Art Libraries at the Rijksmuseum

I was quite honored to be among the guest speakers for the recent 8th International Conference of Art Libraries, held at the Rijksemuseum in Amsterdam (facade of the building seen here). The conference itself had some very interesting papers and it helped inspire a few ideas in my head, which is always a good thing. I was surprised that so many people from the U.S. were presenting, but most of the audience members came from throughout Europe. Two speakers even presented about art libraries in Japan, which quickly reminded me that we need to stop thinking so Euro-centrically about all these things. 

My co-presenter (Melanie Wacker, also at Columbia; photo at left of us taken by Ann Lindell) and I gave a talk entitled "From Curatorial Files to Linked Open Data: Cataloging the Art Collection at Columbia University," discussing background on the art collection my department oversees and how our management of metadata and cataloging moved from traditional paper files to a metadata schema that we were then able to convert to MARC so as to be published in the Columbia Libraries online catalog, to convert for use in the soon-to-be-launched Digital Art Properties collection, and then used as the basis for a linked open data project that was a grant to test art for use in BIBFRAME, the future XML-based form of cataloging established by the Library of Congress that eventually will replace MARC. I realize much of what I just wrote there may seem like gibberish to anyone but IT specialists and librarians, but the point is that up until recently no one could search anything in the Columbia art collection, whereas now the art collection is now not just discoverable but available in digital format (highlights anyway) and is being used to establish new models of excellence for ways of cataloging art by libraries in the future. It's been a team effort that we are all proud of.

It was quite humbling to be presenting at the Rijksmuseum, one of the grandest collections of art in the world. This was my second visit there, the first time two years ago when AA and I traveled to Amsterdam. On this trip we also made a visit to The Hague where we visited the Maurithuis and I truly fell in love with Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, one of those examples of art where you have to see it in person to truly admire its majesty in terms of lighting, brushstroke, and overall composition. She is more modern in her appearance than I ever realized. We also visited Delft, Vermeer's home, which was an absolutely charming city. I also had an opportunity to visit the Hermitage Amsterdam and see the Neoclassicism exhibition with works from St. Petersburg; the Canova sculptures were just exquisite. I'm in London right now writing this, with a few other things to do here before heading home in a couple of days.

The Video: E-Journals in Art History

No one ever likes to hear him/herself on tape or video, but everyone on my panel session from February agreed to the request to be filmed, and that online video is now available for viewing for free here: https://www.pathlms.com/arlisna/events/1063/video_presentations/100716

This was in association with the panel session I chaired at the ARLIS/NA conference held in NYC, "Born-digital and Other E-journals in Art History: Crossing Boundaries among Art Historians, Editors, and Librarians," about which I first blogged here. The response to the session by some audience members and the panelists themselves was very positive, so we are glad that it went so well (even if we are embarrassed to hear ourselves on video afterward!).

E-Journal Session at ARLIS/NA 2018

Tomorrow morning at 9:45am (i.e., Mon., Feb. 26, 2018), I'm chairing a panel session at the 2018 annual conference of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). The conference is in NYC this year. When I first started my librarian career (over 20 years ago, if you can believe it), I quickly joined ARLIS/NA and made it one of my primary professional organizations, and I've never regretted it. Some of the people I met 20 years ago are still friends and colleagues. At one point I was Chair of their Web Advisory Group, when the organization and its website was still more home-grown rather than professionally managed as it is today. I also served as President of the Southeast Chapter at one point too. But as things evolved in my life and career (PhD work, in other words), I had to pull away from the organization for a while. This is my first time back at the group's national conferences in a long time, and I'm looking forward to a few of the informative sessions and reconnecting with colleagues and friends.

The round-table panel session I'm chairing is entitled "Born-digital and Other E-journals in Art History: Crossing Boundaries Among Art Historians, Editors, and Librarians," and my co-chair is Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Seton Hall University, and Founding Editor of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. We have four speakers who are going to give brief presentations on specific topics, and then it's open-forum with the audience from whom we hope to hear comments, questions, and recommendations for improvement in the publication and dissemination of electronic journals in art history. Here is the full description of the panel and information on our speakers:

E-journals have existed for about three decades. They were pioneered by the sciences and social sciences, but for various reasons, some more valid than others, the arts and humanities were slower to catch on. In the field of art history, in particular, a major retardant was the need to establish protocols governing permissions and licenses for reproducing high-quality color images in perpetuity on the internet.

Today, the e-publishing of art history journals has become an accepted practice, yet it is certainly not the standard. Key challenges remain: how to adapt traditional print journals to digital formats, and how to take full advantage of the possibilities the digital medium has to offer; how to index and archive e-journals, and how to fund them, especially open-access journals that are born digital.

This round-table brings together art historians, editors, and librarians involved in different aspects of journal e-publishing. Interactive in format, the session will address questions about content, format, access, archiving, and new possibilities in the digital publishing realm. The session will begin with short presentations by the panelists about their experiences in e-publishing, highlighting lessons learned and future challenges to be addressed. The second half of the panel will open the floor to the audience for comments, questions, ideas, and information sharing, so a larger cooperative experience can be shared by all.

Presentations:
Elizabeth L. Block (Metropolitan Museum of Art): “The Art History Journal Unbound: An Editor’s Perspective on an Evolving Readership”
Martina Droth (Yale Center for British Art): “Creating a Born-digital Journal for Art History: Objectives, Challenges, and Lessons”
Alexandra Provo (New York University): “Indexing for Access: How Librarians Can Help Situate E-journals Online”
Isabel L. Taube (Rutgers University): “Preservation Management in E-journals: What Are We Doing to Fix Links and Archive Resources and Are We Doing Enough?”

Week-in-my-Life: Mar 2015 (Pt. 2)

WEDNESDAY 03/18/15

5:00am = Wide awake after not-so-great night of sleep (again). Breakfast: oatmeal with berries and Greek yogurt, with tea. Decide to lie back down again.

6:15am = Still awake, my brain on overload.

7:30am = Finally must have fallen asleep but now awake. Start getting ready.

8:30am = Step out of subway at 110th St., notice someone's dandruff is flying everywhere, then realize it's actually snowing again. UGH! Get grande blonde coffee and cranberry-orange scone at Starbucks.

9:30am = Visit School of Journalism Library with LS to assess environment for potential loan of paintings they are requesting.

10:00am = Informal interview with prospective intern for Summer/Fall.

