FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS  The papers of reformer and suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) span the period 1846-1934 with the bulk of the material dating from 1846 to 1906.  The collection, consisting of approximately 500 items (6,265 images) on seven recently digitized microfilm reels, includes correspondence, diaries, a daybook, scrapbooks, speeches, and miscellaneous items.  Donated by her niece, Lucy E. Anthony, the papers relate to Susan B. Anthony's interests in abolition and women's education, her campaign for women's property rights and suffrage in New York, and her work with the National Woman Suffrage Association, the organization she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded in 1869 when the suffrage movement split into two rival camps at odds about whether to press for a federal women's suffrage amendment or to seek state-by-state enfranchisement.  With the possible exception of her close collaborator Stanton, no woman is more associated with the campaign for women's voting rights than Anthony, whose name became so synonymous with suffrage that the federal amendment, which formally became the Nineteenth Amendment, was called for many years by its supporters as simply the Anthony Amendment.  A finding aid to the Susan B. Anthony Papers is available online with links to the digital content on this site.  The collection is arranged in five series:  Correspondence, 1846-1905  Letters to and from Anthony.  Arranged chronologically.  Daybook and Diaries, 1856-1906  One daybook and twenty-five diaries.  Arranged chronologically.  Scrapbooks, 1876-1934  Six volumes and two folders of clippings and memorabilia.  Speeches and Writings, 1848-1895  Speeches by Anthony.  Also includes The Woman's Bible, part one, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Arranged chronologically.  https://www.loc.gov/collections/susan-b-anthony-papers/about-this-collection/

Q.  What literary character is being described?  "His mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments."  A.  Sherlock Holmes in The Problem of Thor Bridge.  Borrow The Problem of Thor Bridge from your public library or read it online at https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/doyle/arthur_conan/d75ca/chapter7.html

Asportation is from a Latin verb which means (no surprise) “to carry away.”  OED has a first use citation from just after 1500, but it seems never to have been widely used, even in law.  Many online search results refer directly or indirectly back to 19th century texts, in turn based on lectures from a century earlier (Blackstone’s Commentaries, if you’re wondering).  The main reason the recent uses of asportation caught my attention is because it didn’t seem like the wording was quite right.  When I’ve run across it, it’s almost entirely been in the police blotters of local papers (in Massachusetts).  But . . . I can’t actually find the term “asportation” in the Massachusetts criminal code.  I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that explicitly using this as part of the charge in a criminal complaint—when there is no such wording on the books—presents potential problems.  Asportation is an archaism; in Mass, the proper term is “shoplifting” and it’s covered in Part IV, Title I, Chapter 266, Section 30A of the state’s General Laws.  I’m not sure when asportation was dropped from the wording of the statute (if it was ever there), but it’s not in it at this time.  The law already includes specific references to shoplifting by concealing merchandise, shoplifting by switching a price tag, shoplifting by switching containers, and shoplifting by ringing up a false price, so those who deal with these cases might need to clarify the basic, plain vanilla, run-of-the-mill type of shoplifting.  And so, a new retronym is born: “shoplifting by asportation.” (Actually, the statute doesn’t use those terms, either, but the official jury instructions do.)  If this is true—it’s a retronymic use, not redundancy and verbosity—then the distinction should probably be added to the wording of the law.  Otherwise, everyone involved should stick to the simplest wording and use what’s actually in the statute: shoplifting by carrying away.  Christopher Daly  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/asportation-unnecessary-wordiness-or-a-retronym-in-process/

Chicken & Turmeric Vermicelli Soup by Sabrina Ghayour  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chicken-turmeric-vermicelli-soup?utm_campaign=TST_WNK_20180404&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=Chicken%20&%20Turmeric%20Vermicelli%20Soup

