Full-colour illustrations of all the items in the exhibition with commentary on each.

Photographs and text comprise an expert tour of the holdings of the Library of Congress.

In this highly-illustrated account, Nicolas Barker reveals the history of the British Library's treasure house of books and manuscripts. The Library's holdings cover collections spanning almost three millennia, from the establishment of the British Museum, which brought together the libraries of Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton and Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, to the foundation of the British Library in 1973 and to some outstanding acquisitions of the present day.

"This spectacular illustrated book showcases rare, beautiful, idiosyncratic, and sometimes surprising works in the National Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library. From thirteenth-century manuscripts to extravagant anatomical atlases to silent movies, pamphlets, magic lantern slides, stereograph cards, and much, much more, each item featured is a remarkable hidden treasure."--Jacket.

Essays by Nicholas Barker, Kenneth Breisch, Anthony Grafton Few people are aware of Los Angeles' vast collective resource of rare books, manuscripts, and related objects, housed in Los Angeles-area libraries. Featuring more than three hundred selections from area collections, The World from Here explores this treasure trove of rare books and ephemera. Included are materials ranging from a 1482 atlas of the known world to fiction classics, early botanical and scientific texts, letters, posters, and artists' books. Selections were culled from nearly forty institutions, including the Huntington Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles Public Library and the libraries at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California. Essays on libraries in the American West, the history of book collecting in Los Angeles, and library buildings in Los Angeles during the twentieth century make The World from Here an engaging study of this impressive, yet little-known, cultural resource. It catalogues an exhibit at the UCLA Hammer Museum until January 13, 2002.

The circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. However, books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries - private and public, royal and civic - played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.

Representing four centuries of collecting and 1000 years of Jewish history, this book brings together extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the collections include a fragment of Maimonides' autograph draft of the Mishneh Torah; the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; stunning festival prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring to life the outstanding works contained in the collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, who include Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Venetian Jesuit Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott and Rabbi David Oppenheim. Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also detail the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders, from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth to the twentieth century.

Almost as old as the idea of the library is the urge to destroy it. Author Lucien X. Polastron traces the history of this destruction, examining the causes for these disasters, the treasures that have been lost, and where the surviving books, if any, have ended up. Books on Fire received the 2004 Societe des Gens de Lettres Prize for Nonfiction/History in Paris.

In this photographic journey, Massimo Listri travels to some of the oldest and finest libraries around the world to celebrate their architectural and historical wonder. From medieval to 19th-century institutions, private to monastic collections, this is a cultural-historical pilgrimage to the heart of our halls of learning and the stories they tell.

From the archives of the Library of Congress: “An irresistible treasury for book and library lovers.” —Booklist (starred review) The Library of Congress brings book lovers an enriching tribute to the power of the written word and to the history of our most beloved books. Featuring more than two hundred full-color images of original catalog cards, first edition book covers, and photographs from the library’s magnificent archives, this collection is a visual celebration of the rarely seen treasures in one of the world’s most famous libraries and the brilliant catalog system that has kept it organized for hundreds of years. Packed with engaging facts on literary classics—from Ulysses to The Cat in the Hat to Shakespeare’s First Folio to The Catcher in the Rye—this is an ode to the enduring magic and importance of books. “The Card Catalog is many things: a lucid overview of the history of bibliographic practices, a paean to the Library of Congress, a memento of the cherished card catalogs of yore, and an illustrated collection of bookish trivia . . . . The illustrations are amazing: luscious reproductions of dozens of cards, lists, covers, title pages, and other images guaranteed to bring a wistful gleam to the book nerd’s eye.” —The Washington Post