Recognizing the critical role libraries play in preservation, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), will sponsor the first national Preservation Week, May 9-15, 2010. Preservation Week intends to raise awareness of libraries’ role in connecting the general public to preservation information and expertise. Events sponsored by libraries will increase preservation awareness by emphasizing the close relationships among personal, family, community, and public collections and their preservation. Go to the Preservation Week site at www.ala.org/preservationweek for information and resources. http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/december2009/preservation_alcts.cfm

The Toledo preservation event, "Preserving Your Memories at Home," which is free and open to the public, is scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 15 in the McMaster Center at the main library downtown, 325 Michigan St. Irene Martin, leader of the event, says: "When you're preserving your memory, don't do anything you can't undo." Much of what she'll discuss is proper storage of photographs, letters, documents, and newspaper articles so they last for future generations. "Don't store them in the attic. It's too hot and too dry," Ms. Martin said. "Don't store them in the basement. It's too wet." She has examples of what works - albums made with acid-free paper or phase boxes that can hold and preserve fragile books - and what doesn't - magnetic photo pages, Scotch Tape, and glue, to name a few. "The main thing with preservation," she said, "is do no harm." http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100510/NEWS16/5100324

Richard Ovenden, the Keeper of Special Collections at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, stood beside a velvet rope at the Waldorf the other day, as a line of Oxford alumni, many of them holding cameras, snaked out the door, waiting to have a peek at the visiting celebrity he was shepherding. “The Customs people, you know, they didn’t care,” Ovenden said, sounding incredulous, as he glanced at the rare and celebrated object—a framed parchment—to his right. “ ‘Magna what?’ they asked. ‘Magna Carta! A pair of sturdy-looking men in dark suits enforced a no-flash policy as Ovenden began a long day of recounting his star attraction’s vital statistics and biography for each new wave of admirers. What they were seeing, he explained, was but one of seventeen Magna Cartas in existence, ranging in vintage from 1215 to 1297. The one on display at the Waldorf, which was transcribed in 1217, is one of four that belong to the Bodleian, but Ovenden deemed it “the most beautiful,” and unusual, on account of its “landscape” orientation: sixteen inches wide, twelve inches high. As it happens, the most recent, or youngest, copy, from 1297, has been in the United States for more than twenty-five years, ever since Ross Perot bought it and lent it to the National Archives, in Washington. (Perot sold it in 2007.) http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/05/03/100503ta_talk_mcgrath

The Boston Tea Party ship is not open to the public. She has no masts, no rigging, and hardly any decking. To clamber aboard, I had to climb down an iron ladder, cross two floating docks, crawl under a stretch of ropes, and walk a plank, barefoot. This ship is a replica; the original Beaver, whose cargo of tea was dumped overboard in 1773, is long gone. In 1972, three Boston businessmen got the idea of sailing a ship across the Atlantic in time for the tea party’s bicentennial. They bought an old Baltic schooner, built in Denmark, and had her re-rigged as an English brig, powered by an anachronistic engine that was, unfortunately, put in backward, and caught fire on the way over. Still, she made it to Boston in time for the hoopla. After that, anchored at the Congress Street Bridge, next to what’s now the Boston Children’s Museum, the Beaver became a popular tourist attraction. In 1994, the ship was bought by Historic Tours of America, “The Nation’s Storyteller,” a heritage-tourism outfit founded in the nineteen-seventies by entrepreneurial Floridians who also run, among other things, duck tours in D.C. In 2001, the site was struck by lightning, after which the Beaver was towed, by tugboat, twenty-eight miles to Gloucester, for renovation, where she has been ever since, all but forgotten.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/03/100503fa_fact_lepore#ixzz0nEuln5FZ

The odyssey and mystery of Thomas Paine's missing remains
His grave was dug up by a William Cobbett with the intention of taking the remains to England for reburial thus saving it from daily abuse and vandalism. One theory claims it was lost on its journey. Another claims Cobbett kept the remains in an attic trunk and upon his death, his son began auctioning off the bones. People from around the world have come up with skeletal parts. A minister in England claims he has Paine's skull and right hand, an English woman insists she has his jawbone. Others claim to have buttons constructed from the bones. The Thomas Paine Museum states it has the brain stem buried in a secret location on the property. One true fact: Paine artifacts are on display at either the museum or the adjacent Thomas Paine cottage, which was his residence from 1803 to 1806 located and maintained by the Huguenot and New Rochelle Historical Association, New Rochelle, New York. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2698

