You can read the interview here.

“The iSchool is looking forward to welcoming Dr Elizabeth Hanson into its fold from October 15 to November 8, 2012, when she will be taking up the Patricia Fleming Visiting Fellowship in Bibliography and Book History, continuing her research on the history of Canadian libraries and their texts. … She will be working on her current project, titled “The Post-World War I Campaign for a New Canada: What was Ontario Public Libraries’ Role?” while at Toronto’s iSchool. The Patricia Fleming Visiting Fellow in Bibliography and Book History Fellowship was established in 2005 in honour of Professor Patricia Fleming’s retirement with funds coming from faculty members, staff, friends, former students, and colleagues.” You can read more here.

You can watch the interview here.

“The Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, is a globally renowned research centre and conservation lab, home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials and to major collections of rare Renaissance books, manuscripts and art. For scholars, teachers, and students around the world, the Folger is an incredible resource. And for Rebecca Niles, who graduates November 16th from the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool), and is already working at the Folger, it’s an incredible opportunity.”  You can read the interview here.

“Sponsored by a number of groups (The Collaborative Program in Book History and Print Culture, the Toronto Centre for the Book, the Toronto Review of Books, and Massey College) the event was divided into three sections: 1) E-Reader Response, 2) The Space of E-Texts, and 3) a keynote address. … Located in an academic atmosphere, we shared and discussed. We were all equals. Everybody had something to offer. There was no goal other than to stimulate our minds. Through the process I learned of my new and different types of reading: close reading; continuous reading; deviant reading; distant reading; distracted reading; intersectional reading; location-aware reading; sustained reading. My conception of reading was expanded.” You can read more here.

“Book reviews in Canada are becoming an increasingly rare art form. And yet Jessica Duffin Wolfe is leaping on board, albeit in a way that embraces new media. The Toronto Review of Books will launch on September 20 as a quarterly, online-only journal. Don’t be misled by its name, though–founder Duffin Wolfe is hot to trot to review all kinds of culture.”

You can read more here.

“When we think about literature, we naturally think of books. If literature is viewed as an account of how people thought about things in the past, then what is book history? What fascinates book historians? Is it the ideas contained within a book, the insight into another time, another place? Not exactly; they are concerned with the material form of the written word. Whether it’s Sumerian clay tablets, scrolls, codices or today’s electronic readers, book historians examine all facets of the book and its related activities.”  You can read more here.

“PhD student Claire Battershill calls herself a “binge writer” and it’s her voracious appetite for writing that is winning her accolades, including a first prize in this year’s CBC Literary Awards competition. Her short story piece Circus has won her $6,000 dollars in Canada’s only literary competition that celebrates original, unpublished works in two official languages.

“I often will sit down and write a whole story and not move for four hours. I tend to be really concentrated. I wrote this story when I first moved to Toronto,” said Battershill, who is studying English literature and book history and print culture at the University of Toronto. She said she was extremely surprised when she won the award.”  You can read more here.

“A book that once graced the shelves of the Toronto Public Library is returning to the city after a sojourn of more than 50 years abroad.

Keats’s Shakespeare by Caroline Spurgeon will soon reside at Massey College and be available as a teaching tool for students in U of T’s collaborative program in book history and print culture.

The book’s journey began in London, England in 1928. It arrived at the Toronto Public Library in 1935. From there it went to the Canadian Book Centre in Halifax and finally to the Netherlands as part of a project to refurbish diminished collections after World War II. Then it found its way to the headquarters of a religious congregation of brothers in Tillburg, where a journalist picked it up and decided to donate it to U of T.”  You can read more here.