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SHARP News
@sharpnews.bsky.social
An open-access publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (@sharpweb.org).

Read Bookish Feature Articles, Book Reviews, Pedagogical Materials, and Bibliographies here: https://sharpweb.org/sharpnews
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Announcing: The SHARP News Bibliography Team

We are delighted to welcome Julie Boechat Machado and Shu Wan as our incoming collaborative team of Bibliographers.

Thank you to our outgoing Bibliographer @bibliowingate.bsky.social for everything.

#BookHistory #Bibliography @sharpweb.org
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"invariably entertaining" and "exuberant, erudite" and "occasionally infuriating": man, this TLS review. i feel seen: excluding the first two, and the adverb "occasionally," this is exactly what my loved ones say about me. #18c #c18 #vastearlyamerica #bookhistory
www.the-tls.com/literature/p...
Genre bending
The realist fiction of the eighteenth century took its origin, or at least part of it, from the single-sheet essay-periodicals that were the talk of
www.the-tls.com
February 10, 2026 at 2:08 PM
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I’ll be teaching this, with help from some excellent guest speakers, in person, in London, in June. It will be fun. #BookHistory 👇

ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...
An Introduction to Book Collecting and Book Cultures
This course will pursue a panoptic view of the growth of book culture and the practice of book collecting.
ies.sas.ac.uk
February 3, 2026 at 9:19 AM
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New project+page started: "Home for Broken Wood Type". Celebrating: collecting, mending+understanding, preserving, printing w/broken wood letterpress type. Part of my printing+research during my Jan. artist residency+fellowship. Better+more photos+info to come. enthusiastictype.com/brokenwoodty...
February 4, 2026 at 12:37 PM
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I collect my digital+analog #bookhist +arts projects @ EnthusiasticType.com:
*Limited Letterpress: tools for not-enough-type
*Queer Book History zine (@sharpnews.bsky.social collab)
*TBA zines for letterpress financial/physical/+ accessibility
Broken Wood Type, DIY Queer Historical Letterpress, blog
New project+page started: "Home for Broken Wood Type". Celebrating: collecting, mending+understanding, preserving, printing w/broken wood letterpress type. Part of my printing+research during my Jan. artist residency+fellowship. Better+more photos+info to come. enthusiastictype.com/brokenwoodty...
February 4, 2026 at 12:44 PM
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Wonderful news from Birkbeck's School of Historical Studies. We're hiring not one but TWO open-ended, full-time roles: Medieval Studies, and History of Art! cis7.bbk.ac.uk/home.html#fi...
Current Vacancies - Birkbeck, University of London
Birkbeck
cis7.bbk.ac.uk
January 29, 2026 at 3:20 PM
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Join us this Friday 16 January 2026 at 15:00 CET for a seminar at @cwtsnl.bsky.social with Dr. @samuelmoore.org on the current OA landscape and how we can move to a scholar-led infrastructure beyond the market. #ScientificPublishing #OpenAccess #BookHistory
www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...
Publishing beyond the market
This talk will outline the argument in my new book Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons (University of Michigan Press, 2025). The book explores the evolution of the open ac...
www.universiteitleiden.nl
January 13, 2026 at 9:36 AM
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🚨JOB KLAXON🚨 we're seeking a Curator of African American Experience colls here at KU! GREAT colls & colleagues, tenure track, unionized, salary $61,000-$68,000. Not on the committee, but would be a colleague! More info at link!📜 #bookhistory #booksky #libsky #rarebooks rbms.info/blog/news-ev...
Position Announcement: Curator of African American Experience Collections, University of Kansas
Position Overview Kenneth Spencer Research Library (KSRL) at the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries seeks a creative and collaborative curator for our established and growing African American Expe…
rbms.info
January 13, 2026 at 3:40 PM
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Jody Mason (my supervisor) will be talking about her new book, Books for Development: Canada in the Late Twentieth-Century World!

When: January 23, 2026 12-1:30pm EST

Where: zoom

Register in advance here: uqam.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

#bookhistory
January 13, 2026 at 6:35 PM
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Why Rare Book Rooms Are the Best-Kept Secret for Travelers Who Love History

They remind us that not everything happens online. And also, swoon!
Why Rare Book Rooms Are the Best-Kept Secret for Travelers Who Love History
Anyone into history or literature should set aside one afternoon on their next trip to visit a rare book room. Here's what to know.
matadornetwork.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:30 PM
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I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 23, 2025 at 4:54 AM
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I worked for library special collections as an undergrad, sorting, labelling, and shelving (music) records. One day I opened a box, got a whiff, and knew there was something dead (old dead, not fresh dead) in there. This was above my pay grade so I called my boss, and it turned out to be a bat 🦇
I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 22, 2025 at 6:02 PM
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When I was a postdoc at Dartmouth, a librarian told us that he could arrange special collections visits for any class. "Calculus?" This was apparently a new question.

