With the crack of the gavel at three major auctions tomorrow, Rare Book Week gets underway. Within the span of a few hours, we'll see two of the antiquarian book world's highest high points on the block: Audubon's Birds of America (estimate: $3-5 million) and this dust-jacketed first edition of The Great Gatsby (estimate: $250,000-350,000).   

Rare Book Week, a designation for the week-long stretch of exceptional book events in New York City from April 1-8, was launched by FB&C earlier this year. Headlined by the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which opens for a preview night on Thursday followed by full days on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the week offers a second antiquarian book fair, a fine press book fair, and a fair devoted exclusively to autographs and historical documents, plus nine book and manuscript auctions, and more than a dozen incredible exhibits and events around town.

And one more event to add today: author Nicholas Basbanes will be signing copies of his new book, On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History at the NYABF on Saturday from 1-3 p.m. Nick has been a longtime columnist for FB&C, and we look forward to celebrating with him.

From modern chapbooks to medieval French manuscripts, children's books to Revolutionary War broadsides, vernacular photography to rare maps -- this week has it all. Featured recently in Robb Report, the inaugural Rare Book Week is "bound" to be a hit. Will you be there?   

Image via Sotheby's.

A guest post by Webb Howell, FB&C's publisher

Pete Rose, for all his faults, recognized that "Baseball is a universal language." The first of April assures us that the language is being spoken again and the first pitches of teams everywhere begin to roll over home plate.
Swann Auction Galleries' April 8th sale of "Printed & Manuscript Americana" offers several items of baseball interest, including artwork (above) for a cigar box label depicting Hans Wagner. Better known as "Honus" Wagner, the famed shortstop became one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Wagner may be best known for being the face of one of the rarest baseball cards around. A mere 57 cards are known to exist, with sale of the most recent ones toping one, then two, million dollars.

The artwork is watercolor and the pose he strikes is identical to the baseball card. The estimate is $1,500/2,500. Other baseball-related items in the auction also include an 1884 lithograph of vignettes of 12 active players and a group of 30 Hall of Fame player signatures, among them 4 Negro League greats.

LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, also notes the start of baseball season with a feature on "America at Play." While not specifically about baseball, the article wows the reader with the Library's tremendous collection of sports holdings, of which they make the undoubtedly truthful claim as being "the most extensive in the country."

Of particular note is the recent acquisition of recorded sports interviews, among them the Bob Wolff Collection, that dates to the start of his career in 1939. Wolff began as a broadcaster on the Durham, NC, CBS-affiliated station WDNC, while a student at Duke University. Included in this collection are interviews with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, and play-by-play coverage of Don Larsen's 1956 World Series perfect game. More of the LOC's baseball collection can be found at: http://www.loc.gov/topics/baseball/

Images: Courtesy of Swann Galleries; Library of Congress.

With Jonathan Safran Foer as one of the night's honorees and an after-hours dance party, the Center for Book Arts in New York City reaches out to younger book/art lovers at its annual benefit and silent auction on April 4.

The Center for Book Arts, located at 28 W. 27th St., is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting book arts through classes, exhibits, events, and publications. (If you want to learn letterpress printing, paper marbling, or bookbinding, this is your place.) Every spring it holds a benefit event that recognizes the achievements of individuals in the book arts. In addition to Safran Foer, whose 2010 book, Tree of Codes, was hailed as a book arts crossover, this year's guests of honor are Steve Clay, publisher of Granary Books in New York City, and Joan Lyons, artist and founder of the Visual Studies Workshop Press in Rochester, NY.

The silent auction offers attendees the opportunity to browse and bid on some amazing contemporary book art. This piece by Robbin Ami Silverberg (profiled in our winter 2013 issue) is particularly appropriate for the occasion -- her Safer Code (2014) it is an altered copy of Safran Foer's altered book, Tree of Codes. The minimum bid is $500.

The benefit begins at 6 p.m., and tickets cost $100. For $30, the DJ-ed after party goes from 9 p.m.-11 p.m. Sounds perfect for those in town for Rare Book Week!  

Image Courtesy of The Center for Book Arts.

Richard Minsky has launched a new exhibit and catalogue of publishers' bindings, titled Trade Bindings with Native American Themes, 1875-1933. The book artist (and FB&C Book Art columnist) turned up 116 different decorative and pictorial covers and more than 20 variants by Margaret Armstrong, Frank Hazenplug, The Decorative Designers, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Blanche Helen McLane, Rome K. Richardson, George W. Hood, Thomas Watson Ball, Angel de Cora, Amy Rand, George W. Hood, and many others. They are currently on display in his Hudson, New York, studio.

