The Librarian S Atlas

A history of early modern libraries and the imperial desire for total knowledge. Medieval scholars imagined the library as a microcosm of the world, but as novel early modern ways of managing information facilitated empire in both the New and Old Worlds, the world became a projection of the library. In The Librarian’s Atlas, Seth Kimmel offers a sweeping material history of how the desire to catalog books coincided in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aspiration to control territory. Through a careful study of library culture in Spain and Morocco—close readings of catalogs, marginalia, indexes, commentaries, and maps—Kimmel reveals how the booklover’s dream of a comprehensive and well-organized library shaped an expanded sense of the world itself.

An essential guide to a librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning. Libraries have existed for millennia, but today the library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented (and increasingly digital) information environment. What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings, and committees? In The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes offers a guide to this new landscape for practitioners. He describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning; and he suggests a new mission for librarians: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. The vision for a new librarianship must go beyond finding library-related uses for information technology and the Internet; it must provide a durable foundation for the field. Lankes recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created though conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities. To help librarians navigate this new terrain, Lankes offers a map, a visual representation of the field that can guide explorations of it; more than 140 Agreements, statements about librarianship that range from relevant theories to examples of practice; and Threads, arrangements of Agreements to explain key ideas, covering such topics as conceptual foundations and skills and values. Agreement Supplements at the end of the book offer expanded discussions. Although it touches on theory as well as practice, the Atlas is meant to be a tool: textbook, conversation guide, platform for social networking, and call to action. Copublished with the Association of College & Research Libraries.

How librarians can be radical positive change agents in their communities, dedicated to learning and making a difference. This book offers a guide for librarians who see their profession as a chance to make a positive difference in their communities—librarians who recognize that it is no longer enough to stand behind a desk waiting to serve. R. David Lankes, author of The Atlas of New Librarianship, reminds librarians of their mission: to improve society by facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. In this book, he provides tools, arguments, resources, and ideas for fulfilling this mission. Librarians will be prepared to become radical positive change agents in their communities, and other readers will learn to understand libraries in a new way. The librarians of Ferguson, Missouri, famously became positive change agents in August 2014 when they opened library doors when schools were closed because of civil unrest after the shooting of an unarmed teen by police. Working with other local organizations, they provided children and their parents a space for learning, lunch, and peace. But other libraries serve other communities—students, faculty, scholars, law firms—in other ways. All libraries are about community, writes Lankes; that is just librarianship. In concise chapters, Lankes addresses the mission of libraries and explains what constitutes a library. He offers practical advice for librarian training; provides teaching notes for each chapter; and answers “Frequently Argued Questions” about the new librarianship.

A complete descriptive and illustrated catalogue of one of the largest and finest atlases ever assembled. Now housed in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the 46-volume atlas is an expanded version of Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior or 'Great Atlas', published in Amsterdam between 1660 and 1663. Though the core of the atlas consists of the several hundred maps issued by Blaeu, the original owner of the atlas, Laurens van der Hem (1621-1678), added other maps, views, and drawings of his own choice, including four volumes of manuscript maps of Africa and Asia made for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The practice of augmenting atlases was common in the seventeenth century, but few of these personalized atlases have survived the centuries. The catalogue in 7 volumes (plus a volume about the making of the facsimile) will include all the sheets in the atlas reproduced in black-and-white, with cartographical historical and arthistorical descriptions by P. van der Krogt and E. de Groot. Each volume will contain approximately 16 full-colour illustrations. I. Spain, Portugal and France (vols. 1-8). 1996. With about 700 illustrations. 632 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 278 8 II. Italy, Malta, Switzerland and the Netherlands (vols. 9-17). 1999. With about 700 illustrations. 732 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 348 8 III. British Isles, northern and eastern Europe (vols. 18-24). 2002. With about 700 illustrations. 552 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 189 7 IV. German Empire, Hungary and Greece,including Asia Minor. Descriptive catalogue of the vols. 25-34 of the Atlas. 2004. Sm.folio. Cloth. With about 800 illustrations, including 16 in colour. 708 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 179 8 V. Africa, Asia and America, including the "Secret" Atlas of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Descriptive catalogue of volumes 35-46 of the Atlas. 2005. Sm. folio. Cloth. With about 700 illustrations, including 17 in colour. 640 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 199 6 VI. Descriptive catalogue of volumes 47-50 (E1-E4) of the Atlas and general indices. 2008. Sm. Folio. Cloth. With about 300 illustrations. Approx. 500 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 439 3 VII. Groot, E. de. The world of a seventeenth-century collector. The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem. 2006. Sm. folio. Cloth, with full colour dustjacket. With 150 black & white and 16 colour illustrations. 395 pp. ISBN 978 90 6194 359 4 VIII. The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem. The history of the Atlas and the making of the facsimile. An accompanying publication with background information on the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem and the production of the facsimile. Cloth with full colour dust jacket. 244 pp. 137 full colour illustrations. ISBN 978 90 6194 300 6.