11:00am = Meeting about potential collaboration for art & visual literacy program for med students and doctors at the medical campus. Some great ideas shared!

11:40am = Meeting cut short by announcement from TG that there is a flood in the library, and all staff needed. I hurry upstairs and see water is gushing, having come from a burst pipe on an upper floor, water now rushing through the vents and cascading like a waterfall all over about 1000+ architecture books! Everyone called to action trying to salvage books, separating wet from dry, setting up emergency fans, etc. It's a total mad house, but actually quite amazing to see everyone ban together (including a few students studying in the area) to help save what they can, while facilities staff try to stop the flood.

1:00pm = Lunch at local diner: mushroom & goat cheese omelette, potatoes, and wheat toast with coffee, reading my book on the history of the unification of Italy. Get call from LS that there is another flood in a different building and a painting is affected. Rush to finish lunch and head out, only to find out it was not an emergency and nowhere near as bad as other flood, but definite water issues, so we remove painting to storage.

3:30pm = More neverending emails and other projects at work. Finally leave about 5pm. Startled by how cold and windy it is outside.

6:00pm = Phone calls to the Uncle, then DPG to express some concerns about his apathy toward everything. Unfortunate situation.

7:00pm = Dinner: chicken, spinach, tomatoes, and rice in a bowl with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Decide to watch via Netflix on demand the movie Dumb Witness (1996), a murder mystery originally a book written by Agatha Christie, where an adorable Fox Terrier named Bob (played by Snubby) helps Hercule Poirot solve the murder of the dog's mistress Miss Emily Arundel. (I've watched this before and read the book, but it's one of my favorites, hence the image above.)

10:00pm = Go to bed.

11:00pm = Still awake. So annoying! Finally fall asleep about thirty minutes later...

THURSDAY 03/19/15

2:40am = Wide awake and cannot sleep. Make decaf tea and a turkey & Swiss cheese sandwich with apricot preserves.

3:45am = Finally back in bed, falling asleep...

7:00am = Awake, start to get ready, amazed to discover via text that AA is already at work! (Sometimes he's crazy.)

8:45am = At Starbucks eating sausage, egg, and cheddar breakfast sandwich and drinking a grande blonde coffee.

12:30pm = After spending most of the morning working on my annual performance review, meet colleague DCM for a trip to the Upper East Side to visit a gallery briefly and then to meet with a new potential donor. Productive trip, and much for us to discuss.

3:30pm = DCM and I finally eat sandwiches for lunch. I am SO tired though. Spend little while finishing up a few things at work, then head home.

5:30pm = Stop at Gristedes for milk and on impulse buy Entenmann's chocolate chip pound cake and blackberries. (Don't judge!) Go home and indulge in a cup of tea and slice of cake with said berries and dollop of Greek yogurt. (Delicious!)

6:00pm = Sugar crash! I pass out on the bed and fall immediately into a deep sleep.

7:30pm = Awake. Play Candy Crush Soda on my iPad for a few minutes, trying to wake up, then start blogging. Praying silently that I will be able to actually sleep tonight...

Fanny Eaton: The "Other" Pre-Raphaelite Model

Art historians and lovers of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and their works know well the names and lives of many of the female "stunners" (as they called them) who modeled for them. These include names like Lizzie Siddall, Jane Morris, Annie Miller, Keomi, Maria Zambaco, and so on. But another model about whom little historically has been known, yet who frequently appears in Pre-Raphaelite art from the late 1850s through the late 1860s, is Fanny Eaton (1835-1924). Born in Jamaica the daughter of a former slave, Eaton is a fascinating study in the art and social politics of Victorian Britain. Her mixed-race identity allowed her to be an exotic in the theatrical sense, enabling her to be depicted in different cultural roles in a number of their paintings. The image you see above is by Joanna M. Boyce Wells (1831-1861). It is a portrait study of Eaton dated 1861 that was meant to be a larger work of her depicted as a sibyl, had the artist not died suddenly (image: Yale Center for British Art). The image below shows Eaton as an Indian ayah in Rebecca Solomon's A Young Teacher, also 1861 (private collection), about which I have blogged before (see my post here).

I am pleased to announce that my article about Eaton, discussing her life and her role as a model, has been published in the Summer 2014 issue of the PRS Review, and the response so far from has been quite positive, leading to the discovery in private collections of a few heretofore unknown drawings depicting Eaton as a model, and a number of "retweets" and "favorites" on Twitter. I have now uploaded a PDF version in the Academic Commons of Columbia University Libraries, so it can be downloaded and read for free by all (available here). I owe Brian Eaton, great-grandson of the model, my gratitude for sharing with me his family research material and for supporting my article on his great-grandmother.

My interest in Eaton stems from her role as a model for Simeon Solomon, most notably his painting The Mother of Moses, 1860, about which I spoke at the Pre-Raphaelitism: Past, Present and Future conference at Oxford University in September 2013 (see blog posts here and here). Biographer and curator Jan Marsh previously had written about Eaton in her Black Victorians exhibition catalogue, and has added a few updates on her blog as well (here and here), the latter highlighting a newly discovered drawing of Eaton by the little-known artist Walter Fryer Stocks. I am hopeful that my article will continue to help increase the identification of Eaton in the works of these and other artists, but more importantly will add to the important dialogue about the role of blacks, slavery, and cultural diverse during the global 19th-century world.

Solomon's Vision

On Monday, February 10, 2014, Bonhams Los Angeles sold at auction a rare book that anyone who is a follower of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) and the Pre-Raphaelites would have loved to own…including me. However, it was clearly above my income bracket, as it sold for the amazing price of $17,500! The good news about this is that I know who the winning buyer was, and I’m delighted to hear this person was successful in the bid, for this treasure of a book will go to a good home and be available for scholars in the near future. The seller had been in touch with my fellow Solomaniac Carolyn Conroy and me about this book for a few months already, so we were very eager to know how things would progress with this sale.

The image you see here is the cover of the book, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, written by Solomon and published by F. S. Ellis for him in 1871 (i.e. self-published with Ellis). There were a small number of these beautifully-bound copies of his prose-poem published at the time, mostly for him to give away to his friends, so they are already unique on the market. (A search in WorldCat shows that only 16 libraries in the US, Canada, and the UK have copies.) What makes this particular copy even more special is that it was the one owned by the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). Inside, it is inscribed in the author’s handwriting: “With S. Solomon’s affectionate regards / to his friend, A. C. Swinburne / March 1871.” As a personal copy given by the author to his friend, it’s a lovely complement to another copy that once belonged to the painter Edward Burne-Jones, which is now at the University of Rochester.

