Happy birthday Mary Poppins!

Did you know that August 2009 is a double birthday for the world's best known literary nanny? Mary Poppins first appeared in book form in August 1934 and was released as the hugely popular Disney film in August 1964, so she's 75 and 45 simultaneously.

Mary Poppins was written by expatriate Australian P.L. Travers (born Helen Lyndon Goff). She grew up in Queensland and New South Wales, but moved to London in her twenties and spent the rest of her life outside of Australia. Travers wrote 8 Poppins books, plus several more featuring the character, as well as essays, poems and short stories. Her literary papers are held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and reveal a woman who spent her life searching for meaning - religious and spiritual - but seemed ultimately to be disappointed and slightly bitter.

A display of Poppins material at the State Library of New South Wales highlights the relationship between Travers and the Disney Company during the making of the film, and inlcudes original correspondence between Travers, Disney and Julie Andrews, as well as coloured prints of the Poppins drawings by Mary Shepard and original copies of the Poppins books owned by Travers.

On display in the Nelson Meers Heritage Gallery at the State Library of NSW until November 2009.

Bronte poem variant bindings

I'm trying to sort out the variant bindings on the Brontes' Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. According to all the info I've been able to find, below is the probable order of the bindings (the images below are from Parrish: Victorian Lady Novelists (Burt Franklin NY, 1933 -repr. 1969). The info is based on this, and note 25, Binding Variants in the Brontes' Poems, pp. 219-221 Book Collector (Autumn 1953)

Image from Parrish

These geometric designs are likely the original bindings used by Aylott and Jones (the company the Brontes paid to publish their book in 1846.) Only 2 or 3 copies sold.

After the success of Jane Eyre published by Smith Elder in 1848, Smith Elder acquired the remainder of the Poems stock from Aylott for reissue. It is possible that any copies with the geometric design as above plus inserted Smith Elder title pages date from this Jane Eyre period.

In the 1850s, after Charlotte's death, her biography by Elizabeth Gaskell appeared and sales of the Poems took off. The next two bindings may date from this period:

Image from Parrish

Interestingly, the one on the right appears to be relatively uncommon and is only known with an Aylott title page. The one on the left is the most common version.

Here at the State Library of NSW in Sydney, we have two copies in the Mitchell collection, as pictured below. It's the light green decorative binding on the right which I'm most interested in.

Mitchell Library copies

What I would like to know is, if you have a copy of Poems, which binding do you have and what do you know about it, if anything - particular which publisher title page appears with which binding??

Facebooking and other social networks...

It's the last week of the learning journey and it's social networks. I have to say up front: I am a Facebooker, albeit a slightly ambivalent one. I'm really not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm 'Facebook friends' with many many more people than in real life, including people from school who I wouldn't necessarily be in contact with without Facebook. Is this good? Do I need regular updates on people I haven't thought about for 15 years, let alone spoken to? It is vicariously interesting though and quite addictive, to lurk on the outskirts of others' lives. (That sounds a bit stalker-ish, but you know what I mean.)
Anyway, I guess because so many people are like me and have made Facebook (and similar sites like MySpace) part of their daily lives, institutions and organisations who want to make contact with certain communities should be out there, in these virtual communities. This does not mean that we approach them in these spaces - that is scary commercial-like targetting of people! No, we are there, to be found, in a virtual way, in the same was as we are here, on Macquarie Street, to be found, by anyone who cares to look.

Penguin does it again

How do they do it? I have to say, Penguin has one of the best brands around. Their marketing is always spot-on. And I always, ALWAYS fall for it.

Office goes virtually free

I think I'm up to week 13 in my haphazard learning journey. Online applications and tools. We certainly don't need to be tied to a PC any more or even carry around all our electronic bits and bobs on a memory stick. The internet can store almost all our files for us and offer us all the software we need to create and manipulate our information. I imagine some of our clients using the internet are enjoying being able to create, access and use their documents without needing to access our network or even save copies onto a stick.
Computerworld recently compared the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools of three of the big names (Google Docs, Zoho and ThinkFree) to see if they are genuine competitors of MS Office. The results are interesting. It seems that these online applications 'have gotten good enough' to be of real use in comparison with MS Office. Guess we can all give Bill the flick now...

rare books and special collections in virginia

A deviation from the program - this week I've been in Charlottesville Virginia at Rare Book School. I took a course called 'Introduction to Special Collections Librarianship' which was taught by Alice Schreyer, Director of the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago. Most of the students in the class were librarians or administrators of university special collections, which meant that the course naturally emphasised this area of SC librarianship. We discussed the theory and practice of SC librarianship, with a focus on rare book collections, although we did speak extensively about manuscript and archival collections. Among other things, we covered areas such as access, reservation, digitisation, using SCs in teaching and outreach (including exhibitions), the phenomenon of 'hidden collections', and the recently-drafted document outlining core competencies for SC professionals. It was a really interesting week and a great perspective on how the SC community in the US functions (actually, quite an eye-opener in some ways, especially in terms of funding and the positioning of the SC profession within the general library community). I've made copious notes, of course, but can I read them???

Mash it up

Well, this week was kind of fun (though it did take an awfully long time to be creative). A lot of what is on offer out there is a bit pointless, except for fun, but there are some exciting possiblities. Talis ran a library mashup comptetition a few years ago and some of the entries were intriguing. The winner was John Blyberg who created Go Go Google Gadgets, a suite of library gadgets which could be added to your personalised Google desktop. Blyberg is also the creator of the fabulous Catalog Card Generator.

Anyway, I spent a long time on Bighugelabs trying to choose a toy to use, then another very long time on Flickr, agonising over whether I could pinch someone's photo, despite my usual scruples about copyright (I did use it in the end - and I acknowledge a fine photo by The Kruger.) I'm not sure which value this illustrates - it covers all bases really. It is supposed to be a positive message by the way!