Manuscript Digest –April 2019– This complimentary e-digest, launched in 2012, covers significant acquisitions and sales, manuscripts lost and found, rare books and ephemera, document conservation, and more.

In the News

Saved from the Blaze
NPR, March 27, 2019
A week ago, collector David Karpeles’s St. Louis manuscript museum went up in flames. What firefighters saved as the building burned.

Rights Turn
ABC11, March 21, 2019
In 1865 a Union soldier snatched North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights. In 2003 it popped for sale. An FBI sting killed the deal, but the litigation went on. Until now.

Muni Bonds
amNewYork, March 3, 2019
NYC’s municipal archives houses designs for Central Park, a sketch for the Brooklyn Bridge… But the house needs work. So the archives is selling bonds. And not just any bonds.

Harvard Unplugged
Harvard Gazette, March 8, 2019
A first-year seminar at Harvard gets up close and personal with Houghton Library’s collections. What born-digital students think of (very) old-school books and manuscripts.

The Book Magnet
Canadian Jewish News, March 8, 2019
Seventeenth-century Rabbi David Oppenheim was drawn to books. Lots of books. The history of his collection — and the mystery of a manuscript last seen in Germany, 1939.

Doctors without Borders …
Irish News, March 5, 2019
Medieval edition. By the 1400s Irish doctors were reading Persian medical manuscripts. The proof? Scholars found it by tapping into the spine of an old book.

Chinese Puzzle
The Times, March 9, 2019
How did a major 18th-century Chinese manuscript turn up in a closet at a museum in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania? It all goes back to a labor strike…

Dumbo Goes to Baraboo
Journal Sentinel, March 27, 2019
The makers of the new Dumbo movie wanted to nail the details of an old-time circus. So they went on the road, to see a circus collection that’s nothing short of elephantine.

Digital Dilemma
Nextgov, March 29, 2019
NARA’s asking federal agencies to switch to electronic records. So far a third of the agencies are on track. The rest? Think boxes of email printouts. Can NARA close the digital gap?
• What’s happening to yesterday’s news

Lit Wits
Smithsonian.com, March 14, 2019
What did England’s 1920s literary luminaries think of each other? A recently unearthed survey sheds some light on the Woolf pack, and it isn’t pretty.

Writ Small – Tiny books on show at New York’s Grolier Club
> Zoom in

Batman at 80 – Holy price tag! The bat-book that topped $1 million
> Zowie!