Solomon and Swinburne were for many years a “dynamic duo” in 1860s Pre-Raphaelitism. They probably met through Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones around 1862, and the two young men quickly took a liking to one another, Solomon (photo right) a Jewish youth with unkempt hair, a beard, and sad eyes, Swinburne a slender fop with a bush of red hair (photo below). One of the most audacious anecdotes ever told about them is that Rossetti came home one day to discover Swinburne chasing Solomon down the stairs, and both of them were naked. All that said, it is doubtful they were ever lovers. Biographers tend to see Swinburne as an auto-erotic who indulged in flagellation and birching. But combined with Solomon’s homosexuality, history saw fit to mix the two as sexual deviants of the Victorian era. Solomon is credited these days with being one of the first artists to depict the ancient Greek poetess Sappho as a lesbian (see, for instance, the Tate's Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene), and this imagery was clearly part of the working association he had with Swinburne, who wrote poetry about Sappho in a similar way. Solomon also illustrated Swinburne’s birching tales, such as Lesbia Brandon, drawings one can see in the collections of the British Library. With their friendship blooming, Solomon spent the 1860s painting provocative male figures and exhibited them at the Royal Academy and the Dudley Gallery, while Swinburne scandalized readers with the first edition of his Poems and Ballads (1866) with odes written for and about sado-masochistic women.

A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep is seen today as an early example of gay literature, and indeed it was republished in its entirety most recently in Chris White’s edited anthology Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 1999). Expressing the physical and emotional angst of different types of love, Solomon’s text has come to be seen as a paean to same-sex passion at a time when one could not express this kind of love in society. At the time of its publication, however, his prose-poem was seen by reviewers as an artist’s statement for his highly symbolic, personalized imagery that drew on ancient mysticism—ephebic gods of love, angels, and love-struck youths—figures that populated his paintings such as Love in Autumn and Sacramentum Amoris and often left viewers confused as to what they meant. Discouraging reviews of the prose-poem appeared in the Athenaeum and the Jewish Chronicle, but John Addington Symonds (later a champion for same-sex passion) wrote a laudatory review in the Academy. Swinburne also wrote a review (at Solomon’s request) and it appeared in the first issue of the Dark Blue. Sadly, Solomon was less than pleased with Swinburne’s review, concerned that it gave the wrong impression of Solomon’s symbolic meaning. In retrospect it seems safe to speculate from some of their letters that this may have been the beginning of the rupture in their friendship.

After Solomon’s arrest in 1873 for homosexual crimes, Swinburne was among his former friends who outright rejected and distanced himself from Solomon, probably fearing for his own public reputation. Years afterward, when he was desperate for money, Solomon reportedly tried to sell off some of Swinburne’s more salacious letters, for which the now-reformed and alcohol-temperate Swinburne never forgave him. Swinburne’s letters to Solomon have never been found and probably were destroyed at some point. However, many of Solomon’s letters to Swinburne do still exist and were published in a few books, most recently Terry Meyers’s edited Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Pickering & Chatto, 2005). The letters reveal hints of their secret adventures, occasionally written in coded language. More boldly in 1871, just two months after the publication of Vision, Solomon wrote letters to Swinburne about the trial of the famous cross-dressers Thomas Ernest “Stella” Boulton and FrederickWilliam “Fanny” Parke. The friendship of Solomon and Swinburne lasted less than a decade, but it produced a fruitful, creative relationship that clearly benefited both of them in art and literature. This particular copy of Vision that has just been sold is rather special then. It records a moment in time at the apex of their relationship when this talented duo respected one another and were close, actively learning from one another. After this moment, things changed, and this book and its inscription now forever commemorate a relationship where each was able to say, for a short period of time, “affectionate regards” to a friend.

UPDATE 3/2/14: I can now announce with some excitement who won the auction for this rare copy of Solomon's 1871 prose-poem, dedicated to Swinburne. The book now resides in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library. Mark Samuels Lasner has spent much of his life amassing one of the best private collections of Victorian literature, manuscripts, and drawings. He has been incredibly generous in providing access to works in his collection for researchers (myself included), and he has exhibited his collection widely to encourage further scholarship. His long-term plan of making the collection accessible through the University of Delaware Library means scholars worldwide will be able to have access to these rare and excellent items for ages to come. I can't think of a better home for this special copy of Solomon's little book.

Random Musings 14

Last Saturday I finally had a chance to get back to Brooklyn Museum for 2 exhibitions I've been wanting to see. John Singer Sargent Watercolors celebrates 2 major collections of watercolors by Sargent (1856-1925), owned by Brooklyn and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Joined together for this exhibition, there is a clear distinction between the more finished set of pictures purchased in 1912 by Boston and the 1909 purchase by Brooklyn, which are more sketch-like. Depending on your taste and interest in how an artist thinks, each of the works will appeal to viewers differently. The show is arranged thematically, with segments on Italy and sailing, for instance. Sargent was born in Italy to American parents and lived throughout Europe (I still have a difficult time thinking of him as an "American" artist), so he was well-traveled for his day and time. One of my favorite watercolors from the show was the work you see above, Corfu: Lights & Shadows, 1909, from the MFA, in which he represents a small building on the Greek island, but captures all the sensation of sunshine using different hues to show how the branches of the trees cast shadows onto the white building. It is truly a tour de force of a work, revealing how Sargent's handling of color and lighting can convey atmospheric conditions and the emotional satisfaction of the place he's showing the viewer.
In sharp contrast to Sargent's work, I also enjoyed the exhibition showcasing the work of contemporary Nigerian artist El Anatsui. Although he has had a long career, his more recent works using found objects from garbage dumps (tin can lids, bottle caps, twist-ties, etc.) have made him internationally famous. He recreates large-scale sculptural installations that are fascinating. They appear like tapestries of gold. They are the detritus of society reimagined as beauty, and thus say much about the interactions of different classes and ethnic groups in the cultural exchange of the objects as they were imported from Europe and rebranded as "African" products. This is an installation shot I took of some of his works hanging in the main rotunda of the building.

