Via Rob Velella on Twitter, Professor Richard Kopley’s discovery of an unknown source for The Scarlet Letter: 

DUBOIS, Pa. — An indispensable masterwork in American literature, “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, has been a staple in literary studies and English courses for generations. Now, thanks to the work of Penn State DuBois Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus Richard Kopley, more is known about how this novel came to exist.

Kopley has edited and re-released “The Salem Belle: A Tale of 1692” (Penn State Press), a novel first published, anonymously, in 1842. The unidentified author was Ebenezer Wheelwright. Kopley considers the book as a major source for the 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter.” However, Wheelwright’s book had fallen into obscurity and was nearly lost to history. Kopley’s research shows that Hawthorne drew inspiration for his classic from this previously little-known work. The new edition includes an introduction and notes by Kopley, which detail his research into the two novels and their connection.

[Read more at the link]

From BBC News via Twitter: Kalev Leetaru has uploaded 2.6 million historic, copyright-free Internet Archive images from books to Flickr. They’re searchable, too. 

Here’s the link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/with/14784850762/

From the Washington Post, a story about Civil War hero Robert Smalls: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/civil-war-hero-robert-smalls-seized-the-opportunity-to-be-free/2012/02/23/gIQAcGBtmR_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Smalls became skilled at working on ships, eventually advancing to the position of pilot. In 1861, he was hired to work on a steamer called the Planter, which was used to transport cotton to ships headed to Europe. But once the Civil War started, the Confederates seized it for use as an armed transport vessel.

Smalls knew how to navigate. He knew that the white crew trusted him. He had his eye on freedom, and all he needed was an opportunity.

* * *

“They were going to seize the ship,” said Lawrence Guyot, a black-history expert in Washington. “It was dangerous. It was daring. It was unprecedented. And when they accomplished it, it was used to demonstrate that blacks could be brave and strategic in pulling off military maneuvers. Because of what happened on the Planter, Abraham Lincoln decided to let African Americans join the fight in the Civil War.”

From Caleb Crain at The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/the-new-york-public-library-comes-around.html): 

Last week, the Times reported that the New York Public Library, in a surprising about-face, has given up on its plan to tear seven stories of bookshelves out of its white-marble flagship building, on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. The bookshelves, usually referred to as “the stacks,” literally hold up the palatial reading room on the library’s third floor, and, in 2008, when the plan to remove them was first announced, they contained the heart of the library’s research collection. . . . 

 

Almost every major research library has to store part of its collection remotely, but in this, as in all things, there must be proportion. It takes time to get a book from New Jersey into Manhattan, and if a researcher has to wait a day or two to see a new text some of the serendipity goes out of research. If a researcher’s deadline is tomorrow, a book that he can’t see until the day after is of no use to him. 

I would add that, for out-of-town researchers planning a trip to an archive, this access is critical as well.  The best-laid plans and online searches of collections can’t prepare you for something that you discover on site, and, as Crain says, some of the serendipity goes out of research if you can’t access the texts before a 24- or 48-hour (or longer) wait.