What's New @ PBO and in the world of Publishers' Bindings

We are continually adding exciting new features to the site. Revisit this page often to see what's new -- the newest additions are at the top.

• The gallery, Tokens of Affection: Art, Literature, and Politics in Nineteenth Century American Gift Books was added to the PBO galleries. [June 18, 2008]
  
• We have completely revised our gallery on Abraham Lincoln. Rembering Abraham Lincoln: Man, Myth, and Meaning, along with a revised biographical essay.[June 18, 2008]
  
• Louisiana State University Libraries test contribution to the PBO project has gone live with 106 titles drawn from the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections were successfully added to the PBO database. Start at the gallery page for the collection at http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/lsu.html. [June 10, 2008]
  
• The gallery, Confederate Imprints: Publishing in the Civil War South has been updated.
  [ June 10, 2008]
  
• In February, 2008, Publishers’ Bindings Online was just awarded “Best Online Archival Exhibition” in the ArchivesNext 2008 Best Archives on the Web Awards! ArchivesNext is a blog on Archives and web/digital technology and is coordinated in part by an archivist at the National Archives. PBO was nominated and voted on by a panel of judges, all of whom are experienced professionals in the archival field. ArchivesNext (www.archivesnext.com) is the Archives and Web 2.0 Technologies blog. PBO will be featured on the site, and will feature a discussion of what judges thought gave it an edge over other nominees.

• The Richard Minsky Collection is now included in the PBO database! A gallery and more information will be available soon, but to read all about it, visit the Cool@Hoole blog entry here!

• On Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, 2nd Floor Mary Harmon Bryant Hall at 4:30 pm Edward Tang, Associate Professor of American Studies, The University of Alabama will present Turning Japanese: How Winnifred Eaton became Onoto Watanna in Victorian America. An exhibit of the works by Eaton/Watanna from the Hoole Special Collections (and PBO) will be on display in the Hoole Library lobby. In conjunction with Sakura Festival 2008. The flier for the event (featuring a beautiful binding!) is available here.

• Jessica Lacher-Feldman will present a session on PBO at The NY Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers Symposium on Publishers' Bindings -- February 22,2008 at the Grolier Club. The full conference announcement has been added to our site at http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/publicity.html
  
• Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Amy Rudersdorf, and Kristy Dixon presented Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books -- The Collaborative Digital Project as a Model for Access, Outreach, & Multidisciplinary Creative Success at The Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting in Chicago, September 1, 2007. A pdf of the conference presentation is available here.
  
• Jessica Lacher-Feldman, PBO project manager, published an article, Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books as a Model for Publicity, Outreach and Promotion of Digital Projects and Online Resources in Cultural Heritage Institutions and Academic Libraries in the Journal of the Association for History and Computing [March, 2007]
  
• A panel presentation on the PBO project will be presented at the Society of American Archivists' Annual Meeting, August 29 - September 1, 2007.
  
• The Univeristy of Alabama Libraries has acquired the "Minsky Collection" -- over 500 American publishers' bindings that renowned book artist Richard Minsky used to create his catalog, American Decorated Publishers' Bindings 1872-1929. The plan is to include these books in the PBO project. Stay tuned for news in this area! [January, 2007]
  
• PBO now features a Google custom search feature on the home page. This allows for users to search the web portion of the PBO site for information. [November 8, 2006]
  
• PBO is on myspace.com -- along with some other cultural institutions, PBO now has a profile on myspace which allows for new audiences to learn about the project and the resources available through the PBO site. [November 6, 2006]
  
• The PBO homepage has a new look! We have redesigned the page and are giving it a "soft opening" -- please tell us what you think!
  
• In August of 2006, we added a whole new area to the PBO site -- Artistic Styles & Movements in the 19th & early 20th centuries contains twelve galleries on the significant artistic styles and movements represented in the PBO era, including Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Eastlake, and many more, as well as an informative essay on Visual Literacy and Publishers' Bindings. Also be sure to visit our new gallery on illustrator Will Bradley.
  
• PBO's Outcomes Based Evaluation documents and Logic Model have been updated and included on the PBO site. [July 11, 2006]
  
• The Bindings Designers pages have been redesigned for easier navigation. Now we have separate pages for Prominent Designers, Identified Lesser-Known Designers, and Unidentified Designers, as well as a Bibliography for Resources about Bindings Designers. [July 6, 2006]
  
• A brief survey has been mounted and added to the PBO site. Please complete the survey and tell us what you think! [June 29, 2006]
  
• A new gallery, Southern Writers and Local Color: A Regional Twist on a National Trend has been added to the PBO project. [June 29, 2006]
  
• A new two-part gallery, Genesis & Apocalypse of the "Old South" Myth: Two Virginia Writers at the Turn of the Century [Part I: Thomas Nelson Page's Literature of the Lost Cause and Part II: Ellen Glasgow's Feminist Approach to the Old South] has been added to the PBO site. [June 6, 2006]
  
• We have added a Site Map to the PBO site. Accessible from the bottom of every page, this tool provides additional navigational help. [May 23, 2006]
  
• A new gallery, Booker T. Washington: Author, Educator, Advocate, has been added to the PBO site. [May 23, 2006]
  
• A new gallery, True Tales of Bondage and Freedom: Nineteenth Century Slave Narratives has been added to the PBO site. [May 17, 2006]
  
• We have created an interface (through a clickable 1855 map of the US!) for Publishers Across the Land to view lists of publishers by region, state, and city. [May 11, 2006]
  
• We have added the final 318 records to the PBO database, which is now fully populated! There are a total of 4,526 books in the PBO database. [May 9, 2006]
  
• The PBO IMLS Report 5 is now available. All PBO IMLS reports are available here on the PBO website. [May 8, 2006].
  