In my last Random Musing, I posted an update about the New York Public Library's Central Library Plan. bklynbiblio followers will recall that I've been among the many criticizing them for their plans to renovate the main historic building and research center, and turn it into the modern-day equivalent of a library-like Internet Starbucks cafe. Under pressure from critics, NYPL President Tony Marx has agreed to have an independent committee evaluate the plans, according to this article in The New York Times (thanks, PR, for the lead). We will see what this next chapter will bring.

Two years ago, I blogged about my new fiction discovery, British novelist Barbara Pym (1913-1980; thanks again to TC for the introduction!). Her short novel Excellent Women (1952) has become one of my favorite books. I can see her influence on other British women writers I enjoy reading, such as A.S. Byatt and Ruth Rendell. The charm of Excellent Women is that nothing really happens. The book focuses on Mildred Lathbury, who makes tea, helps decorate the local church, unexpectedly gets involved in the drama of her neighbors, and makes observations about everyone in her life in an ever-so-judgmental Christian way that will have you laughing aloud. Her later novels are reportedly darker, but I haven't gotten to those yet. Pym is also an inspiration to writers. Her first few novels sold modestly well, and then publishers refused to publish her because she was seen as old fashioned. It took years before she was published again, and that book wound up winning her the Booker Prize. The lesson learned is never to give up. June was the centenary of her birth, so you can read up more about her life and novels in these laudatory articles in The Telegraph and The New York Times. There's even The Barbara Pym Society website to peruse as well.

Archaeology published a tidbit of fascinating news: this 400-lb. stone sculpture of a nude female torso was excavated in Brooklyn in the DUMBO area (that's "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for non-Brooklynites). There are traces of paint on it, and she's been dubbed Ginger because this area had spice warehouses in the 19th century, but no one knows much about who she is or why she was there.

And, finally, I had to wrap up this musing with something rather fun. Ever hear the joke about how to make an Italian stop talking? You tie his hands behind his back! Italians talk with their hands. I even do it, and half the time I don't even realize it. There is an article in the NYT exploring how these gestures may have a more important role in communicating and reach back to ancient Roman days. There's also a short, fun video that explores the topic some more, and this interactive feature of animated images that shows you just a small handful of the more than 250 gestures that are considered part of Italian communicating. Enjoy! (Insert hand gesture here.)

Avery Library

The Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University recently released the official announcement about my appointment as Curator of Art Properties. You can read the announcement by clicking here. After having completed 3 weeks of work, I can say for sure that I truly am thrilled by this new position. There's an unbelievable amount of work involved in this job, but I'm up for the challenge. In the last few weeks alone, I've been involved in potential donor opportunities, a sculpture conservation project, the photographic reproduction of an 1890s portrait painting, meeting a few administrators for the loan program, rethinking some policies and procedures, and looking into some exhibition ideas for areas of the collection. My staff members have been great to work with; I'm learning a lot from their years of experience. All in all, it's been an incredibly busy but rewarding 3 weeks.

I also feel rather privileged to be back in a library community, and one of the most prestigious art and architecture libraries in the world at that. Avery Library has world-class general and special collections, including the recent acquisition of the Frank Lloyd Wright archive. Avery Library was established in 1890 when architect Henry Ogden Avery (1852-1890) died unexpectedly and his parents established his book collection as the foundation of what became Avery Library. In 1912 the library was the first to be established in its own Renaissance palazzo-style building on the campus of Columbia in a building designed by McKim, Mead, and White. You can read more about the history of Avery Library by clicking here.

Random Musings 13

It's been a while since I posted one of these "Random Musings," briefly bringing in a hodge-podge of stories. This week there were a few things worth noting. The first has to do with the destruction...excuse me, "renovation"...of the New York Public Library's main research building. bklynbiblio followers may recall that I (and others!) have had a few things to say about this plan here and here. This week the NYPL released the official reconstruction plans, with swanky drawings (image above) and an eye-catching video on their website, to demonstrate how incredible the renovation will be to the public at large. The biggest attraction is that everyone will have wonderful views of Bryant Park. The worst part about the release of these plans is that it's going to have exactly the effect they want: suddenly now even I'm finding myself instinctively rethinking my criticism. That doesn't mean I support the changes; rather, it means the advertising about the changes is designed to make you think it's for the greater good and to make you forget all the negative things about the historic building and its collections. This is Mad Men in action, 2012 style. Even though this week noted preservationist Ada Louise Huxtable published an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal about the destruction of this building, this is one of those moments where it's obvious now that it's irrelevant what people think. The NYPL is moving forward with their plans.

Elsewhere in NYC depressing news, the MTA has announced that starting in March they're raising prices again for the subways and buses. My 30-day unlimited pass is going up to $112 and a regular one-way pass will now be $2.50. This is the 4th increase in 5 years. Word has it that FEMA is supposedly going to pay for the hundreds of millions of dollars of repairs and operational costs the MTA suffered as a result of Hurricane Sandy, so apparently this increase was just a regularly scheduled one. I have to admit that following the hurricane I was among those who were impressed by how quickly the MTA got mass transit back up and running, so I can't completely knock them these days. The fact that the MTA chairman Joseph J. Lhota is suddenly so popular for that must be the reason why he's resigning...and apparently running for Mayor next year.

On a more positive side of things, New York magazine has published their 8th annual "Reasons to Love NY," which is always a delightful reminder of why NYC is so great. Among the highlights this year: our governor (Andrew Cuomo) isn't afraid to talk about global warming; our mayor (Michael Bloomberg) isn't afraid to talk gun control; Donald Trump finally became the joke we always knew he was; you can get anything in a bodega; and we screw in public (my favorite of them all!). You can read all these and more here.

In the art world, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin, made news recently after conservation work on a 17th-century French painting suddenly revealed that the nude woman you see on the left was actually a mythological subject, with images of the god Zeus/Jupiter and a putto/Cupid. The over-painting probably had been done in the 19th century. It's always amazing to me how art can surprise us still sometimes. Here's an article about it from The Art Newspaper.

And last but not least, Archaeology magazine has issued their annual "Top 10 Discoveries" for 2012. They had previously discounted the whole Mayan-end-of-the-world story, so that wasn't on the list. Two of the more interesting that did make the list, however, are the discovery of the remains of "Frankenstein"-like creatures made of body parts from different people all laid to rest in a ritualistic grave in Scotland, and a 2000-year-old bag filled with coins and jewelry in Israel that was probably hidden by a woman during an uprising with the Romans. The best, however, has to be the image you see here. It's a 37,000-year-old stone engraving found in France depicting, of all things, a vulva. There's not much one can say after that, is there?

