Frances Burney, or as I like to call it, Men Behaving Badly

Spear by Nicola Griffith. The piece of Arthuriana that I have been dreaming of.

Restoration by Ave Barrera. The body horror and grody men made my toes curl in discomfort but the interweaving of memory and perspective were absolute perfection.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. I couldn’t put it down and can’t get it out of my head.

Book reading highlights from 2025. The year of not as much reading as I may have wished, but a year in which I got to discover these awesome books and their writers—which makes it a great reading year!

A small black book with a gold design on the cover.

Mustn’t forget this little Art Nouveau Evelina (Frances Burney, printed 1904), which I discovered via Rebecca Romeny’s phenomenal Jane Austen’s Bookshelf (2025).

The title page of Kelmscott, Doves and Ashendene (ed. Will Ransom, 1952). Essayists include William Morris, Emery Walker, Sydney Cockerell, T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, and Alfred W. Pollard—all major figures in the Arts & Crafts and fine press movements.

The delightfully impressed gilt-tooled spine and front board of a leather bound book, The Idylls of the King by Lord Tennyson (printed 1863).

A shelf of books, including the two-volume Life of William Morris (Mackail, 1899), the Idylls of the King, the British Library’s lovely and affordable facsimile of their first edition copy of Pride & Prejudice, and Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney (2025).

The cover of The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1st U.S. edition, 2012). A Christmas gift from my dad, who has been gifting me English editions of this, my (and our) favorite series for years now. 🩷 this is #3; The Shadow of the Wind is #1 in both the series and the list of my favorite books ever written.

Book collecting highlights of 2025! Indulging my loves of Arthuriana, tactile and beautiful bindings, the fine press movement, Austen (in facsimile), and the works of Carlos Ruiz Zafón.