Minsky is an expert in American decorated publishers' bindings. His first three exhibition catalogues documented more than 1,000 covers, and each exhibition was acquired by a different institutional library. In 2012, he mounted and catalogued a single-artist exhibition devoted to Thomas Watson Ball, which went en bloc to Penn State. Last year, George Braziller published a paperback edition of Minsky's book, The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930.

I asked him if he sought out Native American-themed books for this new project, or if the theme presented itself while he was researching the larger topic of American decorated publishers' bindings. "I have some books with this theme and it's one that was not highlighted in any of the previous exhibitions. Searching for more covers with this subject matter turned up some amazing designs--enough for an exhibition," he told me. "Only five of the designs are among the nearly 1,200 in the previous catalogues." In a newsletter to collectors and friends, Minsky also clarified the exhibit's theme: "This exhibition is titled Trade Bindings with Native American Themes rather than American Indian themes because of its geographic and temporal scope. The books are about indigenous peoples from the Aleuts and Inuit of the arctic to South Americans, and fictional prehistoric inhabitants that may predate those believed to have migrated across the Bering Strait land bridge and the Paleoamericans who may have migrated by boat."

Through March 31, Minsky is offering a pre-publication discount on the limited edition or the deluxe edition of the catalogue.  

Image: The Indians' Book
Recorded and edited by Natalie Curtis
Unsigned cover design likely by Angel de Cora ((Hinook Mahiwi Kilinaka, Winnebago)
Harper and Brothers, ©1923
Courtesy of Richard Minsky. 

With a few exceptions, every great writer gets his start in newspapers, magazines, and smaller publications. Before his big break, Mark Twain published news stories in a handful of western newspapers. "Firsts" of Hemingway's short stories can be found in Esquire, and Dorothy Parker's first published poem appears in a 1914 issue of Vanity Fair. For completist collectors, these early pieces are an integral part of a collection, and usually not too expensive.

The prolific John Updike--pity the completist--is no different. We can trace his journalism all the way back to his high school newspaper, Chatterbox. Updike attended Shillington High School in Pennsylvania, and he held many positions over the years at the school's paper, including editor. On April 2, a collection of original mimeographed Chatterbox issues from 1949-1950, showing more than eighty Updike contributions, goes to auction in New York City. Among Updike's adolescent jottings, there are reviews, such as "Hamlet Reviewed (an orgy of superlatives)" from Feb. 25, 1949, and many poems, for example, "Ode to the Seniors" from April 14, 1949 and "Valentine to the Hydrogen Bomb" from Feb. 10, 1950.

This run of newspapers was originally collected and owned by Updike's classmate, Barry Nelson, who worked as the paper's sports editor.

The auction estimate is $4,000, with bids being taken online by Heritage Auctions until April 1.

Image via Heritage Auctions.

Marcus Books, a landmark Black bookshop in San Francisco, may close its doors if it is unable to raise $1 million in funding to purchase their building. The bookshop has launched a GoFundMe campaign in the hopes of raising the necessary capital.

Next week at Sotheby's London, the library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching, a collection encompassing 1,500 books, 350+ years, and 7 continents, begins its turn at auction. It is, writes Anthony Payne in the catalogue's introduction, "the finest private collection of English global exploration and discovery to have been formed in the last century."


Captain Cook, Walter Raleigh, David Livingstone, Ernest Shackleton, Charles Darwin -- these are just some of the explorers in this collection that spans 1576-1939. The March 27 sale is the first of four, with the next scheduled to be held in September, and two following in the spring of 2015. Two of the highlights of this first sale include the earliest printed map of Australia (above) and the first book printed in Alaska.

Brooke-Hitching, 72, has been collecting for more than 40 years, and as a banker-turned-bookseller, only bought the best. From all accounts, he is a meticulous and persistent collector -- his fine bindings are in the best condition, and many of the books are unique or rare presentation copies. This auction is one for the ages!

Image via Sotheby's. 

Our series profiling the next generation of special collections librarians and curators continues today with Allison Jai O'Dell, Special Collections Cataloging and Metadata Librarian at the University of Miami.

How did you get started in rare books?

By following sage advice.  My undergraduate degrees were in ancient history and classical languages.  This educational path doesn't often translate into a ready (let alone lucrative) career, so I went to work as a database administrator.  I quickly became enamored of information management and enrolled in library school at The Catholic University of America.  During the first months of my MLS program, everyone kept saying, "You know Latin and Greek?  Have you thought about rare books?"  So, I heeded their collective recommendation and registered for courses on book history and rare books librarianship.  Being trained in archaeological methodology, exploring book history felt natural to me.  Something clicked: this was the perfect way to combine my academic background and professional experience.

