With no more campaigns to raise money for it seems that the Bush machine has set its sites on the Bush Presidential Library.

In the spirit of Sacha Baron Cohen the Sunday Times of London arranged and recorded an interview between a leading GOP activist Stephen Payne and two men thought to be acting on behalf of the exiled former president of Kyrgyzstan.

Payne, who also sits on the Homeland Security advisory board, is heard offering meetings with high-level officials of the Bush Administration in return for a hefty donation to the Bush Presidential Library. For somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library, Payne promised face to face meetings with a variety of Bush's cronies.

“Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible ...The main thing is that he [the Asian politician] comes, and he’s well received, that he meets with high-level people . . . and we send positive statements made back from the administration about ‘This guy wasn’t such a bad guy, many people have done worse’.” said Payne.

Keith Olbermann has coined this latest fiasco Library-Gate and the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee lead by Henry Waxman has begun to investigate. In the meantime, the White House is distancing itself, Payne was fired from the Homeland Security advisory board and a Bush spokesman for library foundation said that no additional monies will be accepted from foreign sources while Bush is still in office.

See the Sunday Times of London video here
The story here

Other coverage:
Houston Chronicle piece, "Houstonian denies he tried to sell access to Bush aides."
Dallas Morning News story, "Lobbyist promised White House access in return for Bush library"
Post at Majikthise, "Stephen Payne continues to make Jack Abramoff look like a piker"
Huffington Post story via Politico, "Henry Waxman Launches Probe Into Lobbyist Stephen Payne Who Allegedly Traded Access For Bush Library Donations."

Previously on Book Patrol:
The Dark Side of the Bush Presidential Library
And the Envelope Please: Designs for the George W. Bush Presidential Library

Welcome to the all new Digital Bookmobile, the world's first bookmobile without books. This 18 wheeler is 69 feet long and packed with the latest digital technologies. It was created by Over Drive to be used as an outreach tool for public libraries to promote their digital offerings.

How it works:

"The Digital Bookmobile, developed inside a high-tech tractor-trailer, will present programs that promote the host library's download digital media catalog and 'virtual branch' website. The vehicle is customized for each library event and equipped with broadband Internet-connected PCs, high definition monitors, premium sound systems, and a variety of portable media players. Hands-on learning stations demonstrate how to search the digital media catalog, use supported mobile devices, and download and enjoy eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video from the library."

It kicks off it's national tour August 10th at the main branch of the New York Public Library. Current tour schedule here.

Thanks to LIS for the lead

If your a Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit or Benjamin Bunny fan then peacay's recent post, Beatrix Potter Rarities, at BibliOdyssey is a must see. peacay features numerous rare Potter sketches, watercolors and drawings, many from her days as a greeting card illustrator before her huge success as a book illustrator.

What is of particular interest here is that all images were culled from the archives of Sotheby's and Christie's and not from the digital archive of various library special collections. It opens up a whole new world by offering us a glimpse of important material that usually ends up in private hands. The image archives of the leading auction houses are a goldmine and greatly enhance the understanding and study of our material culture.

Michell Romo decided to celebrate her 25th birthday by creating one art project a month for a year. Each month she features a different conceptual theme and each will be available in a limited edition of 25 copies. The end result will be 25 handmade books and an art show. One theme was Fonts and Typography

via Neatorama

When Barnes & Noble decided to close their Chelsea store in New York City many thought that the small rare- and out-of-print-book department that was housed at that location for the last 8 years would disappear too.

Instead the company decided to not only relocate the department to a larger store on Broadway and 66th Street but is also "spending a significant sum on the department, installing custom display cases with locked glass doors" and moving it to a more prominent location on the second floor of the store.

Although they are claiming that there are no plans to "replicate the effort in other stores" and are calling it the pet project of Karen Catalanotti, who set up the department in the Chelsea store, there exists a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on this growing market.

One can imagine in the not to distant future a Barnes & Noble Rare Book command center which would house seasoned booksellers and an extensive reference library and uses the latest technology to communicate with their various stores and booksellers on the front lines.

Picture this: Someone walks into a Barnes & Noble in Des Moines, Iowa with a box of books for sale. The trained used bookseller on staff deals with the general out of print material using a comprehensive internal database and if there is an item that might warrant further work they simply image or video it and send it off to the command center. A short time later the command center responds with either further bibliographic questions or a fair offer price.

For one, the profit margins are significantly higher than new books but more importantly it bolsters the role of the bookstore in the community and brings the company closer to being the full service bookstore they aspire to.

The future is near!