Anthony Wayne's remains
On December 15, 1796, at the age of 51, General Wayne died after a "severe fit of the gout." The General had requested that his burial take place two days after his death and that he be buried, wearing his uniform, in a plain wooden coffin at the foot of the flagstaff of the post's blockhouse. The top of the coffin was marked with his initials, his age and the year of his death in brass tacks. And thus his body remained for 12 years. In the fall of 1808, however, General Wayne's daughter, 38 year old Margaretta, while seriously ill, suggested that her brother, 37 year old Colonel Isaac Wayne, bring their father's remains back to the family burial plot in Radnor, Pennsylvania. The following spring, Colonel Wayne made his way, traveling by sulky, a light two wheeled cart, to Erie, Pennsylvania in the northwestern corner of the state. What happened next is a series of events that can only be described as bizarre. The General's coffin was opened and to the surprise of all it was discovered that his body had not decomposed. It was in an excellent state of preservation with the exception on one leg and foot that were partially gone. Clearly, the body could not be removed to Radnor, Pennsylvania in a sulky. Dr. J.C.Wallace's solution to the problem was to boil the body in water thus enabling him to separate the flesh from the bones, then they easily packed the bones in a trunk for their journey to the new burial location in Radnor. Much more at: http://www.americanrevolution.org/wayne.html

It is the job of literary executors to take charge of the work of a writer after their death. They must often decide what to do with incomplete work, using their own judgement if not given explicit instructions. In some cases this can lead to something happening to the work that was not originally intended, such as the release of Franz Kafka's unfinished writings by Max Brod when Kafka had wished for them to be destroyed. Novels can remain unfinished because the author continually rewrites the story. When enough material exists, someone else can compile and combine the work, creating a finished story out upon several different drafts. Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger was written in three different versions over a period of 20 years, none of which were completed. Twain biographer and literary executor Albert Paine combined the stories and published his version six years after Twain's death. Similarly, J. R. R. Tolkien continuously rewrote The Silmarillion throughout his lifetime; a definitive version was still uncompiled at the time of his death, with some sections very fragmented. His son, Christopher Tolkien, invited fantasy fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay to reconstruct some parts of the book, and they eventually published a final version in 1977 The size of a project can be such that a piece of literature is never finished. Geoffrey Chaucer never completed The Canterbury Tales to the extensive length that he originally intended. Chaucer had, however, already written much of the work at the time of his death, and the Canterbury Tales are considered to be a seminal work despite the unfinished status. English poet Edmund Spenser originally intended The Faerie Queene to consist of 12 books; even at its unfinished state—six books were published before Spenser's death—it is the longest epic poem in the English language. Honoré de Balzac, the French novelist, completed nearly 100 pieces for his novel sequence La Comédie humaine, but a planned 48 more were never finished. Other famous unfinished works of literature include: Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe (a completion was provided by George Chapman); the second part of Dead Souls by Gogol; Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert; Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek; Suite française by Irène Némirovsky, Answered Prayers by Truman Capote, The Love of the Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Uncertain Times by Richard Yates, and Mount Analogue by René Daumal. See much more, including works of music, art, architecture, and film at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_work

Unfinished work is often covered by the copyright laws of the country of origin. The United States have taken the step of creating a law which specifically mentions ongoing work, whereby work which is in progress but will in the future be completed can be covered by copyright. On 27 April 2005 the "Artist's Rights and Theft Prevention Act", a subpart of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, was signed into U.S. law. This act allows for organisations or individuals to apply for copyright protection on unfinished commercial products, such as software, films, and other visual or audible media. For example, a photographer can preregister a photograph by giving a written description of what the final piece (or collection thereof) will look like before the work is finished. In copyright law, an artistic creation that includes major, basic copyrighted aspects of an original, previously created first work is known as a 'derivative work'. This holds for all kinds of work, including those that have never officially been published. The rights of the first work's originator must be granted to the secondary work for it to be rightfully called a 'derivative work'. If no copyright permission is granted from the originator, it is instead called a 'copy'. Upon completion of the new piece both parties hold a joint copyright status, with both having to agree to any publications. When the copyright has lapsed for the original work the second artist fully owns the copyright for their work, but cannot stop distribution of the original piece or another artist from completing the work in their own way. However, such copyrights can only be granted if the work shows significant new creative content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_work

Re Niagara Falls feedback: I grew up 20 miles from the Falls in Buffalo. About ten years ago a member of my high school class, a Columbia MFA named Lauren Belfer wrote a book called City of Light (Doctorow-y-like historical fact-meets-fiction) in which she posits that because of the electrical power potential of NF, Buffalo was poised to be the Silicon Valley of its day, but then Wm. McKinley was killed visiting the 1901 Pan Am exhibition and Buffalo suffered from the same spooked/shunned effect as Dallas after Kennedy was assassinated there in 63. I don’t know if it’s true, but it sure makes sense.