Bibliocraft

By -
Bibliocraft: A Modern Crafter's Guide to Using Library Resources to Jumpstart Creative Projects, by
Jessica Pigza

Talk about a fun book!  Jessica Pigza is a rare book librarian and crafty blogger at the New York Public Library.  She keeps dropping the names of my favorite designers, like Heather Ross, Gretchen Hirsch, and Mary Corbet.  I would like her job, please.

Library collections, especially collections of older books full of public-domain images and patterns, are wonderful sources of inspiration if you're an artistic type.  Pigza spends the first half of the book showing the reader how to access all this wonderful stuff, and the second half has various small projects by popular designers, along with their inspirations.  The projects weren't really my favorite, but then I am not actually much of a crafter; I do sewing, mostly of quilts or other particular things.

The library information is wonderful.  Pigza explains the different types of libraries and where to find what you're looking for.  She given a nice run-down on library organization and the basics of Dewey vs. Library of Congress, and explains subject headings and how to make them work for you.  She also provides a quick explanation about copyright in the US and avoiding trouble.  And THEN, there's a lovely massive list of online library collections that will have you happily browsing for months.

The Biodiversity Library's flickr stream of old biology prints!
The British Library's tour of illuminated manuscripts!
Children's books from the 17th-20th centuries!
And so much more.

Comments

  1. looloolooweezMay 28, 2016 at 6:58 AM

    This seems like a very interesting book. Too bad the project weren't really your thing, but the list of resources must have been fun to explore. Right now I'm working on framing some old malacology illustrations recently posted by the Smithsonian library for my husband's birthday gift (he's a shell collector).

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanMay 28, 2016 at 10:33 AM

    The resources are great! I don't need more projects anyway, so that's no biggie. I loved the book. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more