Such is the case with most encyclopedias.

As our friends over at The Bold Italic mention,

“if any of us owned encyclopedias today, there’s a slim chance that we’d choose to cross the room, awkwardly remove a heavy book from its shelf, stumble through all the wrong letters, and finally locate the B’s to read outdated information about Justin Bieber. Oh, sorry, I meant string theory. That entry’s outdated, too, though.”

So artist Brian Dettmer‘s  uses these often leather bound literary relics and re-purposes them, creating stunningly beautiful pieces, which are on display through March at Toomey Tourell and the Katz Snyder Gallery.

Check out more pictures and read more from The Bold Italic here.

As of February 10, public library patrons will denied access to Penguin ebook and audiobook titles (not physical titles) for the immediate future, until the publishing giant finds a new partner.

Penguin joins Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette among the Big Six publishers in search of an e-book library lending model, making  Random House the only major publisher allowing unrestricted access to e-books in libraries—though it will raise prices beginning in March.

With e-book borrowing from libraries is skyrocketing, publishers fear that borrowing will cut into paid sales of print and digital materials.

Read more from the Library Journal here.

Do you think that publishers have a valid concern about e-books cutting into sales?

“Research” means “to search intensively,” but that’s not the whole of it.  I love to research partly because it is an invitation for the mind to wander.  I’m sitting in the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture, preparing a story on cloud forests.  In 1993′s Biodiversity and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Forests, edited by Steven P. Churchill, I find that there are more than 90,000 species of flowering plants in the Neotropics; which is twice as many species as are found in the African and Southeast Asian tropics combined.

Wow, why?    “When compared to the approximately 250,000 species world wide, the mountains of tropical Latin America are truly one of the world’s great centers of biodiversity….”  The authors note that “little (here) has been explored with regard to patterns and processes of evolutionary history and biogeography,” and then warn that deforestation is likely to drive more than half of these plant species to extinction by 2100.  “Extinction is final; any information that might have been gained from those plants will be lost with them.”

I have a pile of other books referencing cloud forests in front of me, but as I lean back to ponder this massive threat of loss, my eye catches sight of a pretty little volume on display:  Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso (2004). 

I open the book to “Tree,” where I learn that “Always considered a manifestation of divine presence, the tree has long been an object of veneration, as a symbol of the communication between the heavenly, earthly, and lower realms.”  Aha!  This prompts me to remember one of my favorite books of all time, The Garden of Eden:  The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise, by John Prest (1981).  I obtained a copy of this book awhile ago on Amazon’s marketplace, a virtual flea market of used books; mine is decommissioned from the Schenectedy County Library in New York State, and still has its clear library cover on it.  How any library could get rid of this treasure I will never comprehend. It is filled with beautiful art work and brilliant observations.  Of course I don’t have it with me.

So I stand up and go search the catalog for this book, which I pull off the shelf.  Prest traces the first botanical gardens to an impetus both scholarly and devout:  “The Garden was an encyclopaedia.  Like an encyclopaedia it was a ‘book’, laid out in pages…It had the advantage over a book that the plants were real, and took precedence over a herbarium (or plant museum) of cut, dried, and mounted specimens, because the material was alive.”  A small thought balloon appears in my mind, at that word “alive.”  I’m thinking, Spring is on the way; it’s time for me to revive the garden that struggles to live on my back deck.  I need new plants, but which ones?

Before putting the Prest book on the cart to be reshelved by someone who will make painstakingly sure, as I will not, to put it in the right place, I browse it a bit more.  “Contemporaries interpreted the foundations of these encyclopaedic Gardens in the context of the re-creation of the earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, with which this story begins.”

