Obscurorant 2.0

Consider this an update of earlier post, concerning libraries on Flickr. Now you can find the Smithsonian there as well. See also: The Commons. (lva)

The New York Public Library also has digital archives online. Some of my favorite galleries available here include:

Dust Jackets from American and European books, 1926-1947. When I was kid, books with dust jackets like these could still be pretty easily found, in library stacks or in your grandparent’s house. Some now reside on my bookshelves.

A collection of photos of Broadway theater marquees and facades.

My favorite so far: Turn of the Century Posters. Images of book, magazine and newspaper posters from 1893 through the middle of the last century. I love this one advertising a serialization of Conan Doyle’s Sir Nigel. And wasn’t the Boston Herald classy once upon a time?

I’ve been meaning to post these Flickr links for a while…

The Boston Public Library’s collection on Flickr. Includes this awesome set of posters for long-vanished Boston breweries and this set of war posters. Great stuff to dig through.

The Library of Congress on Flickr. Reaalll easy to get lost in there.

Here we have a set of Scholastic book covers from the 60s and 70s, some of which I can remember. No Dynamite magazine covers though.

UPDATE: I neglected to point out (for those interested) a number of Quincy postcards from this BPL set:

Aerial view of Quincy. The old Fore River bridge. The Square. Thomas Crane Library.

Today in the New York Times: an article and slideshow on the athenaeums - private libraries - of New England, complete with pronunciation guide for the local dialect:

(A note to those who visit: While “athenaeum” is commonly pronounced ath-eh-NEE-um, in New England ath-eh-NAY-um is acceptable.)”

Last semester I had occasion to visit the Salem Athenaeum during the course of writing a paper. I’d like to visit the others as well - I think such visits would make an excellent series of day trips.

N.B. - link from Cronoca

So you remember Ghostbusters right? Specifically, you remember the opening where Bill Murray and co. confront a ghost in the library?  Well you can go over to the Britannnica Blog to see the first part of a list of haunted libraries.  I’m waiting for part two, to see if any Massachusetts libraries are included.

In one of those weird coincidences life occasionally puts in your path, shortly after starting my second semester of library school and moving into an apartment with a real kitchen in which to cook, I come across Cooked Books, Rebecca Federman’s explorations of the New York Public Library’s culinary holdings. Yes, recipes are posted, both for food and drink. Plus, you can learn about les Dames du Boeuf and LUPEC, groups featuring my kind of folks.

Also, The Girl and I have been thinking it would be fun, as well as beneficial, to take a class in basic knife skills.  Maybe here perhaps?

Coming next weekend - the Annual Fall Book Sale at the Thomas Crane library.  Because now that I’ve culled the collection, fitted ‘em all in the new digs, and have precious little time for (pleasure) reading, it stands to reason that I need a dozen or so new titles.  Fortunately for me at $0.50 a pop it’s a cheap way to scratch an itch.

Anyhoo, maybe I’ll see you there.

So Friday night’s wine tasting at the Crane was quite nice and while sipping away in the Richardson building I even discovered a couple of white wines I liked. Plus there were prizes. Not for me of course: everybody is lucky and unlucky in their own peculiar way (such as cards and/or love as the old saw has it) and I am a dismal failure at raffles. I have never, not once in my life, actually won a raffle. Whatever I am lucky at, it is not these sort of contests.  I couldn’t even win lunch with the Sheriff, which I had figured as a near sure thing because c’mon, who else is going to venture a precious ticket on such a prize?*  The Girl, on the other hand, is a raffle machine. No sooner had she expressed a desire for Whale Watch tickets then lo! she won said tickets. Plus a monstrous gift certificate to Montilios.

The following evening we celebrated my cousin’s birthday at Dali (followed by pints at the Thirsty Scholar). Now, while it was a pleasure (as always) to see my cousins I feel I must come out against tapas.  The experience always leaves me feeling the same way I imagine I would were I rolled by a lady of the evening: vaguely unsatisfied and decidedly poorer.   Tapas, however delicious, is simply not enough bang for the buck.

I certainly learned a lesson though. When the Bunny and I open our much-anticipated Irish-Italian-American bistro, our menu will prominently feature ‘Irish tapas,’ that is to say a baked potato for which we will charge you $12.00.

*Some old dude evidently.

Just a leetle bit more with the reference madness this morning.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, the grand old man of encyclopedias, has all its content available online… for a fee. But there are some pretty cool features there that are free.

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Today’s post is going to be all about cool things concerning the information chase, with me dropping some links and generally babbling some things I find fascinating. Feel free to pass this one by if the above doesn’t sound like your cup of tea…

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The Boston Public Library is digitizing their maps and making them available online. I love the Google maps-style control that allows users to zoom and scroll.  I was able to get a good look at Q-town circa 1877 and see how much my neighborhood has changed.

I added a new category of links to the sidebar: The Librarians. These are all sites I came across when I was researching the idea of going back to school and pre-big decision making ritual of considering all the angles, from every possible angle. Anyhoo, you may find some of them of interest.

And how is school going, you ask? (Well maybe you don’t but I’ll tell you anyway.) What it is, is very very time consuming. Which is kind of sad, considering I’m taking just one class, but on the other hand Reference is a notoriously labor intensive class (my advisor estimated the workload at about 20 hours per week plus class time) and I’m still working full time. So, while uechi training is down to once or twice a week and pleasure reading greatly reduced, I am learning to look up shite even faster than before - s’all about the information friends.

Now taking two classes, like I hope to do in the fall, ought to be real interesting…

Courtesy of the Library of Congress: a treasure trove of color photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, in an the exhibit America from the Great Depression to World War II, conveniently indexed by subject, geography and creator.  There’s all sorts of interesting things to dig up - this shot looks like a still from an old movie.

You can also search through the much larger collection of black & white photographs. I found this group of pictures from Q-town.