Random Musings 12

What do you think when hear the names Don, Betty, Peggy, Joan, and Roger? If you're thinking Mad Men, then you're as excited as I am to see the 2-hour season 5 premiere on March 25 (image: Frank Ockenfels, AMC). I wasn't so sure about this show at first and didn't watch the first two seasons right away, but once I caught on, I was hooked. Matt Zoller Seitz has some interesting thoughts about why the show is so great in the latest issue of New York magazine. Last season had some great moments, like Don's elderly Jewish secretary, Ida "Are-ya-goin'-to-da-toilet?" Blankenship, who was so popular she got her own Facebook page. Tragically, even her death was a hoot. And of course there was episode #7 from last season, "The Suitcase," which ranks up there as one of the all-time best hours of television ever written and acted. The synergy between Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) was simply brilliant. Let's see if they can top it this season.

Last month, I posted about New York Public Library's disastrous plans to gut the main historic building and research library and make it mostly a circulating library and Internet computer zone. The project is going to cost upwards of $350 million. Meanwhile more than 80 branch libraries throughout NYC are completely falling into ruin and need to be completely overhauled. Yesterday, Leonard Lopate on WNYC radio interviewed Scott Sherman, who wrote the exposé published in The Nation this past December, and Caleb Crain, a former research fellow at NYPL. The radio program addresses both the potential positive and negative sides of this controversy, but truly drives home the nightmare of what is being planned.

In the world of art, the Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has never gone out of style, so Dan Brown really had no need to try to make him more titillating than he already was. Over the past 2 months, the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) has come back into the spotlight, not in her world-famous portrait at the Louvre in Paris, but in a copy made at the same time that belongs to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid (their image). Having recently conserved and cleaned their copy of the Gioconda, the Prado's conservators have determined that it probably was painted about the same as the original. They're also claiming that the restored copy is closer to what the picture actually looked like when Leonardo painted it. Dirt, varnish, and aging have darkened the Louvre's original. I think it's rather interesting too that the copy artist probably was Andrea Salai, Leonardo's lover. You can read more about the painting in articles published in The Art Newspaper here, here, and here. And just when you thought that was big Leonardo news, yesterday it was announced that scholars believe they may have "found" his long-missing mural of The Battle of Anghiari beneath another painting.

I'm heading back to Florida this week. The Pater's mental health is degrading some more as Alzheimer's disease continues to affect him. I'll be doing a few more things to help make his life comfortable and manageable, including following up some doctor appointments. Our dear friend RM has been simply amazing in helping with so many things. I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude and, knowing she reads these posts, I'm publicly making it known how much I appreciate all of her help. With managing health problems such as Alzheimer's in our lives, I've often found the British World War II slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On" to be quite useful at times, so I'll leave you with this delightful video of the story behind the slogan, the iconic posters, and a charming bookshop in the UK that I would love to go visit one day soon. Watch the video here if you can't see it below. You'll appreciate the message.
 

Library Bytes: NYPL Issues

Everyone knows that the main building of the New York Public Library on 5th Ave & 42nd St is an important cultural center and architectural landmark. I blogged about the NYPL system in 2009 when I found out about a video that promoted more information about libraries and their services. To paraphrase PR, who commented about the video, it is an inspiring video. Back then I also mentioned about the financial cutbacks they were suffering from. Sadly, that has continued to happen, and things are now getting worse. NYPL has been planning a major overhaul of that incredible classical revival building and its services, by turning it into the largest circulating public library in the US. This particular branch of the library as it exists has always been a research facility. The picture you see above is a view from 1913 of what is now called the Rose Reading Room (image: NYPL Digital Library), where anyone can enter, order a book to be paged from the collection, sit down and read it. A number of my PhD friends (and I) use this library and its services regularly. There are other reading rooms as well, but this one is the most famous. The plan now, however, is for NYPL to close 3 branches, ship 2 million books to a storage unit in NJ (that will take at least 24-48 hours to page for users), gut the entire lower floor beneath the Rose Reading Room, and turn the entire facility into a circulating library, just like in towns across America. Some people might think in theory this is a good thing. Certainly their Board and Director think so. It is curious, however, that no one on the Board or even the Director is an actual librarian or holds an MLS degree. They're all business people. But I digress. Their plan also calls for the cancellation of 2 previously planned regional branches they were supposed to built. Instead, they're basically turning the main building into a giant computer center (think an Apple store, no salespeople, but seriously overworked civil servants, and lots of naughty goings-on in the stacks). Not only will this cost an unbelievable fortune to do, but it is destroying the integrity of the entire architectural structure and all of its services for researchers. This past December, Scott Sherman published a fantastic exposé in The Nation on all the secrecy and under-the-table things going on there (including the then-still startling news the new Director had been arrested for drunk driving). The New York Times now has its take on the whole thing, and I'm saddened to say that their article is really a fluff piece that does more to stroke the egos of the NYPL Board and Director. The powers that be claim they want feedback from the community, so speak your mind about this. But make sure you read at least The Nation article first, because it's shocking and eye-opening.

Keighley and Perry

Although I talk about libraries and museums on this blog, I haven't said much about my job at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I work part time as an Associate Museum Librarian in the Image Library, which for over a century has been the repository and archive for the collection and dissemination of visual images in all media for educational and commercial uses. The collection holdings include stereoscopes, negatives, and 35mm slides, although not surprisingly we work almost exclusively with digital images now. I do a variety of tasks, including reference, instruction, and cataloging, but I'm also project manager for a few digitization projects. For instance, I'm currently working on selecting and cataloging historic views of the Met's galleries from the 1900s through the 1950s, which will be scanned from our lantern slide collection. This is a project being done in partnership with NYU's Institute of Fine Arts Visual Resources Center. But another project on which I was working for more than 5 years (with IFA and ARTstor, in particular a large number of individuals deserving lots of credit for all their hard work over the years) has been the digitization of selected images from the William Keighley Collection, a set of about 35,000 slides donated to the Met from 1958 through the 1970s by Keighley, a well-known film director. He had a second career as an amateur art and architectural historian and with his directorial eye took beautiful images of exterior and interior spaces throughout Europe, including private estates closed to the public at the time. We've been working to make about 10% of these images available for educational uses in digital format, including the image you see here showing the library of Saint Florian Abbey in northern Austria, which ARTstor is using to promote the collection. In order to see and download the images, you must belong to a university/museum that subscribes to ARTstor, but you can read more about the project here and see the official release here.

