Parnassus on Wheels

"Oh, you're a librarian..," they say.
Followed inevitably by,
"You must read a lot."
Or,
"I'd like to read all day at my job..." wistfully.
"Ha ha, yes, so would I," is my not so clever rejoinder that is always ignored.
How did I get to this librarian place? It might have been in seventh grade when Mrs. Quinn, my English teacher, assigned a 1917 book by Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels, which begins: 

CHAPTER ONE


I wonder if there isn't a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never
found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of
poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or darning socks. I've
done a good deal of reading when I could, and I don't want to "admit
impediments" to the love of books, but I've also seen lots of good,
practical folk spoiled by too much fine print. Reading sonnets
always gives me hiccups, too.

I never expected to be an author! But I do think there are some
amusing things about the story of Andrew and myself and how books
broke up our placid life. When John Gutenberg, whose real name (so
the Professor says) was John Gooseflesh, borrowed that money to set
up his printing press he launched a lot of troubles on the world.

You can read the entire book on the Internet Archives  or The Gutenberg Project. You can even download it to a Kindle or other portable electronic device from there. The Project Gutenberg Project reviews it nicely here. So I'll just say it's the story of a woman who takes off in a mobile bookshop, an old-fashioned bookmobile/caravan to get a taste of freedom from the drudgery and responsibility of working on her farm with her rather pretentious brother, a budding author. It is written with tongue firmly in cheek in a rather old-fashioned style. I don't think I liked reading it at the age of twelve or so, but maybe it planted the seed of an idea in my mind. I still think it would be fun to drive a bookmobile around neighborhoods and a horse-driven one would be even better. If you like that idea, take a look at some of the modern incarnations of that dream.

My copy of the book looks like this

Biblioburro which you can follow on Facebook
FabLab in the Netherlands
Mobile libraries on Pinterest

Who Wants Your Old Books - revisited

One of our favorite posts, our statistics tell us, is the one about how to get rid of your old books. This is a common question in most libraries and a question not easily answered. Or at least, not easily answered in the way that people would like to hear. Sadly, most old books are just unwanted, unloved and worth very little, but no one wants to just throw them out. Here is what we wrote:

Disposing of Old Books

Who wants your old books? Have you tried in vain to sell them at a yard sale or give them to your local library, school, college or thrift store only to be sent away not empty-handed? Have you been told that old library books circulate poorly, old encyclopedias and textbooks become obsolete quickly, college book stores pay a pittance for expensive, almost-new textbooks? Are you reluctant to sell books on Ebay because it is a time-consuming activity? Furthermore the cost of shipping books to third world countries is prohibitive. Used and rare book dealers can be very picky about what they will take or even deign to look at. Storing books takes up space and space in libraries and book stores and your house is at a premium.
What can be done with old books? Book lovers just want to feel that their books have found a better place than the recycling bin, but sadly, that's where many books end their lives. Most people seem to think that all books have some intrinsic value but if you examine that common assumption, it isn't true. Since the advent of the paperback, the information and publication explosion, cheaper printing technology, online databases and texts, a culture that generally likes the new and shiny and disposes with the old, books do not have as much actual (monetary) value as they do sentimental value. And if they have been in the attic, cellar or garage for years, they are probably worthless. Not always, but usually.
Nevertheless, here are some possibilities for disposing of old books:
BetterWorldBooks

Book Sales in New Jersey

Harvest Books

But you should know that the following rules about what kinds of books are acceptable applies to every library sale, booktrade website, thrift store or other bookish entity that I have ever seen or dealt with:
from the Harvest Books site
"There are some books we cannot use. Since books we cannot use must be recycled at some expense, we do not accept these types of materials even as a donation:
Books that have been wet or are moldy.
Books without covers.
Books that are in poor condition relative to their vintage. Obviously older books will sometimes show their age. This does not mean they are not valuable. But torn, yellowed or creased copies of last year’s romances or thriller novel will not do us any good.
Encyclopedias -- general reference encyclopedias, such as Britannica, are NOT of any use, even to schools --it’s all available on the computer these days.
Readers’ Digest Condensed Books.
Older editions of travel guides or other books that come out with new editions each year.
Textbooks more than two years old.
No newspapers or magazines, please!"

Essentially, if you don't recycle your old books that are unusable, unsalable, unwanted, obsolete; you are passing on the job to someone else who will recycle them.

