Bill Siemering, founding program director of NPR, author of its mission statement, has asked me to inquire if any profs might be interested in a Zoom class visit? No honorarium necessary. Bill founded All Things Considered, Fresh Air, won a MacArthur, etc.

The semester starts in a week and we already have 85 class sessions scheduled in Special Collections. Departments from Biology to Landscape Architecture to Spanish to Theatre, all coming to use rare books and archives! Huzzah!

First day back in office—mid-century printing and type catalogs. Could be worse!

JOB ALERT! 3-year postdoc at @girtoncollege.bsky.social - research anything you like in History, Archaeology or Anthropology in a wonderful, welcoming scholarly community. PLEASE SHARE! Closes 12 January www.girton.cam.ac.uk/job-vacancie...

#MonthofDick getting off to a much better start than expected. I entered this book thinking for some reason I wouldn’t like it—but am instead finding it as humorous, fascinating, and unputdownable as 175 years of readers surely have as well. Also loving the Rockwell Kent illustrations!

Book reading highlights from 2025. The year of not as much reading as I may have wished, but a year in which I got to discover these awesome books and their writers—which makes it a great reading year!

Book collecting highlights of 2025! Indulging my loves of Arthuriana, tactile and beautiful bindings, the fine press movement, Austen (in facsimile), and the works of Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

I’m doing a survey of fine bindings (19th c. English, specifically) in our collection because I have the best job and it’s December 23rd. Enjoy some delicious gilt-tooled leather spines!

An 18thC advertisement for the Greenwich bookbinder Joseph Naples, who offers to fit up gentlemen’s libraries ‘in the neatest and best manner, and on the most reasonable terms’. Another piece from an album of book trade ephemera, compiled by Tim Munby & now @theulspeccoll.bsky.social, Munby.b.131.

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

I always love a surprise appearance from an old friend.

Happy holiday season from Kanga, who is NOT happy that he’s been prevented from batting at the newly hung ornaments. Plotting has commenced.

So, SO delighted that four additional leaves of the Josephinum Bible (my longtime reconstruction project) have found their home at Ohio State! These are the first illuminated leaves in OSU’s collection, which now owns a total of 14 leaves from this parent codex broken in the late 1990s.

A collection that I engage with a lot at work is a library of historical architecture books and related materials. I’d like to share some things I have learned and observed about the early modern-contemporary pursuit of classical architecture and its relationship to white supremacy.

My review of @robertamazza.bsky.social’s “Stolen Fragments”—an excellent piece of detective work and a thoughtful commentary on our responsibilities as stewards of cultural heritage—is available OA in Manuscript Studies. I loved this book and I think you will too :)

The @scottpolar.bsky.social are looking for a librarian. This is a rare opportunity! Work with (probably) the world's largest dedicated polar library alongside archive and museum colleagues. The dream 😍 📜

Recent books and bookplates I saw at work! Sharing the mostly art nouveau (+ one early modern) aesthetic love with you all on this autumn Sunday.

Pretty disappointed, but unsurprised, at the lot descriptions for the upcoming Christie’s Books and MSS auction citing, with little exception, ONLY de Ricci’s Census and its supplement. I doubt I need to enumerate the reasons that this is not only bad scholarly practice but also very suspicious.

One of the innumerable things to love about Ben Wickey’s fantastic graphic novel about the Salem Witch Trials and their entry into the American consciousness, “More Weight,” is the beautifully accurate drawings of the various forms of printed matter—including these stab-stitched pamphlets!

no it can't, you're just describing phrenology, a white supremacist pseudoscience

Just found out about this amazing example of #manuscript #recycling . The whole manuscript is made up from the margins of an earlier liturgical manuscript, cut out and rearranged (hence the unusual format), the (mostly) blank margins then used to copy various magical texts in the mid 16th century.

Bibliography friends: any source recommendations that discuss the use of “marginalia” as additions specifically related to the text vs. other manuscript additions (ownership inscriptions, unrelated notes, etc.)?

Cleveland, OH: Northeast Ohio Broadcast Archives Manager, Cleveland Public Library

“Hereticks are as good as Papists for all their Masses and Wafers and convents and whorish Nuns and Inquisitions” Tell us how you really feel! (From the lives of the Princes of Orange, 1693)

Delightful line of ownership documented in pre-title pages of this 1566 edition of Tyndale’s New Testament—a line of Bonds! Thomas, Bonds. Printed by Richard Jugge, with his mark.

Planting a pollinator bed or two this fall time and pulled up these beauties in the process!

"Where am I, and what is the time?" he said aloud to the ceiling. "In the House of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning." said a voice. "It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know." #Tolkien #BookSky Image: "Rivendell - The Riders" by @donatoarts.bsky.social

Enjoying some time with Jean Mabillon and his extremely approachable transcriptions of Merovingian scripts, in addition to the other joys of De re diplomatica (1681)—the work first establishing the science of paleography.

Dare I say I was torn when deciding to pull this?

the US govt has mounted a repeal of the right to culture. There is simply no other way to understand dismantling Dept of Ed, PBS, NPR, NEH, NEA + IMLS, defunding universities, censorship of artists, attack on equal access to institutions,+ erosion of free speech. hyperallergic.com/1049388/how-...

Description: handwritten by MRJames

Spent some extremely healing quality time with the most beautiful book ever printed today.

MLGB is back!! Delighted that Medieval Libraries of Great Britain @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is now back online. We are also working had on plans for the next phase of the resource, enhancing & adding data & functionality. HUGE thanks to my colleagues for their hard & clever work mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

If you haven’t yet read Vnouček’s fantastic article on the parchment in the Hamburg Bible, I am constantly recommending it!

Alarmed and shocked at the first page of “The Grammar of Ornament,” Owen Jones (1856) which includes this representation of the head of a Māori woman owned by the Chester Museum. 1/

Me welcoming the students to class in October:

Jobs For Medievalists Melvin R. Seiden Curator and Department Head, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts (Full-time) The Morgan Library & Museum invites applications for the position of Melvin R. www.themedievalacademyblog.org/jobs-for-med...

Books I saw at work: last week and @digitalscriptorium.bsky.social Annual Meeting today!

JOB ALERT: Assistant Professor of Art at Smith College, focusing on artists’ books and artist publications: apply.interfolio.com/173234?fbcli...

List three things you can talk about for three hours without prep 1) the medieval manuscript trade in northeastern Ohio 2) Lemonade (Beyoncé, 2017) 3) handmade/luxury paper (historical and present)

Fun things in (and on!) books used in today’s History of the Book scavenger hunt.

Stumbled across my 19-year old handwriting while shelving manuscript fragments! Back from my time as a student worker reorganizing the fragment housing—when the collection was a lot smaller than it is now!

Books I saw at work: last week!

Spotted in the back of the stacks!

Ah, to pull the largest book from the literal bottom of the stack. But, very very large (and colonial) engraved prints await!

Possibly my favorite author field ever in our catalog: “Person of quality”

I have a new favorite archival item!

Back from Oxonmoot and digesting everything I've read, heard, and learned and had to revisit Lee's article, especially after having finally finished reading the whole of Lord of the Rings. @mollyostertag.bsky.social www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-...

One of today’s collection research tasks: finding examples of blackletter in “non-substantial English-language texts” from the handpress era for our History of the Book course. A favorite find:

So excited to be starting my new position as the Instructional Services Specialist at the Ohio State University Thompson Library Special Collections today! Since I’ll be back in the stacks, you’ll be seeing lots of rare books and manuscripts very soon…