In related news, bklynbiblio readers may recall my very positive blog review of the Grayson Perry exhibition currently on at the British Museum. I subsequently revised and expanded this review in its entirety and I am pleased to announce that it has just been published in the Winter 2012 newsletter of the Historians of British Art. (I do hope the teddy bear god Alan Measles is pleased by the news.)

28 New Haven Days: Part 4

If you've been following my posts about New Haven, you know that I've been lamenting about the crime here. Shermania commented on my last post about how he's in New Orleans right now and that their crime is much higher, and the RL-DGs have told me as well that since they moved to New Orleans, they have been warned about the crime and it has prevented them from exploring their neighborhood like they normally would. In a bizarre coincidence, The New York Times happened to publish an article last week about crime in New Orleans. This year they have had 175 murders, which is a ratio of 51 per 100,000 citizens. Compared to NYC, where it's 7 per 100,000, that is a shocking difference. The current population of New Haven is about 130,000, however, which means this city has a ratio of about 28 murders for the same number. Clearly it's not as bad as New Orleans, but it's certainly much higher than NYC. In thinking more about this, I've come to the conclusion that 2 issues here are at stake: (1) people (myself included) envision this area as a "New England college town" when in fact it is a city, even if it is small; and (2) NYC has become so safe it has given us a false sense of security about how other cities really are.  On Sunday, the PR-AMs came from NYC to visit, and even they were a bit surprised that we were asked for money by people out in the street about six times. Our favorite incident happened during dinner when a guy asked us for $3 and when we said no he went back to the bar where he was drinking a beer. Not surprisingly, he ducked out without paying.

After all is said and done, however, I cannot emphasize enough how fantastic my time here has been. The staff of the YCBA has been simply incredible. This really has been an amazing opportunity and it has helped me tremendously in my dissertation research. The picture above is a shot of the Reference Library where I spent most of my time in one of those study carrels on the mezzanine level, upper right. I'm going to regret leaving in a couple of days! And in spite of the issues with crime, I have ventured out and eaten a number of delicious meals here: vegetarian restaurant Claire's just across the street from the Taft (great soup), Big Bear Saloon (awesome burgers), Zinc Artisan (tasty personal pizzas), Istanbul Cafe (yummy Turkish), Zaroka (inexpensive Indian buffet), Woodland Cafe (tea & bagel sandwiches), Caseus Cheese food truck (delectable grilled cheese), and of course the old standby Atticus Cafe & Bookshop on the ground floor of the YCBA. There are many good restaurants here too, but I haven't had time to eat everywhere.

As far as my work goes, last Friday I gave a presentation to the YCBA staff. About 25 people showed up, which was great, and they provided boxed lunches for everyone. Although I gave an overview of my dissertation itself using PowerPoint, I focused more on things I've discovered since I've been here. What started out to be an almost 25-minute presentation turned into nearly 75 minutes of round-table discussion with excellent feedback, which I needed and greatly appreciated. One of the challenges of working on an artist from the past (in particular one who hasn't had a book published on him since an edition of his memoirs came out in 1911) is that there is a tremendous amount of information to cover, and so I must be very selective in what I work on, or postpone for a future project. For instance, in the process of working on John Gibson, I've found myself now also interested in his brother Benjamin (1811-1851), who also was a sculptor. This portrait bust of John is by Benjamin, made about the year 1838 (image: YCBA). Benjamin was 20 years John's junior and was never the success his brother was, but he did work in John's Roman studio, taught himself Latin and Greek, and published a few articles on archaeological discoveries in Rome. He was frequently ill, however, and sadly he died near the baths of Lucca when he tripped and suffered a concussion. He is buried in Lucca, but John also set up a memorial in his honor in Rome at the Protestant Cemetery where he himself was buried in 1866. My interest in him is probably not too much a coincidence; he was about my age when he died.

28 New Haven Days: Part 1

I've been in New Haven for approximately 55 hours, and while I'm more settled now than when I first arrived, so far it's been a relatively quiet start. Friday night I was staying at the Graduate Club, and I spent that afternoon getting my Yale ID, then touching base with the YCBA staff and getting acquainted in more detail with the Library itself. Because yesterday was the annual Harvard-Yale game (I presume that's football?), plus with Thanksgiving coming up, I'm arriving here during an unusual time when many things are shut down for the week, including some of the Libraries. Nevertheless, I managed to keep myself entertained a bit this weekend. On Saturday, I moved into the Taft Apartments, which you see here. They were built in 1912 and named for Pres. Taft, who after his presidency taught at Yale and lived here. The apartments, however, are perhaps more famous because they're next to the Shubert Theater, which historically has been a testing ground for plays before heading to Broadway, but these days seem to be stuck doing revivals and seasonal works like A Christmas Carol in early December. The Taft has made an appearance in more than one film too, like All About Eve (1950), when Eve (Anne Baxter) is performing at the Shubert and she is confronted in her Taft apartment about her own past. (If you haven't seen this movie, get it now...it's one of Bette Davis's best films with her classic line "Fasten your seat belts--it's gonna be a bumpy night!") As for my apartment, so far so good, although my previous occupant wasn't exactly the cleanest person, leaving behind half-dirty dishes and her long black hair on more than one towel, including (shockingly) the kitchen dish towels which, alas, I did not discover until after I cooked my dinner and found hair in my food. (Yes...very gross.)

Shermania had written me about an exhibition at Artspace called Library Science, and I'm so glad he told me. It's the perfect combination of contemporary art and librarianship coming together in a way that would satisfy any bibliophile or library nerd. Candida Höfer was of course included, showcasing one of her large-scale photographs of libraries, but a number of other artists in the show were new to me and had some interesting ideas about libraries, books, and cataloging. Mickey Smith rephotographs found photos of people posing with faux libraries as backdrops, calling into question what the library is meant to suggest when it is not real. He also laid out an entire collection of hundreds of volumes of the Federal Reserve in a way that one quite literally walks over the books in order to look at his photographs. Considering this entire series is now available through online databases, Smith makes us rethink the evolution of information and the gradual disappearance of books in the e-publishing world as we walk all over them and what they historically have represented. Reynard Loki reenvisions the idea of cataloging with an ongoing project in which he indexes on paper his entire library by the first and last lines of each book he owns, and Erica Baum's large-scale photographs of subject heading cards from old card catalogs suddenly makes words like "Power" take on a whole new visual sensibility. This was an interesting exhibition for sure.