With which this story begins.  I look over at the children’s section of the library, an inviting place with low chairs for short people, and beguiling picture books – a pretty young mother is reading to a rapt toddler; someone else’s child inexorably gravitates towards the words, the pictures, and sits down with them.  I think about the magic in books and the magic in gardens.  Hey!  I’m supposed to be writing a story on cloud forests.  I go back to my carrel and pick up The Panorama of Neotropical Cloud Forests, by Grady L. Webster (1995).  I am delighted with Webster’s description of the “green mansions” in the mountains of Central and South America; this is a reference to the classic book by W.H. Hudson.  Then Grady gets a bit technical:  “…the integradations between vegetation types and the variation produced by effects….”  At integradation, dear Reader, I’m about to doze.

So I get up and search the catalog again, for:  Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Region, by Nora Harlow (2004); Golden Gate Gardening by Pamela Peirce (2010); and Designing California Native Gardens by Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook (2007).  I make note of some ideas for my deck.  It is 3 p.m.  I should keep working on my piece.  Aha!  I can continue my research outside.  In fact, there are three cloud forest gardens within short walking distance, full of the fuschias, passifloras, brugmansia, and salvias I have been reading about.  I decide to go look for a Deppea splendens in the Mesoamerican Cloud Forest – a species that has gone extinct in the wild.  But the story has not ended for this plant here, at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.  So out I go, to read the leaves.

Over 200 dealers from all across the globe will be hawking wares including first editions, modern literature, illustrations and more at the Concourse Exhibition Center.

Collectors and book-loving lookie-loos are welcome to stop by booth number 424 and say hi!

Get more information and download a coupon here.

It’s a fact:  bookstores around the world are closing.

In 2011, more than six bookstores in San Francisco closed, and that is not counting the liquidation of the massive book and media retailer, Borders.

But in San Francisco, we still have amazing independent bookstores like City Lights Books and Books Inc.

We also have Readers Bookstores, which sells used, good quality books for cheaper than you’ll find anywhere else, all in support of the San Francisco Public Library.

So today, we were happy to see that our friends over at Flavorpill put together a collection of eye-pleasing bookstores from around the world.  Get over the mid-week hump and get lost in gorgeous literary spaces, here.

Prefer getting lost in the real life?  Visit one of the newly renovated SFPL branch libraries!

By Katie Sue Ambellan

I love Steven Colbert.  A man who’s satire that knows no end, Colbert recently sat down with author Maurice Sendak—a man who’s endless imagination has inspired millions around the world—to talk about the one thing he hasn’t conquered: children’s books.

In case this adorably hilarious, two-part interview has you wanting to re-visit all your favorite Sendak classics,  check them out from the San Francisco Public Library!

Watch Part 2 here.

Daily Treats are sweet finds from our Treat Avenue Donation Center.

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Find more rare reads at Amazon and AbeBooks.

It seems everyone these days is talking about the PBS Series Downton Abbey. The New York Times, Gawker and your trusted internet friends all seem to say the same thing:  Season 1 is really good.

And for those who are fans of the hit British melodrama, there’s more.  Heck, you can even learn to dress like them!  Publishers are rushing to print Edwardian and wartime England stories, especially those that highlight the grandeur of British estates.

Thankfully, our friends over at the Library Journal have put together a solid list of what to read and watch, post-Downton Abbey.  You can read the full article here and check out your favorite picks, available for free at the San Francisco Public Library.

Calling San Francisco Poets!  Do you have what it takes to join the ranks of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Janice Mirikitani, devorah major and Jack Hirschman as San Francisco Poet Laureate?

Now is your chance!  Mayor Edwin M. Lee and the SF Poet Laureate Nominating Committee are seeking nominations for the sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate, to succeed Diane di Prima, whose term has expired.

In addition to the prestigious title, Poet Laurates are required to deliver an inaugural address to the public at the San Francisco Public Library, participate in community-based events, including a youth-centered event and more.

Nominees must be San Francisco residents, have a substantial body of published work, including at least one full length book (minimum 48 pages, not self-published or vanity press) or CD (not self-produced) or 20 or more published poems in established publications, print or online, over the past five years.

For more information or to download the nomination form, click here.