Celia McGee's piece, Rare Indeed: A Chain Committed to Selling Out-of-Print Books, in the New York Times

"Today, more talented artists by far are involved in picture-book making than ever before, with art schools, museums, and galleries most recently becoming devoted to picture-book illustration as an art form," said picture-book historian Leonard S. Marcus.

They exhibit focuses on illustrations of the last ten years and is divided into the following categories:
The New Child
The Child in the Family
The Child at School and Play
The Child in the Community
The Child in History
The Questioning Child and
The New Picture Book.

Featured illustrators include: Etienne Delessert, Marla Frazee, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Maurice Sendak, William Steig and Chris Van Allsburg.

The show was organized by the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY, and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, and is co-curated by Marcus, art historian Jane Bayard Curley and librarian Caroline Ward and runs through September 14.

Speaking of picture-books. Don't miss Erica S. Pearl's piece at Salon.com, "I'm Talking to You, Corded! : The Mismatch of Technology and Picture Books." Pearl takes a look at the disconnect between the representation of technology in modern picture-books and the reality of the modern technologies that appear in many children's environments.

Pearl asks the question "Why do modern picture-book scenes often look so dated"

"The homes we see in children's picture books--even books published in the current decade and set in the present--often seem conspicuously dated. There are few computers. E-mail is hardly ever mentioned (much less checked). Phones usually have long, loopy cords tethering the receiver to the base."

She offers numerous visual examples included a few that incorporate the appropriate technology of the day.

Talk about books and technology. Is the book on life support? The reader? Is information going in? or coming out?

This fantastic screenprint was designed by John Solimine of Spike Press in an edition of 400 for the recent publication of Coudal Partners' Field-Tested Books. It also serves as the cover art.

For over six years now the folks at Coudal have been asking been asking people to send them 300-500 words about a book they read somewhere; a "certain book read in a certain place."

The Field-Tested Books book contains three years of reviews featuring 143 entries from more than 90 contributors. It sells for $17 with a portion of the proceeds going to First Book, a charity that buys new books for underprivileged kids.

Book available here

Denny, Emily Inez (1853-1918). Untitled. 51" x 37", framed; the image is approximately 38" x 14". Dated 1888, with the signature "E I Denny '88" faint but visible in the lower left hand corner.

One of our areas of specialization here at Wessel & Lieberman is the history and literature of the Pacific Northwest. We are fortunate to see and handle many types of material relating to our homeland. Though I work hard at keeping Book Patrol book focused there are times where something outside the book begs to be shared. This is one of those rare times.

The view is a maritime landscape of Puget Sound, appearing to be a view which looks south from the northern part of the Sound, somewhere between Edmonds and Bellingham.

Emily Denny was the first child of Seattle pioneers David Denny and Louisa Boren. In her 1909 autobiographical work "Blazing the Way; True stories, songs and sketches of Puget Sound and other pioneers", she states that she was "the first child of the first white family established at Elliott Bay."

As an artist, Emily Inez Denny's work is accomplished, and a few of her depictions of early days in Seattle have become iconic representations of the period. Her painting "Fort Decatur, January 26, 1856" relates a famous scene from the "Indian Attack on Seattle"; it is held at the Museum of History & Industry in Seattle, along with numerous other pieces of hers. Her painting "Indian Camp on Lake Union" has been recently restored and was a centerpiece for an exhibit titled 'Nature in the Balance'. As a result of several different donations, MOHAI has the largest collection of Emily Inez Denny work; a large number of pieces are also held privately by the family, and her work is rarely seen offered in the market.

This painting is a magnificent example from Emily Inez Denny's oeuvre, the work of a pioneer child from Seattle, and an accomplished artist of the region from this time.

16 year old Surjit Singh wrote a love poem in praise of an older girl. The problem was the girl was an "upper caste girl" and such cross-caste appreciation is taboo in India.

"When the teacher came to know about the Surjit's love poem, he caned him till he almost dropped dead." said one of Surjit's fellow students. If that wasn't enough the day after he was "thrashed in front of other students by an upper caste teacher" he was beaten to death by members of the girl's family.

The schools headmaster pleaded ignorance about the tragedy saying "he was out of school on the day of the incident". The teacher has been but on leave and is "inaccessible". No charges have been filed and the boy's father, Telu Ram, is to poor to pursue the case on his own.

Story in the India Times

The F.B.!. has come with a summer reading list. They are on the lookout for the following books:

150 copies of Understanding Terror Networks

30 copies of Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times

130 copies of The Koran (Penguin Classics version)

150 copies of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

180 copies of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

30 copies of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror

30 copies of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

30 copies of Islam: A Short History

They also need 100 copies of the 2008 Federal Criminal Code Rules Book.