July 3, 2017  In A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius  erupted violently, spewing pyroclastic flows across the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The eruption has become one of the most famous in history because the speed of the hot gases caught the locals unawares.  The intense heat captured many features of city life, including individuals as macabre still-lifes.  Much of this detail was then preserved beneath huge volumes of ash that rained down on the region.  One of the discoveries made in 1752 in Herculaneum was of an intact library.  This contained large numbers of papyrus scrolls of philosophical texts, many associated with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara.  This is the only complete library that has survived from antiquity.  And while many of the rolls were destroyed by workmen at the time and by scientists and archaeologists later, some 1,800 rolls survive, most of them in the Naples National Archaeological Museum in Italy.  Today, Inna Bukreeva at the Institute of Nanotechnology in Rome, Italy, and a few pals say they have made significant improvements to the software.  As a result, they’ve peered inside these unopened rolls with unprecedented detail.  “We restored for the first time several extensive textual portions of Greek, the largest ever detected so far in unopened Herculaneum papyrus rolls,” they say.  The technique is straightforward in principle.  The team began by imaging the papyrus roll at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble using a technique called x-ray phase-contrast tomography.  This produces a 3-D representation of the roll in which the sheets can be identified and separated, at least in theory.  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608209/first-virtual-unrolling-of-ancient-scroll-buried-by-vesuvius-reveals-early-text/

Brent Seales couldn't get access to the Herculaneum scrolls, so he looked elsewhere to prove his algorithms and software.  That led him to Jerusalem and this charred fragment, a 1,700-year-old scroll from a burned synagogue near the Dead Sea.  Brent Seales:  Is there a line up here?  Israeli archaeologists didn't expect much, but what Seales' software revealed was like a miracle.  Bill Whitaker:  What was it?  Brent Seales:  Well, it was the Bible.  He resurrected all the surviving Hebrew script, the oldest text of the Bible as we know it today.   The first two chapters of Leviticus in a scroll that, prior to that--was assumed to be nothing or so badly damaged no one would ever know.  Bill Whitaker:  This is what you hope to see in the Herculaneum scrolls?  Brent Seales:  Absolutely.  This is actually an identifiable text.  Following his breakthrough in Jerusalem, Graziano Rannochia admits Brent Seales' software is brilliant.  Now the Naples library, which wouldn't let Seales get his hands on the scrolls, is considering granting him access.  He's convinced the secrets of Herculaneum, locked away in the scrolls for 2,000 years, are just within reach.  See article from 60 Minutes broadcast April 3, 2018 at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/herculaneum-scrolls-can-technology-unravel-the-secrets-sealed-by-mt-vesuvius-2000-years-ago/

In Doha, the Qatar National Library was unveiled in April 2018-- a glitzy 42,000-square-meter space designed by Dutch architecture firm OMA, it's a new landmark for the city.  In the Netherlands, meanwhile, a 19th century church, which has been painstakingly converted into a library, opened its doors this year.  Across the world in Tianjin, in northeastern China, the futuristic Tianjin Binhai Library was unveiled in late 2017.  Its eye-shaped atrium was designed to be a "new urban living room."  "We designed this (space) as a public library for modern information," Ellen van Loon, who designed the Qatar National Library with Rem Koolhaas and Iyad Alsaka at OMA, tells CNN.  Of the part of the building that looks like an excavated cave, inspired by local archeological sites, she adds:  "It's not just another modern building somewhere in the middle of a country--this basically connects the building back to the culture.  It's a very different experience to going on the internet."  The advantage of designing a building as one big room (is that) ... when you enter you can see all the books in one go," van Loon says.  Inside, over one million books are available, housed in bookcases which are stacked on different levels, creating a terraced effect.  A "people mover system"--essentially, a wheelchair-friendly sloped elevator--takes guests to the level they want to get to.  Jamie Andrews, head of culture and learning at the British Library in London says that they've seen an increased number of people using the public spaces since free WiFi became available.  The purpose of a national library has been transformed--in some respects liberated--by the internet.  As well as putting more online, we find there's also an appetite for things that are original and authentic."  The collection includes items such as Beatles manuscripts, as well as a writing desk that once belonged to author Jane Austen, which are among the British Library's most popular attractions.  In Vught, a town in southern Netherlands, a church built in 1884 was transformed into a library with sliding bookshelves that house thousands of books.  The library, which forms part of the De Petrus Meeting Center, preserves the church's original layout and design details, such as its arched roof and stained glass windows.  There is, however, a newly built mezzanine floor of 5,380 square feet (500 square meters) where a study area and meeting rooms are located.  Andrea Lo  Read more and see pictures at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/modern-libraries/index.html  Thank you, Muse reader! 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1879  April 23, 2018  1635 – The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston.  1914 – First baseball game at Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park, in Chicago.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_23