Inquiring minds will find interesting tidbits on this page
Stuart Kells says it best in The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders, “Libraries are more than the accumulation of books. Every library has an atmosphere, even a spirit. Every visit to a library is an encounter with the ethereal phenomena of coherence, beauty, and taste. But libraries are not Platonic abstractions or sterile, hyperbaric chambers. They are human places into which humans cry tears, molt hair, slough skin, sneeze snot, and deposit oil from their hands -incidentally the best sustenance for old leather bindings.”
Toledo [Spain] held a long-standing position as an intellectual capital built upon Jewish, Islamic, and Christian shoulders and was the first locality that implemented “blood purity statutes” in the 1450s that blocked the participation of conversos in municipal government.
Deciphering Secrets / Archivo Histórico de la Catedral de Burgos
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
In 1996 Google co-founders supported the Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project and by 2002 Google Books was officially launched as a secret project to start digitizing books all over the world. It’s definitely not a secret anymore! (Source: Arts and Culture, google.com)
How many words are there in the dictionary? 273,000 in the Oxford Dictionary.
Materials books have been made of through the ages: papyrus, palm leaves, bone, bark, ivory, linen, stone, silk, gems, plastic, silicon, bamboo, copper, iron, silver, gold, wood, wax, glass, hemp, rags, rubber, enamel, turtle shell, antlers, hair, rawhide and elephant intestines. (The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders, by Stuart Kells).
Oprah Winfrey launched her book club in 1996. Toni Morrison called it “a reading revolution.” (Jess McHugh, “How women invented book clubs, revolutionizing reading and their own lives,” Washington Post, March 27, 2021)
The Old Farmer’s Almanac was first published in 1792. Its headquarters are in Dublin, New Hampshire, Robert B. Thomas was the founder of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, (editor from 1792 to 1846). The Old Farmer’s Almanac is the oldest almanac in the country—started when George Washington was president.
Come back often, we add more all the time.