• The PBO Project Manual (working document) has been added to the PBO site. [April 25, 2006]
• We have added 703 new records to the PBO database -- there are now 4,208 titles available. [April 17, 2006]
  
• The gallery, Black and White: Paul Laurence Dunbar and Race in post-Civil War Literature has been added. [April 12, 2006]
  
• A lesson plan, Myths of the Wild West, as well as book list and guide have been added to the PBO Indians, the Frontier, and the West in American Bookbindings gallery and essay. [March 17, 2006]
• We have added 963 new records to the PBO database -- there are now 3,505 titles available to search including 151 versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin! [March 8, 2006]
  
• The gallery Confederate Imprints: Publishing in the Civil War South has been added. [March 8, 2006]
  
• The PBO Master Bibliography of Print and Online Resources has been updated. There are currenly over 130 print resources and over 40 online resources referenced. [March 7, 2006]
• Please visit our newly updated galleries page. [February 9, 2006]
  
• The PBO glossary of bindings and publishers' bindings terms is now available. [February 9, 2006]
  
• An additional 504 records have been added to the PBO database, bringing the current total to 2542 records! [February 8, 2006]
  
• The essay Uncle Tom's Cabin: A 19th c. Bestseller has been updated with more content and information. There are currently over 120 different editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the PBO database with many more to come. [January 25, 2006]
  
• The essay Indians, the Frontier, and the West in American Bookbindings, adapted from a talk by Dr. Josh Rothman, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama, is now available. [January 25, 2006]
  
• The gallery Son of a Comet, Star of the West: The Life and Literature of “Mark Twain” is now available. [December 8, 2005]
  
• The PBO project (episode 004) is featured on the podcast Saving Often -- a podcast of the Sanford Media Resource and Design Center, part of The University of Alabama Libraries. [download mp3 file here] [December 6, 2005]
  
• More records have been added to the PBO database. As of December 1, 2005, there are 2308 records available.
  
• The gallery Founded in Handcraft: The Roots of Publishers' Bindings is now available. [November 29, 2005]
  
• The gallery and essay "Moonlight and Magnolias": History and Literature in the Big Easy is now available. [November 21, 2005]
  
• A lesson plan, book report guidelines, and book list for the Civil War gallery is now available. [November 10, 2005]
  
• The gallery and essay Heroes of the "Lost Cause" is now available. [October 18, 2005]
• Gallery of Book-Cloth Grain Patterns is now available. [October 13, 2005]
  
• A new gallery, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War President, is now available. [October 5, 2005]
  
• A new gallery, "The Most Written-About War in History": Civil War Themes in Fact and Fiction, is now available. [September 2005]
  
• Signficant updates have been made to the Teaching Tools page. The resources are divided by subject and type for easier access. [September 2005]
  
• Significant updates to the PBO Bibliography of Print and Online Resources have been made. The bibliography contains references to more than one hundred print resources and over forty online resources we have identified. [September 2005]
  
• We have added descriptions to the resources on our Research Tools page. [September, 2005]
  
• 2064 records now populate the PBO database. Over 1600 new records were added on August 8, 2005.
  
• An essay and search gallery on Louisa May Alcott entitled Little Woman, Big Pen. [August, 2005]
  
• A lesson plan has been added to the Industrial Revolution essay.
  
• A text only link is now available on both versions of the home page.
  
• An essay and lesson plans: From Domestic Goddesses to Suffragists: The Story of Women Told on Bookbindings, 1820-1920
  
• New resources added to our Other Online Resources Page.
  
• Publishers' Bindings by Decade: A series of eleven essays on the history and culture of each era, along with a gallery search in the PBO database of each decade accessible through each decade gallery page.
  
• Three lesson plans are available for the study of Uncle Tom's Cabin using the PBO project resources as foundation.
  
• A small version of the poster for the project, created for PBO's participation in the University of Iowa conference, The Changing Book, is now available.
  
• An essay on Publishers' Bindings and the Industrial Revolution is now available.
  
• A gallery, Publishers’ Bindings from the Max Kade Institute, is now available.
  
• A gallery Publishers' Bindings from the Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture, is now available.
  
• A gallery Lafcadio Hearn: 19th-Century World Citizen.
  
• Updates to Publicity page, featuring a list of international sites linking to PBO. (http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/publicity.html)
  
• A gateway page on outcome-based evaluation, part of the About the Project area of our web site.
  
• A comprehensive resource listing binding designers featured in PBO with biographies and examples. (http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/designers2.html)
  
• The Galleries page, which serves as a gateway for some exciting new searches and research information relating to publishers' bindings. (http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery.html)
  
• A gallery and essay on Uncle Tom's Cabin.
  
• A gallery and essay on the use of silver and gold in 19th-century bindings.
  
• A Flash tutorial on how to email a record from the PBO database to yourself. (http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/tutorials/tutorialmain.html)