Joseph Ishill, Berkeley Heights, NJ: Printer & Anarchist

Joseph Ishill (1888 - 1966), printer, anarchist, and Berkeley Heights resident, may be experiencing a renaissance of interest. The Berkeley Heights Public Library has a small Ishill Archive which includes engraved copper printing blocks, a collection of pamphlets, and other related publications and ephemera printed by Joseph Ishill. In the last few months, several people have inquired about the library's collection of Ishill's works and correspondence. Is there a revival of interest in hand printing and/or anarchism? We don't know why Joseph Ishill is now on people's minds, but for anyone interested in the topic, below are pictures of two Ishill publications in the BHPL archive and a link to more images from the archive. BHPL's Ishill Archives can be seen by appointment only. Here is the link to the Ishill publications we have scanned into Google Documents so far.

Below are two original flyers made by Joseph Ishill to advertise a 10th library anniversary program and an exhibit of his wife's poetry at the Berkeley Heights Public Library.

Ishill's flyer for the 10th anniversary of the library

Ishill made the flyer for his wife's poetry exhibit

Related resources:

Area resident Chris R. Morgan's article about Free Acres, the utopian community founded in Berkeley Heights and Ishill's connection to it, can be found here:
Free Acres Is the Place to Be

BHPL's Google Documents folder contains the index to the Ishill Archives and some other scanned contents of the collection. This is a work in progress. More of the contents of the Ishill Archive will be scanned and added over time.

The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan is one of the foremost collections of Ishill works
Works by and about Joseph Ishill
http://www.lib.umich.edu/joseph-ishill-authors-artists-oriole-press/works.html

Joseph Ishill and the Authors and Artists of the Oriole Press
http://www.lib.umich.edu/joseph-ishill-authors-artists-oriole-press/

List of other Ishill resources at the University of Michigan
http://www.lib.umich.edu/search/website/ishill

The University of Florida has a collection of Ishill works, see
A Guide to the Joseph Ishill Collection
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/manuscript/guides/ishill.htm

The Houghton Library at Harvard University has a guide to its collection of works by and about Joseph Ishill
 http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~hou00674

Alan Runfeldt's Excelsior Press, Frenchtown, NJ
 http://excelsiorpress.org/index.html

Mr. Runfeldt grew up in Berkeley Heights, knew Mr. Ishill and has one of his presses as he shows in this blog post
http://excelsiorpress.org/blog/blog.2009.html#2009.04

Update 7/21/2017
From the Passaick to the Wach Unks by The Historical Society of Berkeley Heights, 1977 (call #974.936 FRO) pp 211-212 describes Joseph Ishill's time as a resident of Berkeley Heights from 1919 until his death in 1966.

Library Exhibit on Illustrator Will Crawford of Free Acres

In honor of the Free Acres' 100th anniversary, the drawings and carvings of Will Crawford, an illustrator whose work appeared in Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Life, are on exhibit at BHPL until July 22. Will Crawford was a resident of Free Acres in Berkeley Heights from 1918 until his death in 1944, and the log cabin he built still exists. The library display includes Crawford’s pen and ink illustration “Civil War Carnage,” which was an illustration for fellow Free Acres resident MacKinlay Kantor’s Civil War novel, Long Remember, published in 1937. Kantor went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Andersonville in 1956.

Also on display are the Free Acres mailbox sign carved by Crawford, and “The Flop,” a carving Crawford made for his Free Acres neighbor Thorne Smith in 1926. The name of the carving refers to the fact that Thorne Smith had mentioned to Crawford that he was sure that his next novel, Topper, would flop. Topper went on to be one of his most successful works and was made into a movie in 1953. The art and books on display were loaned by Steve Schade and Thorne Smith’s grandson, Terry Conner.

The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme

Using mnemonics as an aid for learning vast quantities of information is often employed in medical education. Taking it a step further, the author of the textbook Cope's Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen, later turned his book into 88 pages of doggerel which explains how to diagnose and treat patients with belly pain: The Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen in Rhyme by 'Zeta,' (aka: Sir Zachary Cope.) This small volume has been sitting on my bookshelves at home for many years and what made me think about it is it turns up in Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone which I am currently reading. Zeta's little book is quoted by the fictional Dr. Ghosh and listed in Verghese's bibliography. Is it hard to imagine gut pain being funny? Consider this advice to the physician:

'The abdomen is like a stage

Enclosed within a fleshy cage,

The symptoms are the actors who

Act often with consumate art

The major or the minor part;

Nor do they usually say

Who is the author of the play.

That is for you to try and guess,

A problem which, I must confess

Is made less easy from the fact

You seldom see the opening act,

And by the time that you arrive

The victim my be just alive.'

'The leading or principal symptoms are four,...

Distension, rigidity, vomiting, pain.'

(as seen in the illustration by Peter Collingwood)

OK, not ROTFL, but maybe easier to remember than a regular textbook.