The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Reading this on Library and Archives Canada's website:
Amid the threats to Canada's nationhood in recent months and in the global context of social division and eroding democracy, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has a unique and critical role to play in asserting Canada's identity, promoting national unity and championing democratic principles.
then seeing this further down the page:
LAC is planning the following spending reductions:
2026-27: $11.1 million
2027-28: $14.7 million
2028-29: $22.1 million
It is anticipated that these spending reductions will involve a decrease of approximately 161 full-time equivalents by 2028-29. (my italics)
put me in mind of this
 


Dr. Dolittle's pushmi-pullyu
How can you assert, promote, or champion anything when your budget is being slashed? How can Canadians - historians, bibliophiles, citizens - understand, learn and write about their own country when they can't access the historial record in a timely fashion?
If these cuts are for real, then the Carney government is talking out of both sides of its mouth, happier when Canadians don't look at their own history. This, in fact, is exactly what some of Canada's top historians are saying.
To get to some kind of truth, I figured the time was right to go back in and talk with Leslie Weir, Canada's national Librarian and Archivist, in hopes she could set me in the right direction.
Leslie was appointed head of LAC in 2019 (we first talked shortly after her appointment. Listen to that conversation here). Prior to this she was Librarian at the University of Ottawa, from 2003 to 2018.
A past president of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Leslie is, in addition to her currently duties in Canada, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), until 2027.
We met at her offices in Ottawa at 395 Wellington Street.
I reference Voltaire briefly during our conversation. Voltaire revelled in pointing out gaps between rhetoric and reality. How, for example, could a church that preached love and forgiveness, at the same time condemn innocent people to be torn limb from limb in the public squares?
I end off the interview with three quotes from him:
"It's dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong"
" To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
Here's another to end off this introduction:
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Bloomsbury Publishing has been in business for almost forty years. Last year it earned £361.0 million. Over the past five years it's taken in more than £1.4 Billion. It's one of, if not the most successful publishing ventures of the past century. How does this work? I asked Founder and Chief Executive Nigel Newton.
Here we talk about, among other things, Frank Newton — Nigel's prospecting, race car-driving grandfather; about Peter, his wine-making father; about book publishing and stock picking; the acquisition A&C Black; The Garrick Club; 'romantasy' and Sarah J. Maas; Liz Calder; floatation in 1994; aspiring to be mid-sized; Christopher Little; J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter being a fluke; Amazon observing territorial copyright; AI licensing agreements as unforeseen backlist windfalls; suing AI companies; ideal publishing companies; surviving medically; Emotional Intelligence; The History of Bloomsbury Publishing coming out in April, 2027 to celebrate 40th years in business; Anthony Blonde's book - not The Truth about Publishing. It's either The Publishing Game (1971) or The Book Book (1983) (for sure I own at least one of these, and I'm going to say, almost 100%, it's signed); foreign rights; and how to lead a happy, fulfilling life.

​B. Traven's​ novels and stories​ have sold m​ore than ​3​0 million copies​ over the past century in more than 30 languages​ worldwide. He was Einstein's favourite novelist. Der Spiegel ranks his The Death Ship as the third greatest German novel ever written (okay in the past 100 years), after Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Kafka's The Castle; and yet, despite this, few today, in the English speaking world at least, have heard of him. It's only thanks to the movie, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, based on one of his stories, that he's known here at all. Why is this?

Perhaps because no-one knows with absolute certainty who Traven was. No-one is 100% sure of his true identity.

Timothy Heyman ​(CBE​) is 99% sure. We talk here about his hypothesis, plus the tasks he's set himself to re-establish Traven's reputation and re-gain an audience for his works.

Heyman, a considerable person in his own right, is co-manager (recently promoted to managing director) of the B. Traven Estate along with his wife (who is proprietor), Malú Montes de Oca de Heyman​, Traven's stepdaughter.

I met Tim up in the couple's beautiful apartment overlooking Mexico City to talk about what he's achieved to date with Traven's literary archive, and, again, who he thinks Traven really was. We were surrounded by a library of books written by the mystery man, accompanied by a glorious panoramic view of the city.

After our conversation we went upstairs to a special room which holds the archive - the place where Tim occupies himself with the business of legacy building.

Some years ago I interviewed David McKnight about a collection of Canadian "little magazines" he'd hunted down and later donated to the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Library. It was very easy to get caught up in David's enthusiasm, and I was really impressed by the catalogue he'd produced. Shortly after our conversation I learned that he didn't just collect Canadian poetry, he was also a serious Beatles collector.
We stayed in touch. I drove down to Philadelphia where David hosted me at his home for a weekend. We got a lot done. Took the train into New York for the opening of a film about a bookseller; went on a tour of the rare book and manuscript library at the University of Pennsylvania where David worked at the time as director; attended the Allentown Paper Fair where I picked up some old Fortune and New York Times magazines. It was great. A non-stop exchanging of excited thoughts about books, collecting, and cool periodicals.
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I've been wanting to interview David about The Fab Four ever since I learned of his passion. He's a real expert on the band. I was particularly keen to find out about his personal relationship to the music, and of course, about his experience collecting and documenting its impact on print culture, internationally, high and low. Finally, after years of talking about it, we got down to business. The albums, the books - from limited editions to paperbacks - the magazines, the fan zines, the ephemera, the scrap-books, the puzzles. Liverpool. It's all here.

Michael Erdman is Head of Middle East and Central Asian Collections at The British Library with overall responsibility for all manuscript holdings in Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Chagatai, Coptic, Hebrew, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Syriac.
I talked with him about my recent magazine hunting exploits in Istanbul, and how what we found fits into the overall history of magazine publishing in Turkey. Esoteric, I know, but hey, this is where passion takes you.