It Came From the (Photo) Morgue: Twinkle, Twinkle

We hope you have been enjoying our "photo morgue" tribute to the One City, One Book selection Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. Scroll down through our blog to see them all or click on these links: Sept. 2, 10, 23, Oct. 15, 22

Image and caption from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Description on back:  MARY HILL - MAKES TELESCOPE  [07-21-33]
[PX-P 97  HILL, --]

Two great events this week for the One City, One Book Program:

On Wednesday, November 2 at 6pm, Mary Roach comes to the Koret Auditorium at the Main Library for a conversation with MythBusters co-host, Adam Savage. Before the conversation, enjoy the premiere of Rockets of Yesterday, an eye-popping video tour of 1950s and 60s rocket dreams, curated by writer, archivist and space enthusiast Megan Prelinger.

Get a chance to see the stars and planets for yourself (without having to build your own telescope) at one of the Bay Area "Star Parties" happening Saturday, November 5. In San Francisco, head over to San Francisco State University's Thornton Hall for planetarium shows starting at 8pm and telescope viewing if the clear weather holds out. It's all part of the Bay Area Science Festival going on now!
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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from the News-Call Bulletin morgue. However, the morgue also includes national and international subjects that have not been digitized or cataloged.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Yes, The King James Bible!

What do Madeleine L'Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, the Apollo 8 flight to the moon and A Charlie Brown Christmas have in common?

The King James Bible!  If you don’t believe me, read on. Everyone knows about the KJB but few actually know its significant history.  That’s why the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Bodleian Library and the Harry Ransom Center have collaborated on a fascinating exhibition celebrating its 400th anniversary.

Manifold Greatness: the Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible is a beautiful exhibition currently at the Folger Library.  If you don’t happen to be planning a trip to our nation’s capitol however, you can enjoy its fabulous and fun website from the comfort of your own home. At the site, you can actually practice letterpress printing, hear selections from Handel’s Messiah and listen to the Apollo 8 astronauts read aloud from Genesis while orbiting the Moon.You will also discover how The Book of Eli, Bob Marley and the Byrds are related to the KJB.

If you want to see authentic pages from the King James Bible come up to the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts and Special Collections Center to see our three leaf books*, published in 1937 by the Grabhorn Press. Each contain one page from the actual 1611 King James Bible. They contribute to the “manifold greatness” of our special collections center here at the library.

A leaf from the 1611 King James Bible with “The noblest monument of English prose” by John Livingston Lowes & “The printing of the King James Bible” by Louis I. Newman. Printed for the Book Club of California by the Grabhorn Press in 1937.

A leaf from the 1611 King James Bible with “The noblest monument of English prose” by John Livingston Lowes & “The printing of the King James Bible” by Louis I. Newman. Printed for the Book Club of California by the Grabhorn Press in 1937.

A leaf from the 1611 King James Bible with “The noblest monument of English prose” by John Livingston Lowes & “The printing of the King James Bible” by Louis I. Newman. Printed for the Book Club of California by the Grabhorn Press in 1937.

For more information on the historical significance of the King James Bible, read the New York Time’s exhibition review, Edward Rothstein’s review of Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick and Simon Winchester’s review of Wide as the Waters and In The Beginning by Alister McGrath.

* "Leaf Book": A leaf book is (or was--they are out of fashion) a way of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. A seriously imperfect copy of a famous book presented the opportunity: some suitable authority on the book would be asked to write an essay on it, a distinguished printer would be asked to give it typographic form, choosing a page slightly larger than that of the book in question, and printing as many copies as there were surviving leaves.  The whole would be handsomely bound, with one LEAF of the original laid in.  A Noble Fragment 1921, in which this treatment was bestowed on over 200 leaves (about a third of the whole) of a copy of Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, was the original leaf book.  The evidential (not to say monetary) value of a single leaf of that Bible is now so great as to make this seem deplorable vandalism; at the time, no doubt, it was regarded as an honest way to bring to a larger market something in itself virtually unsaleable. Hard cases make bad laws: a leaf book is always in some way a hard case.  But BREAKING-UP is not to be condoned, even in a good cause.  ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter.

Zombie Holiday Guide

Night of the living dead, 2007
Photo courtesy Brian Castagne

Just in time for Halloween: a short list of books for the living and the living dead, with zombie love from the staff at San Francisco Public Library.  The following list of humor books may be found in the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, Book Arts & Special Collections Center. Feast on more zombie books and films (instead of the usual brains) by checking the library's online catalog. 

