Rare Book Monthly Articles - November - 2009 Issue

The Gifted Institution

The Gifted Institution

By Bruce McKinney Material is given to libraries for many reasons. Often the owner has or had a preference for an institution and in time this preference leads to a gift. Such gifts, if substantial, may be legally executed. Most are less formal. When the gift is legally structured, it includes obligations that in time expire. For all other gifts, often subject only to a holding period for tax purposes, the institution is free to catalog or dispose or catalog and later dispose. Within libraries there are two views as to how such material should be treated once an institution's leg...

Immortality has a Price

Immortality has a Price

By Bruce McKinney At Bloomsbury New York on December 3rd the hammer will fall on a single owner sale, a small group of exceptional early printed books and other items relating to the new world I...

Daniel in the Lions' Den

Daniel in the Lions' Den

By Bruce McKinney The history of libraries and rare books came to San Francisco in the person of Terry Belanger to deliver a talk at the California Book Club on Monday evening, October 5th. Sev...

The Google Settlement:  Where It Stands, and Our Opinion on the Appropriate Resolution

The Google Settlement: Where It Stands, and Our Opinion on the Appropriate Resolution

By Michael Stillman The proposed settlement that would allow Google to offer digital copies of copyrighted books, and in particular so-called "orphan books," books that are out of print and thei...

E-Reader Sales Going Up, Prices Down, While Competition Heats Up

E-Reader Sales Going Up, Prices Down, While Competition Heats Up

By Michael Stillman The prices of electronic book readers are tumbling, sales are increasing, and intense competition is boiling just below the surface. The electronic book reader market is stil...

Book Prices Tumble Amid Cutthroat Competition

Book Prices Tumble Amid Cutthroat Competition

By Michael Stillman We are at a moment of momentous change in the book industry. Where it all will play out remains anyone's guess. All we know is that it will soon be very different from what w...

Book Clubs go Live

Book Clubs go Live

Book Clubs and Events a new page, is now linked throughout the site. On the home page, on the menu under the sign-in box [but no sign-in required], there's now the link Shows, Clubs, other. On th...

Some Ideas for Making Rare Books Relevant from Buffalo, New York

Some Ideas for Making Rare Books Relevant from Buffalo, New York

By Michael Stillman For generations, rare book libraries have been obtaining and squirreling away enormous quantities of historic old books and ephemera. They have made them available to bona fi...

More than Meets the Eye

More than Meets the Eye

By Bruce McKinney Two sales this year by libraries in the United States illustrate how procedure may influence public response when material is deaccessioned. The two libraries are the Wilmingt...

Where Goes the Collectible Book?

Where Goes the Collectible Book?

By Michael Stillman A recent unsold auction lot is something of a microcosm of various challenges facing the book trade today. It was a single item, though not an ordinary book. It was a set of ...

<i>In The News:</i>  Shakespearean Gifts & Thefts, a Gift Gone Wrong, Abe's Top 10

<i>In The News:</i> Shakespearean Gifts & Thefts, a Gift Gone Wrong, Abe's Top 10

By Michael Stillman UCLA's Clark Library was the recipient of a major Shakespeare collection. Valued at just under $2 million, it is the largest gift ever received by UCLA's rare book library. I...

The Book Club of California:  the oars are in the water

The Book Club of California: the oars are in the water

By Bruce McKinney The Book Club of California held its annual reorganization meeting on Wednesday, October 20th in new space under renovation quarters at 312 Sutter Street in San Francisco. I w...

400th Anniversary of Freedom of the Seas Celebrated at Yale Exhibition

400th Anniversary of Freedom of the Seas Celebrated at Yale Exhibition

By Michael Stillman Freedom to navigate the seas is a crucial element of free trade among nations. For many, their very survival requires freedom of trade, yet this freedom was not always recogn...

15 Catalogues Reviewed This Month

15 Catalogues Reviewed This Month

This month we review 15 new book catalogues. Travel is the topic at Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books and Gert Jan Bestebreurtje Rare Books. A particular trip, Cook's last voyage, is the subject at Hor...

Rare Book Monthly

  • RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
    RareBookBuyer.com
    Specialized in Purchasing
    Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
    RareBookBuyer.com
    We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR
  • Leland Little, Jan. 22: The First Issue of Robert Frost's A Boy's Will, In Extremely Scarce Binding.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Knight's An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Locke's Important Treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: The Richly Illustrated First French Edition of Voyages de Corneille Le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Orientales.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Scarce First Issue of An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, Finely Bound and With Celebrated John Speed Map.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Humphrey's An Historical Account, Complete with Scarce Folding Maps.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: First Edition of Chamberlain's Scarce Civil War Memoir The Passing of the Armies.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: A Rare Photograph of David Bruce Brown and #48 Fiat.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: George Cruikshank (England, 1792-1878), Archive of Sketches, Notes, and Letters.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Extremely Scarce Copy of Die Samländische Ode (The Samland Ode), Signed by Max Pechstein.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Andy Warhol's The Thirteen Most Wanted Men Exhibition Catalogue.
    Leland Little, Jan. 22: Edward Ruscha (American, b. 1937), Every Building on the Sunset Strip.

Article Search

Archived Articles

Ask Questions