I was working on a different review today, but by lunchtime I decided I needed to get some air so I took a long stroll and wound up, oddly enough, in the Grove Street Cemetery. Yes, I admit, I'm a cemetery stroller. I find cemeteries to be very peaceful places where you can commune with nature (loved the birds and squirrels), but also look at the sculpture of the tomb stones and learn about people with whom I have no connection but who were important to someone at some time enough that a marker still exists to mark their remains. A number of the oldest tombstones here date from the 1700s and are now in very bad shape, but a number of 19th-century stones are still intact. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the grave for Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin), but of all the plots I saw the one that caught my eye was that of Edward Elbridge Salisbury (1814-1901), which you see in the foreground of the image above. It's not that the sculpture is of great significance, but when you read the accomplishments of this man, most notably his becoming Yale's first Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit during a period when hardly anyone knew a thing about these languages, you realize he was an important academic figure. I had to look up more about him and discovered that his entire collection of books and manuscripts was donated to the Libraries and are the foundation for the Near East Collection. Looking in WorldCat, however, I was surprised to see what he had authored. While he did publish a few tracts on things like the Persian cuneiform alphabet (1849), he also wrote about Michelangelo (1861), and published a number of books about genealogy and his own family history. It makes you realize how specialized we've become in academia today, and it reminds me of the importance of making sure I don't get too pigeon-holed in my own work.

A Day at the British Library

I’m in London right now on a bit of a marathon research trip for my dissertation on the sculptor John Gibson (1790-1866).  I thought bklynbiblio readers might be curious to know what exactly a typical day during one of these research trips actually means.  I arrived at Heathrow Airport on Wednesday morning, having slept about three hours on the plane, then took the Express train to Paddington Station and a taxi to my hotel, where I dropped off my bag and freshened up.  I grabbed my laptop, made the twenty-minute walk toward the British Library, stopping briefly for a large cappuccino (caffeine will be a key ingredient all day) and a sandwich at Pret a Manger.  By the time I actually crossed the plaza and entered the doors of the BL (picture left from Haiku Girl's Flickr pool), it was about 11:30am.  Now, I’m familiar with the BL to some extent, having secured a reader’s card and done research here in the past, not to mention seeing some of their excellent exhibitions.  You can bring very little into the reading rooms of the BL, so the rest of what I’m carrying goes into a locker.  I had ordered a few items days earlier, so I logged into the system and discovered most of them were ready.  Off I went to the Manuscripts Reading Room.


One of the items I had ordered was the July 1823 catalogue for the Christie’s auction of the contents of the studio of the British sculptor Joseph Nollekens.  My interest in this was based on the fact that Liverpool-raised Gibson went to London in 1817 for about six months before moving on to Rome, and I had uncovered in past research that apparently a small sculpture of Gibson’s was included in this auction, suggesting Gibson may have worked with Nollekens briefly during this stint in London.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the listing; the auction catalogue at the BL only detailed the works for the first day of the sale.  Days two and three are separate catalogues and presumably Gibson’s work was listed in those.  So unfortunately my first bit of research for the day turned out to be a bust, but ever the optimist I am hopeful I can track this down, because the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum also has a copy of the catalogue and I’ll be there on Friday.  I moved on to my second request, an enormous tome called Pictures and Drawings Selected from the Works of Edward Armitage, R.A. (1898).  What does Armitage have to do with Gibson?  Nothing actually.  I’ve been wanting to look at this rare volume of engravings after Armitage’s works because of a long-term article I’m working on related to the Anglo-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite artist Simeon Solomon, about whom bklynbiblio readers will recall I have written about in the past.  Did I find what I was looking for?  No, but again it was good to be introduced to the work of this man who was another important Victorian painter, but about whom we know very little today (although readers may recall my writing about his fabulous allegorical painting Retribution at the Leeds Art Gallery).


Fighting exhaustion, I moved on to the Rare Books Reading Room, where I immersed myself in another rare item, the 1816 sale catalogues for the collections of prints, drawings, and books owned by William Roscoe.  Roscoe was a Liverpool-based attorney who in the 1790s retired early to become a Renaissance historian, writing a biography of Lorenzo de’ Medici that is still considered by scholars today to be a foundational text on the Florentine patron.  Roscoe made a series of bad financial investments and was forced in 1816 to auction off much of his art collection and library.  Following the example of the de’ Medici, Roscoe was Gibson’s first patron in Liverpool and helped nurture him in his pursuit of becoming a sculptor.  Gibson reported in his memoirs about Roscoe allowing him to study his print collection, so I was pleased to be able to look through these catalogues and was quite successful in identifying some of the works he owned, because (as I suspected) they relate to some of Gibson’s earliest works of art, making the scholar in me happy that I had just proven I was right.


Admittedly, reading through 1816 sale catalogues was exhausting, even though I risked the humiliating gawking of other researchers when more than once I got up and started jogging in place to wake up.  By the time I was finished, I needed a break, so I headed to the outdoor café for a Coke and biscuit (that’s a cookie in America).  Reinvigorated from more caffeine and the brisk cool air, I headed back inside, this time to the Humanities Reading Room, where I had a few books waiting for me here as well.  Although Derrick Pritchard Webley’s Cast to the Winds: The Life and Work of Penry Williams (1802-1885) is a relatively recent work, hardly anyone has this book because no one knows who Penry Williams was.  He was a Welsh painter who went to Rome and became Gibson’s closest friend.  The two bachelors traveled extensively together and Williams was Gibson’s executor of his will and estate.  If you think I may be insinuating something between the two of them, you may be right, although I will admit more to speculative thinking rather than outright factual arguing about their relationship.  The book held some interesting surprises for me and did add more information about Gibson that I didn’t know, so that was definitely another success of the day.


