A Library Planet post by Rosine Rigot Bingol In the middle of the picturesque Scandinavian city of Ålesund in Norway is the largest public library in the county of Møre og Romsdal, Ålesund Bibliotek. Ålesund Bibliotek serves as a vital community resource for residents and visitors alike. The library is located on the second floor of…
Library Planet Blog, March 2024
1. We would love to publish profiles of your favourite libraries. Please send profiles to booksofkells@live.com.au 2. Some recent posts on Library Planet include profiles of Vancouver Public Library, the Kyoto International Manga Museum, Mildura Library, the State Library of Queensland, Murray Valley libraries and the Brussels Air Museum. <https://libraryplanet.net/> 3. Please also check out…
The Penguin Paperback
The Penguin paperback is an icon of publishing and design. The first covers were attractively simple. A rectangular shape, 181×112 mm, adhering to the golden ratio of 1.61 and based on work by Leonardo da Vinci on the ideal page size. Friendly bands of orange, white, and orange—like the map of an imaginary European country,…
Melbourne University Publishing: A Centenary History
1. Why did you want to write about the history of Australia’s oldest university press? I relished the opportunity to write about one of Australia’s most important publishers. Many details of MUP’s history are not widely known, and with the press reaching its centenary, the timing for the book was just right. I’ve always been…
From Mao to the CIA, how books have been vehicles and victims of war: Sydney Morning Herald review of ‘The Book at War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict’
Andrew Pettegree’s latest offering has a lot in common with his 2021 book, The Library: A Fragile History, co-authored with Arthur der Weduwen … From The Book at War we learn that a young Mao Zedong worked in the Beijing University library, recording the names of people who came to read newspapers. Mao had arrived at Beijing having…
Mildura Library, Mildura, Victoria, Australia
A Library Planet post by Fiona Kells The Mildura Library is housed in the Alfred Deakin Centre. The Centre, which was named in honour of Australia’s second Prime Minister, opened in 1997. Up until that time, the Mildura Library had occupied the nearby Carnegie Centre, a grand old dame of a building that opened in…
Philologists, pedants and obsessives: how crowd-sourcing created the Oxford English Dictionary
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary is a celebration of words and word-people: authors, editors, publishers, linguists, lexicographers, philologists, obsessives, pedants. Its author, Sarah Ogilvie, was formerly an Oxford English Dictionary editor and wrote the 2013 book Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary….
Library tourism by Mark Dapin
One way to get a sense of a country’s cultural touchstones is to visit its libraries — both the famous and lesser-known ones. BY MARK DAPIN Some years ago I was at a conference of international thriller writers (no, I hadn’t known they were a thing either) when a fellow Australian author suggested we visit…
All the Will in the world: Four centuries of the First Folio (State Library of New South Wales)
The 1623 volume, Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, aka the ‘First Folio’, was 400 years old in 2023. Why is it so special? I should begin by putting all my cards on the table. I’m fascinated by Shakespeare and his books, including the First Folio. In the immediate pre-Covid years, I took my…
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