February 2014 | Rebecca Rego Barry

Rare Books & Ephemera in the News

Is it me, or did this short week bring more neat book- and paper-related stories in the media than usual? Here's a roundup, in case you missed them.

The Boston Globe ran a feature about paper conservators at the Boston Athenaeum. "We have a lot of our past in these books," said Dawn Walus, chief conservator at the 207-year-old Athenaeum, a private institution whose members have included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.

In the New York Times, blogger Olivia Judson writes lovingly about her deceased father's 54 full filing cabinet drawers full of notes, transcripts, clippings, menus. She writes, "I found a life, in paper." The NYT also offered a piece about NYC's De Vinne Press Building and its correlation to a current exhibit at the Grolier Club.

Slate Vault takes a deeper look at a nineteenth-century register of childhood diseases and vaccinations in one family, which is being offered for sale by Ian Brabner of Rare Americana.

In Buzzfeed, Nicole Pasulka writes about loving and losing her favorite childhood booksBuzzfeed also surprised us with "8 Book Historians, Curators, Specialists, And Librarians Who Are Killing It Online."