The New-England chapter of the ABAA is pleased to invite members of the ABAA, the trade in general, and all interested observers to a special one-day "unseminar" entitled "New Tools: Marketing Approaches, Platforms, & Technologies for Antiquarian Booksellers," to be held Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. We plan a full day of presentations, speakers, and open discussion. Since all of our distinguished panelists are either active book dealers or people serving the larger community of antiquarian booksellers, we are calling "New Tools" an "unseminar" to emphasize the participatory and "bottom-up" character of the event. Participants include Dan Gregory of Between the Covers, who will deliver two full presentations during the morning session. First up is "Rare Book Photography for the Busy Professi... [more New England Chapter “Unseminar” on New Tools: Marketing Approaches, Platforms, & Technology]

Click here to view a photos of "five architecturally impressive libraries". I was especially intrigued by the fact that Yale's rare book collection is housed in a building built with "marble sliced so thin that it allows filtered light into the interior of the building, while protecting the stacks from harmful ultraviolet radiation." Pretty cool stuff! I would love to see it in person. Houses for Books: Five Architecturally Impressive Libraries [more Curbed Presents Five Architecturally Impressive Libraries]

The Burns Library at Boston College has made a surprising discovery in their own Yeats archiveYeats' unpublished first play, Love and Death, written in 1884 when he was only 18 or 19 years of age. The play was hidden among boxes of journals, notebooks and correspondence that had been long overlooked. It was only last year when the play was re-discovered by the library as part of an in-house project to find "'high impact' candidates for digitization" in BC's archives. A team of more than 15 librarians, archivists, photographers, literary experts and a dedicated transcriber, began working on digitizing the play and taking extra precaution to "present the whole object as if you can hold it in your hands". To accomplish this, the team presents the transcribed text alongside of high-resolution photographs of the handwritten pages. Click here ... [more Burns Library 'Finds' and Digitizes Unpublished Yeats Play]

UPDATE: These items have been recovered. Over the weekend of July 24/25 the following items were stolen from the premises of R.A. Gekoski Booksellers, 13 Bathurst Mews, London W2 2SB. Anyone with information about any of the items, which may be offered for sale by the thieves, may contact us on 0207-706-2735, or by email at rick@gekoski.com. The individual items are listed below: AMIS, KINGSLEY. Typed letter signed, Lemmons , 1974. One side of a single page of headed notepaper, small quarto; 'Dear Mr. Austin', 'Yours sincerely', and signed 'Kingsley Amis'. A brief note, responding to a request to speak at a conference. Amis queries the breakdown of speaking and question time at the upcoming event, requests transport, and thanks Mr Austin - an editor at Cape- for what, presumably, were laudatory remarks made earlier in the correspondence: ... [more UPDATED: Theft From R.A. Gekoski Booksellers]

Click here to read a Q & A with Robert Darnton, a cultural historian and the Director of Harvard University's library system, on the proposed Digital Public Library of America. Mr. Darnton made one comment in particular that speaks to worried murmurs in rare book trade: One thing we have learned from the new discipline known as “the history of the book” is that one means of communication does not displace another. Manuscript publishing actually expanded after the invention of printing by movable type, and it continued to flourish for three centuries after Gutenberg. Instead of lamenting “the death of the book,” I believe we should celebrate new possibilities of combining the printed codex with electronic technology … .The information ecology is getting richer, not thinner. Thoughts? A bookshelf the size of the world [more Q & A with Robert Darnton on the Proposed Digital Public Library of America]

The Barnstable-Hyannis Patch is featuring "10 Questions with Isaiah Thomas Books' Jim Visbeck". Click here to read! 10 Questions with Isaiah Thomas Books' Jim Visbeck [more Member in the News: Jim Visbeck]

The Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii at Manoa is very grateful to Michael Hollander for the recovery of 218 booksand for alerting the Library of the books' absence in the first place. Michael was contacted by someone in Hawaii who was offering over 200 books for sale. The books were from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century and their total estimated value is between $50,000 to $100,000. Upon receiving six books to examine, Michael noted that they were all stamped as property of the University of Hawaii and had UH bar codes, and he immediately contacted the Hamilton Library to confirm that they were indeed offering these volumes for sale. Associate librarian Alan Grosenheider was alarmed by the call because the UH " sell books like other libraries." An internal investigation began and librarians discovered that the books we... [more Member in the News: Michael Hollander]

Open Letter to Dealers in the Collectibles Trades: Earlier this month convicted fraudster and thief John Charles Gilkey of California was arrested for a parole violation stemming from a series of incidents in San Francisco late last year. Now that he has been re-apprehended, he will be brought up again on charges either later this month or next in San Francisco. A career criminal, Mr. Gilkey has a long record of defrauding rare book and autograph dealers and dealers in other collectibles, with the use of stolen credit card numbers or with bad checks. His first arrest goes back more than a decade to the 1990s when he was brought up on charges for passing bad checks. He was arrested and jailed for credit card fraud in 2003, then released on parole less than two years later. In autumn 2010 he was arrested again after threatening to burn down... [more An Open Letter to Dealers in the Collectibles Trades: Seeking Additional Information on John Gilkey]

Vladimir Radunsky is an author and illustrator of children's books, and has created illustrations for Mark Twain's Advice to Little Girls, a story originally published in The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories. Of Twain's writing, Radunsky says, "He did not squat down to be heard and understood by children, but asked them to stand on their tiptoes—to absorb the kind of language and humor suitable for adults." Please click here to view the slideshow and Radunsky's accompanying post. Slide Show: Mark Twain's 'Advice to Little Girls' by Vladimir Radunsky [more Slide Show: Mark Twain’s ‘Advice to Little Girls’ by Vladimir Radunsky]

Flavorwire has a great post entitled 10 Unconventional Bookstores For Your Browsing Pleasure. Browse away, the photos are great! (And my new mission is to find the 'speakeasy-style' bookstore in NYC!) 10 Unconventional Bookstores For Your Browsing Pleasure [more 10 Unconventional Bookstores]