Teach your zombie toddler to read with Pat the Zombie by Aaron Ximm (2011)

Feeling a little romantic? How about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (2009)

Perhaps you're in a literary mood. Try reading this little number to the undead café crowd: Zombie Haiku by Ryan Mecum (2008)

 Be on your best behavior with Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead by David P. Murphy (2009)

Want to hang out with the living dead? Learn how to talk with zombies in a jiffy with How to Speak Zombie: A Guide for the Living by Steve Mockus (2010)

Reaching out to old (and undead) classmates? Maybe you'll find them in Zombie High Yearbook '64 by Jeff Busch (2011)

How not to be lunch for a zombie: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead  by Max Brooks (2003)

And for a real treat, the San Francisco History Center presents Shock It To Me: Featured Creatures of Bay Area TV, Saturday, October 29, 11:30am-1pm, in the Latino-Hispanic Community Meeting Room, Side B, Lower Level, Main Library. Happy Halloween!

It Came From the (Photo) Morgue: Come to the Dark Side...

In honor of the 2011 One City, One Book selection Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, we have found a few fun photos from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin photo morgue for you to enjoy. Watch for them through November 2011!

Image and caption from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Miss Marian Pfaffenberger "reaches for the ceiling" when Alpha Robot brandishes a weapon. [11/23/35]
[PX-S 43 ROBOTS]

The caption to a related photo explains that Alpha was "a mechanical man, who took 14 years to make, cost $180,000, weighs 2240 pounds, and does everything but cook." In that photo, Alpha Robot was slightly more peaceful, entertaining a group from the Laguna Honda home at the Emporium Auditorium.


Think robots with guns are scary? Head to the Main Library's Koret Auditorium on Wednesday, October 26 at 6:15pm for Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe with Alex Filippenko, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley. Observations of very distant exploding stars (supernovae) show that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, rather than slowing down due to gravity as expected. Other, completely independent data strongly support this amazing conclusion. Dr. Filippenko’s talk explores how over the largest distances, our Universe seems to be dominated by a repulsive "dark energy" which stretches the very fabric of space itself faster and faster with time.

Want to talk more about the One City, One Book selection, Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void? The Merced Branch Book Club will be discussing Mary Roach's book on Tuesday, October 25 at 6:30 pm. Another book discussion group will be gathering at the Parkside Branch on Wednesday, October 26 at 7pm.
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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from the News-Call Bulletin morgue. However, the morgue also includes national and international subjects that have not been digitized or cataloged.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Coles Phillips and the Fadeaway Girls

Cover: Life, Oct 26, 1911

The change of seasons in San Francisco may be subtle, but magazine cover art doesn't have to be. One of my favorite autumn scenes is this cover by Coles Phillips from the original Life, October 26, 1911. Founder and editor John Ames Mitchell (1845-1918) used a mix of emerging and well-known commercial artists to decorate the covers of his humor magazine. Later, Harold Ross picked Life as one of his inspirations for The New Yorker. Take a look through volumes of Life to get a feeling for the sensibility of the time and the impact this magazine had on the most influential humor magazine of the twentieth century.

"The 'Fadeaway Girl' was the particular hallmark of Coles Phillips (1880-1927). Phillips pictured fashionably beautiful young women, using the device of tying the figure into the background by either color, value or pattern. This approach produced an intriguing poster-like effect of great simplicity; yet actually it was based on the most careful preliminary planning of shapes to carry out the illusion of the full figure.

"Phillips was born in Springfield, Ohio, and had his first pictures reproduced as a student contributor to the Kenyon College monthly magazine. Upon graduation he tackled a New York career, first as a solicitor for an advertising agency. Later he formed his own studio of artists. After further study at the Chase Art School, he decided to launch his art career. His first effort was sold to the old Life magazine as a double-page spread. When Life began to use color on its covers, the 'Fadeaway Girl' made her initial appearance and was an instant success. For many years thereafter she appeared in a variety of guises, but was always the patrician beauty.

"Phillips prided himself on being a good businessman-artist. Hs pictures, both for covers and for advertising campaigns, such as Holeproof Hosiery and Community Plate Silverware, were the product of a meticulous, cerebral craftsman."

                 Walt and Roger Reed, The Illustrator in America, 1880-1980 (1984), 106.

Summer may be gone, but autumn has its own rhythm. Visit the library and see the "Fadeaway Girls" and more. The original New York Life magazine may be found in the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, in the Book Arts & Special Collections Center.

It Came From the (Photo) Morgue: Space Race

In honor of the 2011 One City, One Book selection Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, we have found a few fun photos from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin photo morgue for you to enjoy. Watch for them through November 2011!

Image and caption from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

LAS VEGAS, April 11, 1959 --
"Miss Space," the girl in this picture, is the real article; the background could be the product of a space artist's nightmare. Twenty-year-old Suzanne Adams, Dallas, Texas, beauty and an engineering aide at Chance Vought Aircraft, will be a special guest at Las Vegas next week during the World Congress of Flight, a gathering of aviation-space officials from 77 different nations. A close observer of astronautic activities, she believes man's conquest of space should be a man-wife proposition -- as it was in the covered wagon conquest of the West. She is unmarried. Anyone for joint space travel?
[P3 ADAMS, S]

Head over to the Richmond Branch Library on Monday, October 17 at 6:30 pm, where local author Megan Prelinger will present a vivid slideshow of newly revealed space art from her recent book, Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race. She will explain how rockets and spaceships were imagined before they were real, and how some fantasies of 50 years ago have taken to the sky while others live only in science fiction. Her book is based on the hundreds of lushly illustrated recruitment advertisements that appeared in the rocketry and aeronautics magazines in the 1950s and 60s.

