A New Model for Fonts?

There’s an interesting  bit of font news over at webmonkey.  Currently, for a font to display on a webpage it has to be available as a licensed (or stolen) file located on the web user’s personal computer.  But the capabilities of CSS, and updates to web browsers, mean that in the near future a site will be able to load a font available on a webserver, sort of like putting an image on flickr and allowing it to be embedded on any site.  Thus, websites will no longer be limited by the small selection of common fonts, at least for people using Opera, Firefox or Safari.  The only major problem is the hesitancy of font foundries, which worry about piracy.  Check out the original post at clagnut for more information on why font foundries should embrace the embedding model and how pricing and payment might work.

As someone interested in typography I’m all for this, though I do understand the sentiments of webmonkey commenter tiejaz: “Great. Now for the oncoming flood of retards using Comic Sans and handwriting fonts on every page.”

Argh

I’m having terrible glitches with the new WordPress image captioning system, and I can’t get the post below to work correctly, so I’ve removed the captions.  If you want to find out more about the images, just click them to go directly to the websites.  In the future I’ll return to my old methods.

African American Pamphlets & WWI Postcards

Today I want to point out two nice digital collections at Emory University.

When most of us think of pamphlets the first things that come to mind are the broadsides and revolutionary tracts of the early modern era followed by the religious and social works of the 19th century.  The Emory University Portal for African American Pamphlets, however, sheds light on what I would consider to be an often overlooked but significant aspect of American printing history.  You can look through notable examples beginning on the home page, many of which have striking covers, or browse based on author, illustrator or publisher.  It would be nice if Emory made available more background information and full scans of these tracts (at least for the notable examples,) but I did enjoy just looking through the cover images.  The site also provides, at the bottom of the ‘About‘ section, a list of important pamphlet collections at other institutions.

The second site is The Great War, which features a nice collection of WWI era postcards and poetry.  I’m not much into poetry so I haven’t delved into that section, but the postcards are wonderful and can be browsed via a range of subjects like nationality, image type and content (there are even some WWII era cards in the mix.)  I was particularly taken with the embroidered cards—do give them a look.  A bit disappointed, though, that the ANZACs have been mostly left out.

Gardens of Knowledge

John Hill, 1714?-1775. A general natural history: or, New and accurate descriptions of the animals, vegetables, and minerals, of the different parts of the world. . 3 v. London: Printed for Thomas Osborne, 1748-1752. Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In my internet wanderings this week I stumbled on an interesting online exhibit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Gardens of Knowledge features a variety of botanical volumes published in the 17th and 18th centuries and includes some nice images.  It doesn’t make any attempt at broad historical analysis, but is a good jumping-off point for discovering interesting botanical works.

Hollywood Wants to Teach Your Kid to Read

If you’ve ever played a videogame or read a novelization based on a recent blockbuster you will know exactly how much thought and creativity typically go into movie merchandise.  So it’s not much of a shock that children’s books based on action flicks aren’t that great.  Nevertheless, today’s Slate slideshow by Erica Perl does a good job presenting the history of beginning readers and explaining exactly what’s wrong with the sloppily-produced primers based on movies (other than the obvious creep factor of pushing adult-themed franchises onto preschoolers.)  She also makes some good book recommendations for children learning to read; I remember being quite the fan of Frog and Toad back in the day.

If you happen to be in Madison, WI

The UW-Madison Department of Special Collections has created what looks like a fascinating exhibit on the use of color in scientific books between the 15th and 20th centuries.  It’s in conjunction with the 2008 Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine conference taking place in September, but the exhibit will be open all summer.  It focuses on changing color technologies and how the use of color was approached from a scientific perspective, drawing from the library’s extensive science and natural history collection.   For more information visit the Special Collections website.

Links

— Paul Collins has an amusing article in Slate this week on the recently recovered Durham Folio and the history of Folio scholarship.

Just how much Scott knows about rare first editions, only time—or perhaps a plea bargain—will tell. But what he clearly doesn’t know is what any folio scholar could tell him: that aside from a face-melting Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the lousiest loot in the world to steal.

For more informatio on the Durham folio check out the posts at Philobiblos and Upward Departure, as well as an article in the Washington post.

— Thanks to Bibliophile Bullpen for pointing out that the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is making available a free .pdf version of the wonderful ABC for Booksellers Book Collectors.

— Over at the New Yorker, a nice piece on New York librarian Anne Carroll Moore, who created the children’s library as we know it, and her relationship with author E.B. White.

— All the way from a bank vault across town, I just heard the value of my signed first Satanic Verses drop to nill.  Sort of a metallic crashing.

— Paper Cuts discusses the seemingly bizarre world of online book pricing.

How did the booksellers arrive at these figures, which seemed prohibitively high and oddly precise (would it have been $131.10 had one fewer page been dog-eared by the original owner)?

— Hoefler & Frere-Jones comment on “crippling shortfalls in the nation’s strategic four reserve.”

— Political controversy erupts at Fine Books & Collections Magazine over an opinion piece on the NEA by Nicholas Basbanes.

— Wired has a cool photo gallery on nano-fabrication, focusing on a process used to make nano-scale letters.  Very Diamond Age!

• Photo: Thomas G. Mason and Carlos J. Hernandez

GhettoNerd at the End of the World

I’m not sure what it is about Junot Díaz that seems to leave his interviewers inarticulate, (possibly the gentle, self-conscious demeanor through which his wonderful intellect shines,) but he’s done it again in a nice video interview at Slate today. *Caution, there is a tiny bit of spoilage.*

Good timing, too, because I finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao just last night, and I think it’s safe to say that a new novel has found its way to my all-time top ten list (possibly top five).  Besides being incredibly well-written, creative, and thoughtful, it had a huge emotional impact.  Finishing was like a punch in the gut, and I think it might take a day or two before I can get deeply involved in another book.  I’m kicking myself now for not reading it last summer, but there were so many other books on my list, and this one never found its way to our library, so I kept putting it off.

Anyway, I won’t waste my meager words with an attempt to describe the plot or themes, but only say that if you haven’t read it yet, do.  And check out the Slate interview as well as Díaz’s talk with Terry Gross on Fresh Air last fall.  Also available is an email exchange between Díaz and Slate’s Meghan O’Rourke which informs the line of questioning in the video.

Paper History

While doing some Google research I found a great online exhibit from the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum at Georgia Tech.  It presents a detailed history of paper, from ancient China forward, with a focus on the technology of paper-making.  Highly recommended; check it out.

The Things I do for Book History

I had a very exciting day: I got to drive to the UK visa application center in Atlanta to surrender my biometric data.  It’s a new policy for the student visas that requires the applicant to provide fingerprints and a digital photo.  I was a bit worried that it was going to be some kind of nightmarish bureaucratic hassle in which I would be shunted between various ques and uncomfortable plastic seats for an hour.  Like the DMV!  Happily, it was exactly the opposite, with no lines and very friendly, efficient staff.  They let me go ahead even though I was a little early, and it was all finished in ten minutes.  The highlight was having my fingerprints done; it’s all digital and they appeared magnified about 1,000 times on the computer screen.  Pretty cool (and a bit creepy.  Oh well.)

And, quite appropriately, here’s one more memorable book cover I just thought of.  I’m kind of surprised EW missed this one when making their list.