They are also looking for a slew of Microsoft related how-to books.

Details of how you can you can sell them these books here.

Thanks to Resource Shelf for the lead

She came into the world as Joyce Columbia Bernur and when she left it in February of last year she was Joyce Columbia Book. She also left $77,000 to the Berkeley Public Library.

Book lived in the Berkeley area for the whole of her adult life and beside her love of reading and libraries she was also an early supporter of animal rights.

BPL Community Relations Librarian Alan Bern told the East Bay Express that in her later years "She was once heard to say that she wished she could just move into that library and live there for the rest of her days."

When she could no longer get to the library she utilized the Berkeley Public Library's Outreach home delivery program. She loved 'cozy' mysteries or mysteries with cats in them and was a collector of books on astrology.

Ms. Book R.I.P.

Story at the East Bay Express

"If Obama is elected, he'll be one of the most literary presidents in recent memory" says Laura Miller in her piece, "Barack by the Books", at Salon.com. Miller takes a "look at some of the formative books in his intellectual and political life to see if we can learn more about the man behind the movement."

"Obama the reader blossomed as an undergraduate at Occidental College in California and, especially, during the two monkish years he spent finishing up his degree at Columbia University in New York. "I had tons of books," he told his biographer, David Mendell ("Obama: From Promise to Power"), about this time in his life. "I read everything. I think that was the period when I grew as much as I have ever grown intellectually. But it was a very internal growth." Even after he left New York to work as a community organizer in Chicago, Mendell reports, Obama lived so much like a retiring writer -- spending many hours holed up in a spartan apartment with volumes of "philosophy and literature" -- that some of his colleagues assumed he was gathering material for a novel."

Obama's reading list included:

Herman Melville
Toni Morrison
E.L. Doctorow -"cited as his favorite before he switched to Shakespeare"
Philip Roth
Nietzsche
Reinhold Niebuhr
Ralph Ellison
Malcolm X
and the legendary community activist Saul Alinsky

Related Book Patrol posts:
The Role of the Book in the Ascent of Barak Obama
Books Hit the Campaign Trail
What Barack is Reading
The Biblio Campaign Trail: The New Road to the White House
What's Your Candidate Reading?
What the Candidates Should Be Reading
The Presidential Book Debate
Which Book Would You Bring to the White House?

For a mere $7 you can enhance your beach reading experience with The BookShade from Neat-O Concepts. Simply attach to the spine and The BookShade eliminates eye strain and sun glare. It works for both hardbacks and paperbacks and can be rotated into any desired position.
Is the Kindle version far behind?

Available here

Via

This is Bill Gates' copy of "Introduction to Programming," a 1969 manual for Digital Equipment Corp.'s PDP-8 mini-computer that Gates had in high school.

Using an IBM Selectric typewriter with a rotating typeball that produced italic lettering Gates typed the following on the inside cover "Bill Gates owns this book. He wants it. Give it back to him! He will tell you."

Well, Gates finally got it back. 35 years after fellow high school classmate Rami Grunbaum "packed the manual away with other books after graduating in 1974, a year after Gates," it was returned to him by Seattle Times technology reporter Ben Romano during an interview this month.

It might not be worth as much as the $30 million Leonardo Da Vinci manuscript Gates acquired in 1994 but you would be hard pressed to find a better association copy.

Rami Grunbaum's piece in the Seattle Times.

Photo taken by Courtney Blethen / Seattle Times

Publishers might be considering giving up on the printed catalogs but bookseller catalogs are making a comeback. Since the early days of bookselling the catalog was the cornerstone of a bookseller's business. It was the premier sales channel for the trade. They became; however, an early casualty of online bookselling. Many booksellers completely abandoned the catalog format while focusing on developing an online presence. Most of us thought they were no longer necessary. Now, a little over a decade later, most have returned to the catalog.

Why? A lot has to do with online saturation. Outside of one's own website it has become very difficult to separate oneself from the hoards of people who have joined the online bookselling ranks. There are just too many books online and most are being listed by people with little or no experience in traditional bookselling. The quality is being swallowed up by the quantity. The saddest part is that it has become virtually impossible for the end user, the potential customer, to make sense of what they are seeing online. Buying books online has become a crap shoot.

So, it is back to the catalog and while we were away the technology, printing and production options have improved greatly allowing us to infuse new life to this old bookselling staple. As the images in this post show, high quality graphic design has also entered the fray.

While I was preparing this post we received the latest catalog from Rulon-Miller Books. Rulon-Miller's cover rant perfectly conveys the frustrations and new challenges the traditional bookseller faces. Click on it to enlarge and enjoy!