 

I hear you also have a background in book arts. Tell us more:

Once I immersed myself in rare book cataloging, it became clear that to do the work justice, I was going to have to learn to reverse engineer a book artifact.  That is, I was going to have to learn to make books.  I enrolled in the Corcoran College of Art and Design's M.A. program in "Art and the Book."  Studio practice in printmaking, typography, layout design, binding, and papermaking offered a foundation for assessing the products of these activities that has proved invaluable in describing and arranging them.  I draw upon my knowledge of the book arts constantly in my work, and always refer new professionals to Kathleen Walkup's essay, "Why Book Arts Matter." 

What is your role at your institution?

I serve as the Special Collections Cataloging and Metadata Librarian for the University of Miami Libraries.  Practically speaking, I am involved in all things that relate to facilitating intellectual access to print and manuscript materials in our special collections.  My duties include "traditional" rare book cataloging, metadata management, policy development, and collaborative work with the systems and web development teams to build better user experiences. 

I am fortunate to work with future-focused colleagues who are creatively reconsidering the habits of twenty-first-century information consumers.  Lately, I have been facilitating usability studies to improve and invent front-end interfaces, coordinating library-wide discussions to address implementation of linked data features and open metadata strategies, and investigating possibilities available in new systems and schemas. 

And naturally, I take pictures and blog.

Favorite rare book / ephemera that you've handled?

I adore Melissa Jay Craig's work.  She engages with book aesthetics and book form through the corporeal nature of handmade paper, and she creates conversations about the experience of reading in the absence of textual content.  Finding "Working Philosophy" at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts was definitely my favorite book-object experience.

What do you personally collect?

My apartment is full of prints, books, and textiles made by friends and colleagues.  I keep them for their sentimental value - because I know the stories behind their creation, I respect the labor involved in making, and I'm fond of their makers.  But I don't endeavor to be a collector.  I live with two house rabbits who frequently make snacks out of works on paper.  My home isn't the most appropriate space for stewarding artifacts into future use.

What excites you about rare book librarianship?

I love being employed in the study of material culture.  Everyday objects, such as books and ephemera, are a record of who we are, what we do, and what we want.  I'm fascinated by the anthropological aspects of my career.

Thoughts on the future of special collections / rare book librarianship?

I see an increasingly exhibition-heavy role for special collections and rare book libraries.  A few days ago, I was explaining my job to a new friend.  I said that I work to help users access the information in our catalogs and databases.  Her response was, "So, you make infographics?"  I laughed, but it was a very telling moment.  The public assumes that information professionals will curate information for them, and services that distill content into a meaningful and digestible product appear attractive.  Besides, audiences expect museum-like programming when we promote the artifactual value of our material.  Graphic displays and narrative formats have the power to extract and present knowledge, and we can harness this capacity through exhibits, blogs, data visualizations - and yes, infographics.

 I also envision research analyst positions growing among the special collections workforce.  We train as researchers in book and human history; we become intimately familiar with our collections and their descriptive metadata; we cultivate strengths in investigative methodologies and data mining techniques - and yet, we typically stop short of performing research services ourselves.  In an age of information obesity, and given the potential for collaboration available in the digital humanities, I think that might change. 

 Any unusual or interesting collection at your library you'd like to draw our attention to?

The Jackie Gleason Collection focuses on parapsychology, including both scholarly and popular works in areas such as occultism, reincarnation, hypnotism, UFOs, ghosts, spiritual healing, demonology, magic, telepathy, astral projection, clairvoyance... really, really cool stuff.

 Our Artists' Books Collection is what drew me to the University of Miami.  It's a top-notch representation of the genre and highly regarded among contemporary artists. 

 I was surprised to discover that our zine collections are both quite substantial and fully described.  They provide amazing primary source material for researching political, social, sexual, and musical subcultures of the latter 20th century.  The Firefly Zine Collection was donated by former residents of the Firefly, a local Miami collective house and important part of Miami's punk rock and activist scene.

Any upcoming exhibitions at your library?

Golly, lots!  "?#@*$%! the Mainstream: The Art of DIY Self Expression," which ran at the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum this past winter, will be seeing a reprise at the Otto G. Richter Library in the coming year.  Our Special Collections Division is working on an exhibit showcasing local culinary culture.  (Being a cultural melting pot with indigenous tropical fruits, Miami is a great place for chow!)  The Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) is a partner in bringing the Guantanamo Public Memory Project to the University of Miami in October.  And the CHC's fall 2014 exhibition will be on Manuel Ochoa, founder of the Miami Symphony Orchestra.