The mysterious ancient origins of the book By Keith Houston 22 August 2016

 History of the Book

The book is changing. Electronic books, or ebooks, are more portable than their paper counterparts, capable of being carried in their hundreds on a single reader or tablet. Thousands more are just a click away. It can be argued that ebooks are more robust than paper ones: an ebook reader can be stolen or dropped in the bath, but the books on it are stored safely in the cloud, waiting to be downloaded onto a new device. It is not too much to say that books and reading are in the throes of a revolution.

Books and reading are in the throes of a revolution

Not everyone is happy about this. Book lovers, publishers and booksellers alike are watching the book-v-ebook sales battle with great interest, and when Tom Tivnan of The Bookseller reported recently that ebook sales had dipped for the first time, he sounded almost relieved: “For those who predicted the death of the physical book and digital dominating the market by the end of this decade, the print and digital sales figures […] for 2015 might force a reassessment.” Physical books may have the upper hand for now, but the debate is a long way from being settled.

Book lovers, publishers and booksellers alike are watching the book-v-ebook sales battle with great interest (Credit: Getty Images)

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Locked away: Egypt’s forgotten Jewish literary heritage

By Samar Samir

Inside a library of a synagogue in downtown Cairo, hundreds of Judaic books dating from the medieval ages to 20th century are shelved, unread and un-indexed.

Despite a center dedicated to their preservation, government ministries have stalled, eschewing responsibility for what would be an expensive project to review and record the manuscripts digitally.

Cultural history

Some of the shelved books date back to 17th and 18th centuries, while others are kept inside closed glass boxes, Hebrew Language professor at Ain Shams University Mohamed Hosni told The Cairo Post.

“The books are very important and rare. Some books are hand-written while others were donated by dignitaries,” Hosni added, “There are some books [so fragile they] cannot be touched lest they deteriorate.”

The Jewish Heritage Library in Egypt was established inside Cairo‘s Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue by the Jewish Community Council of Cairo in cooperation with Israeli Academic Center in Cairo during the tenure of former President Hosni Mubarak and was inaugurated on Oct. 25, 1988.

Most Egyptian Jews left the country in the 1950s, and of those who remained, the majority officially converted to Christianity or Islam. There less than 20 self-identified Jews estimated to remain in Egypt.

Head of Jewish Community of Egypt Magda Haroun has previously expressed her concerns over neglecting the library’s archeological and old books and rolls without digitizing and documentation.

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Preserving manuscripts Faith’s archivists

Catholic monks in Minnesota are helping to save a trove of Islamic treasures in Mali

Dec 19th 2015 | BAMAKO | From the print edition

THE secret evacuations began at night. Ancient books were packed in small metal shoe-lockers and loaded three or four to a car to reduce the danger to the driver and minimise possible losses. The manuscript-traffickers passed through the checkpoints of their Islamist occupiers on the journey south across the desert from Timbuktu to Bamako. Later, when that road was blocked, they transported their cargo down the Niger river by canoe.

It formed part of a fabulous selection of Islamic literary treasures that had survived floods, heat and invasion over centuries in Timbuktu. But in April 2012 Tuareg rebels had occupied the city. They were soon displaced by the Islamists with whom they had foolishly allied, a group linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The militants issued edicts to control behaviour, dress and entertainment. Music and football were banned. They destroyed Sufi shrines that had stood for centuries. It was assumed books would be next.

Such fears were not overblown. Islamists had been ruthless with libraries and holy sites in Libya earlier in the year. So in October, the evacuation began. By the time French troops liberated Timbuktu in January 2013 and journalists saw a wing of the city’s grandest new library still smouldering, most of the precious manuscripts had already been spirited away. [...]

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Rare Book School at the University of Virginia - NYTimes.com

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia - NYTimes.com

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

Published: July 23, 2012 

Jessica Pigza, an assistant curator for the New York Public Library's Rare Book Division, uses a magnifying glass to determine the type of leather used on a book cover.

 

  CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On a steamy morning last week Mark Dimunation, the chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, was in a windowless basement room here at the University of Virginia, leading a dozen people in a bibliophile’s version of the wave.

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• ArtsBeat: The Rare Book Scholar's Secret Weapon (July 24, 2012)

He lined up the group and handed each person a sheet of copier paper with a syllable written on it. After a few halting practice runs — “Hip-na-rah-toe ...” — the group successfully shouted out, “ ‘Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,’ 1499!”

The phrase wasn’t an incantation ripped from the pages of a lost Dan Brown novel, but the title and publication date of a long erotic love poem printed in Venice by Aldus Manutius and often described as one of the weirdest and most beautiful books ever produced. Read more

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