sandra e thompson: iReview

[This is were I get to play]

Art Project
powered by Google

'Earlier this year [2010], Google rolled out 'Art Project,' a tool that lets you access 1,000 works of art appearing in 17 great museums across the world, from the Met in New York City to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. (More on that here.) Now, as part of a broader effort to put art in your hands, the company has produced a new smartphone app (available in Android and iPhone) that enriches the museum-going experience, and it’s being demoed at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.'

'A unique collaboration between Google and some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.'

http://www.googleartproject.com/

The Google Art Project by Nancy Proctor/ Curator

Tamburlaine Must Die

Louise Welsh

I always listen to ABC radio at home.
Over Christmas, I was captivated by this novella being read on Lucky Oceans' afternoon radio program.

This story is a fictional account of the life of Christopher Marlowe, playwright and poet and the events that lead to his betrayal and murder. He was born two months before William Shakespeare in 1564 and murdered twenty-nine years later.

Homosexual themes abound in Marlowe's writing. Over history, fact and fiction have always intertwined about the lives of Marlowe and Shakespeare. The makings of this compelling story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburlaine_Must_Die

my local library has an eLibrary service

Again, over the holidays, I found out that my library has an eLibrary. It's a free service and downloading the eReaders are free too. I downloaded 'Adobe Digital Editions' for eBooks in text format [the downloads are quick-even for my slow dial-up connection] and 'Overdrive Media Console' for audio books.

I've just listened to a true story about ...

Dewey the library cat

What a fantastic name for a library cat!

How could anyone abandon a tiny kitten to die in a library return chute. He was rescued by our heroine librarian, Vicky Myron who found him cold, hungry and near death.

It was the beginning of a love affair that captured the hearts of America.

see photos of Dewey and find out more about him-

http://www.deweyreadmorebooks.com/deweycandids.php

"Irony in the library"

from the NSW Camden Library website:
22 June 2011

"Fines Amnesty - This is a great opportunity to clear any outstanding overdue library fines ... "

Charles Darwin's 'Insectivorous Plants' was returned to Camden Library this month,
122 years overdue! In this news report, Library Manager, Kathryn Baget-Juleff mentions another long overdue library book in this YouTube video from Channel Ten.

This dubious honour may refer to the first American President, George Washington whose overdue library books surfaced some 221 years late ...

Print v Digital
And what we loose ...

The Heritage of Hiroshige : a glimpse at Japanese Landscape Art
by Dora Amsden with the assistance of John Stewart Happer

image:

On facing page:

The Moonlit Saru Hashi [Monkey Bridge]

'Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight"

This leather bound book has a dragonfly [below] embossed on the back cover.
As a special tribute to the artist who loved to paint and draw them and
was inspired to recreate the shimmering colours of their wings in his palette.
I was deeply touched and delighted by the thoughtfulness of this small and
delicate gesture on the back of the book in thought to the artist.

Abstract
[submitted for LIS assessment]

This is a digitised book from the Library of the University of California: Rare

Books Dept., a gift of Mrs. Ethel R. Pryor.

It is suggested that the student read the introduction of this book to experience

the delightful charm and manner of another age. The author was born in 1858

and written from her perspective she promotes the artistry of the little known

Japanese printmaker, Ando Hiroshige. The featured chapter on colour printing

examines the schools of Ukiyoye.

"In winter scenes Hiroshige surpasses all other painters. His snow, soft and
luminous, is piled upon the ridges of temples and the roofs of peasants' huts.
With such simplicity yet certainty of touch he has attained his results that we
can see the outline of the trees beneath their white burden and feel the icy chill
of blue-black rivulets, half frozen in their course through some narrow gorge
between frowning cliffs snow-covered."

Please note the 'Toyoakitsu' (dragon fly), embossed into the leather of the back cover.

Includes index
Bibliography: p. 81 (A Who's Who of rare books)

'Kurenai no

Kagero hashiru

Tombo kana!

Like a fleeting of crimson gossamer threads, the flashing of the dragon-flies.'

Oops!
Thu, October 27, 2011 Tishrei 29, 5772

How did Israel’s National Library give away a
first-edition Darwin?

A rare translation into Bulgarian of “Tevye the Milkman” by Sholem Aleichem,
one of the books inadvertently given away by the National Library.

the National Library Magazine

At first glance, I thought she was 'the girl with a pearl earing' by Vermeer. Am I forgiven?

She is Nora Heysen, the daughter and fourth child of the German born Australian landscape artist Hans Heysen. Nora won the Archibald Prize in 1938 and her father was knighted in 1959. Read this article about Nora in the June 2011 issue.

I was particularly interested in the article about John Gould. I remember

belonging to the Gould Guild when I was a child and collecting the beautiful

cards of equally beautiful Australian birds.

The National Library in Canberra produces a quarterly magazine. It is full

of interesting well written articles and illustrations about the treasures in

the library.