As big a fan of the printed word as I am, I admit that there is just something to be said for getting to hear an author speak. Even if you don’t listen to what all is said, just listening to the accent, voice, etc. is fun. So even after all the little Nabokov bios I’ve read over the years, I really enjoyed this video posted to video.thirteen:
{hat-tip to whoever posted this to Twitter, sorry I can’t find you now}
Just easing into the week with a fun Flickr collection rolling through on slideshow. It has almost 150 screenshots from various films and tv shows over the years. Lots of fun fonts. My favorite turned out to be this classic by Saul Bass.
Not what you’d call light reading (it weighs 62 lbs.), the World’s Most Expensive newly published book has just been released. It’s a velvet and marble-covered tome worth around $100,000. It was printed, chiseled, sewn, constructed in Italy and now resides at the New York public Library. It’s a portfolio/art study/biography of Michelangelo and took some six months to make.
So far the Renaissance-inspired publisher FMR has sold 20 books. No word yet ifGoogle Books Scan will get to have a go at it…
I am a HUGE fan of our library system here in Birmingham. They are great and very rarely do I feel let down. I’m betting the folks in Boston feel the same way about their library system too. Especially with the launch of their Open Library Scan-on-Demand program.
Here are the directions from their site:
…if it’s at the Boston Public Library and hasn’t been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button… …we’ll have a librarian go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to our scanning center, and have our team of scanners digitize it page-by-page. Within 3-5 days, you should receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more, all thanks to your request!
How cool is that? You can tell these people have put a ton of thought into their library system. if you go the site, you can even see which titles are in the process of being scanned. Kudos Boston!