Discussion groups for the One City, One Book 2011 selection, Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void will be held on Wednesday, 10/19, 6:30pm at the Western Addition Branch, and Thursday, 10/20, 2pm at the West Portal Branch.
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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from the News-Call Bulletin morgue. However, the morgue also includes national and international subjects that have not been digitized or cataloged.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

San Francisco Aerial Views, August, 1938 - Digitized!

Once again David Rumsey is the San Francisco History Center's scanning angel! Thank you!

42. San Francisco Aerial Views, August, 1938

In August, the San Francisco History Center staff went on a field trip to visit the David Rumsey Map Collection.  We were all still excited from Rumsey's recent scanning contribution of San Francisco History Center's San Francisco Sanborn Insurance Maps, 1905. We explored Rumsey's maps as he shared how he became a map collector in the 1970s with a focus on 19th century North American maps.

As a  teaser, we brought with us a couple of aerial photographs from the San Francisco Aerial Views, August, 1938.  These aerials are very popular with building researchers and anyone interested in documenting change over time in San Francisco. Due to the original size of each print (50cm x 60cm), the San Francisco Public Library had not been able to scan each sheet. David Rumsey offered to scan the 164 black and white aerial photographs.

Two aerial sheets of Mission Bay

Our hosts showed us how the digitizing magic happens.

Practice shot with the overhead camera - built to photograph oversize maps

Go explore San Francisco Aerial Views, August, 1938! Some interesting discoveries include: cemetery tombstone debris in the Richmond District, a baseball game at Seals Stadium, and the Sunset District with a mixture of homes and sand dunes. Hint: the Index Map to the Location of the Aerial Photos at the beginning will guide you to individual sheets. When you zoom in on a sheet, you can see the street names and the details.

40. San Francisco Aerial Views, August, 1938

San Francisco History Center's Most Accessed Collections for September

Drum roll please...September's most requested archival collections (in order of popularity) -

San Francisco History Center

1. Edgewood Records (SFH 29)
2. San Francisco Unified School District Records (SFH  3)  
3. John F. "Jack" Shelley Papers (SFH 10)  
4. Herb Caen Scrapbooks (SFH 27)  
5. Family Service Agency of San Francisco Records (SFH 50)

Hormel Center's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Archival Collections (accessed through the San Francisco History Center)

GLC 35 Box 16; Folder: 1978 Prop 6 No on Briggs

1. Charles Thorpe Papers (GLC 10)  
2. Barbara Grier-Naiad Press Collection (GLC 30)
3. Harvey Milk Archives - Scott Smith Collection (GLC 35)
4. Harry Hay Papers (GLC 44) - being processed
5. Vincent Diaries (GLC 45) 

Read Queerest. Library. Ever. Blog for more GLBT archival highlights.

Science Is Fun

I never thought I'd be a fan of science books —until I read Mary Roach’s work and found myself laughing my head off. Apparently I am not alone. If you have yet to be introduced to her work, now is the time, since Packing For Mars has been selected to be this year's One City One Book title.

 
I never thought rare science books would be an interest of mine either, but stumbling across Cosmographia in our Rare Book Room changed that too. Did you know that over 400 years ago, people were making “pop up” books, not for fun and amusement, but for scientific calculations?

Libraries are designed for making discoveries and are elegantly arranged for such first-encounters. I humbly realized I was not the first person to be intrigued with Petrus Apianus's gem of a book when I wandered online upon the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, England.  Their extensive research on Cosmographia is light-years beyond my own. Take a look.

Cosmographia: A Close Encounter, Courtesy of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, England.

Now I seek out this science-stuff and must recommend that you visit the Huntington Library's Beautiful Science exhibition either virtually or in person. You will be dazzled by the things you'd expect to see. But first-encounter discoveries are guaranteed as well. Be amazed by the fascinating life and work of Maria Sibylla Merian, a German woman who traveled to Suriname in 1699 to paint as many tropical insect species as possible—explore and enjoy.

Chrysalis : Maria Sibylla Merian and the secrets of metamorphosis by Kim Todd.

One more recent scientific find of mine is History & Special Collections at UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library.  They’ve created a wonderful online exhibit called Spices: Exotic Flavors & Medicines which you can savor here.

Courtesy of UCLA's History & Special Collections at the Biomedical Library

Afterward, make a point of visiting the library this month and enjoy any of the fun, science-inspired events celebrating Mary Roach’s entertaining writings.