Printed Matter from the Personal Libraries Library Press

The Personal Libraries Library Press has completed a large round of printed matter that has been dispersed to its current members. Pictured above is the extent of the goodies, all of which were included in the Catalogue Member packets: the wishlist, Maria Mitchell poster, Mitchell letterpressed print & card.


The Pocket Wishlist includes books in both Maria Mitchell and Robert Smithson's personal libraries that are coveted at the Library. The Wishlist can fit in wallets & pockets, it unfolds to reveal the wanted books. The Library hopes you will refer to it when in your favorite used book store!



A limited-edition set of letterpress prints were made that help elucidate (or vice versa) the Maria Mitchell poster/legend. One print out of the set of 9 was placed in its own folder for Catalogue Members. One of the prints can be seen below:



And finally, the letterpress card displays a section of the poster, describing the links between Frances Power Cobbe, her intriguingly titled book, Maria Mitchell, a bust of Mary Somerville and the Vassar College Historian.

Personal Libraries Library Reference Library

The PLL is pleased to announce the formation of a reference section. Following are books that are great sources about those whose libraries are being collected. These books are available during Reading Room Hours only, and not for check out.

MARIA MITCHELL
Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science by Renee Bergland - Ref MM 1.1

ROBERT SMITHSON
Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings edited by Jack Flam - Ref RS 2.1
Robert Smithson organized by Eugenie Tsai with Cornelia Butler - Ref RS 2.2

ITALO CALVINO (more to be added)
Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino - Ref IC 3.1
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino - Ref IC 3.2

JORGE LUIS BORGES (more to be added)
Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Non-Fictions edited by Eliot Weinberger - Ref JLB 4.1

Books, Books, Books! Science, Science, Science!

The Personal Libraries Library has recently acquired many books from the Robert Smithson Personal Library that are focused on science. One line of inquiry in Smithson's artwork was the transformation, entropy and detritus of geological elements. The images above and below are from Geology: Our Changing Earth through the Ages by Jerome Wyckoff.


"Cross section of a volcanic region shows how igneous activity in the crust produces various landscape forms- volcano, lava flows, dikes and sills, laccoliths, geysers and hot springs, and fumaroles." (Golden Press, 1967: 43)


The Library now has a set of books on rocks, minerals and crystals. They include: Crystals and Crystal Growing by Alan Holden & Phylis Singer, Field Book of Common Rocks and Minerals by Frederic Brewster Loomis, and Crystals, Diamonds, and Transistors by L.W. Marrison.


Two additional new books are Harry Asher's Experiments in Seeing and Flaubert's Bibliomania, a short tale about a man obsessed with books:

He saved all his money, all his goods, all his emotions for books. He had been a monk and for books he had abandoned God. Later he sacrificed for them that which men hold dearest after their God: money. Then he gave to books that which people treasure next to money: his soul. (The Rodale Press, 1954: 15)