He rocked it. Einstein's work (w/ Kemeny's corrections) back to old yearbooks back to a 1482 Euclid. Thank you, Jay!

#MathSky
I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 22, 2025 at 9:35 PM
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At Harvard’s Houghton Library, I found a letter with salt crusted onto it. When I read the letter, I realized it was the guy’s dried tears because the letter was about the death of his young daughter
I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.
December 22, 2025 at 7:42 PM
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If I wanted to try to write about Boston publishing history (more recent, like last 50 years or so, not 19th c) in some kind of serial way, what is best platform? Substack seems lowkey evil. Happy to get opinions on this. Thanks! #publishing #bookhistory #Boston #books
December 22, 2025 at 4:44 PM
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Do you enjoy my periodic rantings on Isaac Newton's alchemical citations? If so, take a look at my shiny new article on our improved #TEI encoding system of Newton's citations & what we can learn from some preliminary analyses of the data!
#BookHistory #histsci (tldr in 🧵)
doi.org/10.14434/tc....
A Bibliographical Framework for Citation Analysis of Isaac Newton’s Alchemical Manuscripts: Alexandra E. Wingate | Textual Cultures
doi.org
December 22, 2025 at 2:49 PM
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FLIPPING OUTSTANDING WORK, of interest to 📜 #bookhistory #booksky #libsky #rarebooks and #histSTM
Do you enjoy my periodic rantings on Isaac Newton's alchemical citations? If so, take a look at my shiny new article on our improved #TEI encoding system of Newton's citations & what we can learn from some preliminary analyses of the data!
#BookHistory #histsci (tldr in 🧵)
doi.org/10.14434/tc....
A Bibliographical Framework for Citation Analysis of Isaac Newton’s Alchemical Manuscripts: Alexandra E. Wingate | Textual Cultures
doi.org
December 22, 2025 at 2:57 PM
We're on board with it. :p
December 20, 2025 at 4:19 AM
Would you consider your passport a book? Not sure about it?

Read Inge Orlowski's FEATURES article, "Passports as Books and Books as Passports" on SHARP News to get you thinking!

Read it here: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#Travel #BookHistory #WhatIsABook #Materiality #Mobility
a person is holding a passport with a stamp that says passport
Alt: A hand is holding a passport open to a spread with many stamps. In the background, photos of international landmarks and scenery change rapidly.
media.tenor.com
December 17, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Three new SHARP grant/fellowship reports, live now on SHARP News!

👉 25th Anniversary Fellowship Reports by...
Hyei Jin Kim: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...
Gloria Morales Osorio:
sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

👉 SHARP Grant Report 2024 by...
Farhana Shaikh: sharpweb.org/sharpnews/20...

#SHARP
December 17, 2025 at 9:57 PM
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It finally happened. One of our fabulous @umdbooklab.bsky.social interns, @isabelleberube.bsky.social, printed (with movable type!) the entire first page of Benjamin’s WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION. That’s all handset type. They have ambitions to do more. 🤯
December 11, 2025 at 8:47 AM
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Booking is now open for Making Medieval Manuscripts! A practice-based course where we make ink, cut quills, illuminate, make pigments and bookbind, using #medieval techniques and materials. We also explore early medieval art. No experience necessary! #bookhistory ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...
Introduction to Making Medieval Manuscripts (Practice Based)
This course introduces students to the complicated and messy processes of production through which pre-modern manuscripts were created
ies.sas.ac.uk
December 3, 2025 at 12:43 PM
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V for Vendetta! Looks like this example of #scanninghands is calling for a revolution...
October 20, 2025 at 6:18 AM
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Say hi. This is an example of how human labor will be remembered when all books are digitized and we all work with digital copies only. And maybe, hand on heart, this hand was intentionally raised to greet us from the past. #skystorians #bookhistory #digitalhumanities
March 21, 2025 at 7:10 AM
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Don't miss! 🌿 Pocket Books and Floating Libraries: Books as Collecting Tools in Instructions to Travelers. Anna Svensson will discuss how books haven’t just described the natural world, they’ve also helped collect it. Wed. 10 Dec, 15:00–16:00 CET Zoom link, email: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se
December 8, 2025 at 10:50 AM