And then the fire alarm went off!  Everyone in the BL had to evacuate, so I grabbed my laptop and we left.  Forty-five minutes later we finally were all allowed back inside, and if you could have watched the crowd of researchers herd back into the building, you would have thought we were either cattle blindly walking to our destiny, or perhaps more appropriately braindead zombie researchers dedicated to finding out that one fact everyone else has missed about X-topic, knowing the BL held it in its bowels of knowledge.  Allow me to point out I’m actually not joking about this.  The BL is ALWAYS mobbed with people.  They range from college-aged students to the elderly, and it never ceases to amaze me how sometimes it’s nearly impossible to get a seat in one of the reading rooms because all 200+ are taken…that’s per reading room, and there are about a dozen or more reading rooms!  But I digress…


Finally getting back inside again, I was able to look at my next item, volumes one and two of L’Ape Italiana delle Belle Arti Giornale Dedicato ai Loro Cultori ed Amatori, which began publication in Rome in 1835.  This is a beautiful large-format journal with short essays in Italian and exquisitely produced line engravings after past Renaissance and modern paintings and sculptures by artists working in Rome.  This journal really was for the wealthy collector.  Gibson had two works engraved (remember, at this time he was a “modern” artist!) in these first two volumes, a privilege matched only by two other contemporary sculptors, the Belgian-born Matthieu Kessels and the German artist Emil Wolff.  My reading knowledge of Italian got a workout (and this still on the three hours of sleep on the plane), so I decided to hold off on going through more issues of this journal for now and find out about two other works I had ordered.  Turns out they were housed in one of their off-site facilities and wouldn’t be available until Thursday, so I’ll have to go back to look at those.  By this point in the day (nearing 6pm), I was shattered, so I went for a lovely cuppa tea and another biscuit, and meandered back to the hotel so I could finally unpack.

Random Musings 8

This week the New Orleans Museum of Art (pictured here) made the official announcement that my friend and colleague Russell Lord has been named their new Freeman Family Curator of Photographs. In their press release, they noted that in his position he "will be responsible for the care, interpretation, and presentation of NOMA's wide-ranging photography holdings. In addition to developing exhibition programming that expands scholarship in photography and actively engages audiences, Lord will continue to acquire works that enrich the museum's collection." You can read the full press release here and be very impressed by his credentials and experience, but the announcement also made it into The Art Newspaper, Houston Chronicle, Washington Examiner, and other national newspapers. bklynbiblio readers may recall SVH and I attending Russell and Dana's wedding two years ago, but he and I also have been at the Met and school together, and we've taken a few art trips together too. I'm absolutely thrilled for him, but I am seriously going to miss the two of them when they leave Brooklyn in a couple of weeks. I am comforted by the fact that SVH and I are now planning a spring trip to the Big Easy.

Speaking of SVH, recently she sent me this link to a news post and short video about what is being called America's smallest library. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week, with 150 books housed in an old phone booth, this library in upstate NY has been a great success within the community. Check out the short video about it when you're on the site. And people think no one reads printed books anymore...

Have you watched the miniseries Downton Abbey yet? If not, you have no idea what you're missing. It is one of the best things to come out of the UK since high tea and Ewan McGregor. The show takes place from 1912 to the breakout of World War I and captures the lives of the Earl of Grantham's family and his servants below stairs. The writing and acting is top-notch, with bouts of drama and humor that hook you in so much that you don't want to stop watching it. Not only has it now this past week won 6 Emmy awards, including best screenplay for Julian Fellowes and best supporting actress for the perpetually brilliant Maggie Smith (pictured here as the Dowager Countess), the miniseries also now ranks in the Guinness Book as the most critically acclaimed show in television history. The New York Times also recently had an interesting interview with Fellowes about the success of the show. Don't rent it, just buy the DVDs, it's that good. I own a set and I am looking forward to watching it again soon...because the sequel has premiered in the UK this past week and will be on TV in the US in January!

Finally, you must watch this very cool video that recently came across my Google Reader from the blog How to be a Retronaut.  In 1784 German designers made an android that resembled Marie-Antoinette and presented it to the Queen of France. Working in ways akin to a music box, when wound with the key to play the android performs a musical composition by striking on the strings with hammers. It's incredible to watch the figure come to life, admittedly even creepy at times. But the talent and ingenuity it took to make this truly is a testament to the Enlightenment and the interest of men and women who wanted to explore new ideas about science and technology. The video has subtitles for those who don't understand French, but really the android "speaks" for herself.

Library Bytes: LibraryThing

I haven't written anything library-oriented in quite a while, so I thought a post on LibraryThing would be fun, especially since I finished cataloging today my entire book collection. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I have 1100 books in my apartment. I have no idea how they're all fitting in here, but somehow there's still plenty of room to walk around. If you read bklynbiblio on the actual site itself rather than through an RSS feeder, you may have noticed I have a widget that shows a rotating group of random book covers from my collection. It's sometimes fun to see what will show up.

LibraryThing (LT) is actually an amazing website. Here is my profile. You catalog your book collection, searching by title, author, ISBN, whatever. But rather than just a static database of your holdings, it connects your library with everyone else's library in there to become a social networking site where you can see how many other people own the same book as you, and what people have the similar libraries to you. Not surprisingly, my friends SC and PR both turn out to have a number of similar books as me. That said, if you think my 1100 is big, you should see theirs: PR has 3433 books and SC has 4872 books! I joined LT 2 years ago after hearing about it from one of them. SC blogs about it frequently on Shermania, but since he's an expert cataloger in the library profession, it's not surprising that he would be so into it. The social networking component goes even further though, incorporating chat rooms, book store events, and so on. I don't actually utilize all those features in it, but I do like what it comes up with at times.

Once you catalog your books, you also assign multiple subject headings or tags. Using these recurring tags, you can then determine how many books you have in that particular subject. Are you surprised to discover that my top 3 tags are "British" (454 books), "art" (431), and "19th-century" (313)? "Fiction" (306) and "Victorian" (211) come next. Cataloging your collection also allows you to discover the authors whose books you own the most. Some of this doesn't really surprise me. Agatha Christie comes in high for me at 80 books (almost all paperbacks). I put the book cover image of What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! above as part of this post because I still think this was probably one of her most clever plots. (A woman on a train watches another train pass on a parallel track, and she suddenly witnesses a murder in the window of one of the cars. When she reports it afterwards, there's no trace of a murder ever taking place.) After Christie, my top fiction authors are Anne Rice (28), Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine (27), and A.S. Byatt (16). Among my art history books, Elizabeth Prettejohn came in with 6 titles, Beauty and Art: 1750-2000 being but one of her works. I was surprised who came next: Renaissance scholar Keith Christiansen and photography historian Larry Schaaf, tied with 5 books each, followed by the work of 19th-century art historian Robert Rosenblum. If you have a book collection and you've been wanting to get it organized, give LT a try. And if you do, "friend" my library!