Library Stuff

“A Princeton University alum has bequeathed to the school his collection of 2,500 rare books worth an estimated worth of $300 million – the largest single donation in the school’s history, officials said. William H. Scheide, a 1936 graduate, died in November. He was 100 years old. The Scheide Library, housed in the university’s Firestone Library and available to students since 1959, contains the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, the original printing of the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s first, second, third and fourth folios and an 1856 autographed speech by Abraham Lincoln, among others, according to a university release.” (via NJ.com)

“The Einstein Papers Project, the decades-long effort to compile and preserve the scientist’s professional work and personal writings, is today opening to the public as a free searchable database containing thousands of documents. The launch of the Digital Einstein Papers includes more than 5,000 documents that span the first 44 years of Albert Einstein’s life. As the organizations collaborating on the project — the California Institute of Technology (the project’s home), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (which houses the Albert Einstein Archives) and Princeton University Press — work to sort through tens of thousands of articles and letters, the website will grow to one day feature what the publisher said may be the first free digital collection of a prominent scientist’s complete works.” (via insidehighered)

“The papers of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison are now part of the permanent library collection of Princeton University. Princeton made the announcement Friday, shortly before the 83-year-old Morrison took part in a forum at the school where she served on the faculty for 17 years.” (via AP)

“Princeton University Press has selected Tizra as the digital publishing platform it will use to make The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein available online.  One of the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the documentation of the history of science, The Collected Papers will ultimately comprise more than 14,000 papers selected from all phases of Einstein’s career and fill nearly 30 volumes.” (via Digital Book World)

“Imagine looking over author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s shoulder as he wrote “The Great Gatsby,” one of the 20th century’s best known novels — watching as he developed certain plotlines and abandoned others, cultivated characters from brief sketches into familiar figures and painstakingly wrote and rewrote some of the most famous passages in American literature. The Princeton University Library has afforded such an opportunity by digitizing the handwritten manuscript and corrected galleys of Fitzgerald’s classic novel and making them available online to anyone who wishes to view them.” (via NJ.com)

“An extraordinary collection of world maps, dating from 1472 to 1700, has found a permanent home in the Historic Maps Collection of the Princeton University Library. Collected by Henry Wendt, Class of 1955, and his wife, Holly, the thirty items have been traveling around the country for the past three years as an exhibition, “Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700.” Firestone Library’s Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts hosted the show in early 2010.” (via Princeton University)

SciTEchNews – “DataSpace is a digital repository meant for both archiving and publicly disseminating digital data which are the result of research, academic, or administrative work performed by members of the Princeton University community. DataSpace will promote awareness of the data and address concerns for ensuring the long-term availability of data in the repository.”

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