The Southern Cross was never lost to Indigenous Australians, but it was to Europeans when its five bright stars disappeared from sight in Roman times. So when adventurer Andrea Corsali saw its “marveylous crosse” after he passed the Cape of Good Hope in 1516, he swooned.
Now a rare letter containing Corsali’s illustration and description of the Southern Cross has been acquired by the State Library of NSW for $1.19 million with support from its foundation.
[Clip] Source: State Library of New South Wales
The letter, written in Latin in 1516 and translated into English in 1555, is thought to be the earliest printed documentation by a European of the Southern Cross, and is one of the library’s most significant acquisitions in recent years.
There are only four known copies of the letter, which were printed by Medici clandestinely soon after receiving the original in October 1516. Three are held in institutions overseas, and the fourth will now go on display in the State Library’s Amaze Gallery from Thursday.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
The article linked to below was recently published by Urban Library Journal. Title Conversations That Matter: Engaging Library Employees in DEI and Cultural Humility Reflection Authors Angel TruesdaleUniversity of North ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
From The Texas Tribune: Officials in Llano County must return to the public library system books they removed and allow them to be checked out again, a federal judge ruled this week. ...
From the Website (via Society of Scholarly Publishers): The US OSTP’s Nelson Memo, which requires immediate public access to federally funded research papers, sent a shockwave across the scholarly communications ...
From the Library of Congress: To celebrate the start of the 2023 season, the Library is pleased to announce a new digital collection: Early Baseball Publications. The collection, which will grow over ...
Associated Press: Italy: Privacy Watchdog Temporarily Blocks ChatGPT Citing Data Breach ChatGPT Opened a New Era in Search. Microsoft Could Ruin It (via WIRED) General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence (New Briefing Doc ...
From the Ithaka S+R Library Survey by Ioana G. Hulbert Executive Summary The Ithaka S+R Library Survey has examined leadership and strategic perspectives in the field by surveying library deans ...
Here’s the Full Text of the Coko Announcement: Coko is delighted to announce that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant of $595,000 over 2 years to support ...
From Nextgov: The new Trustworthy & Responsible Artificial Intelligence Resource Center built by the National Institute of Standards and Technology will now serve as a repository for much of the ...
From a LIBER Announcement: LIBER is pleased to announce that Martine Pronk has been appointed as Interim Executive Director, for the period 22 May-1 September 2023. Martine will take over ...
Here’s the Full Text of an Announcement From Lancaster University: A new project that works to increase access to valuable research is to receive more than £5.8 million [$7.15 Million/USD] ...
Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Call for Working Group Proposals 2023 (via RDA) Envisioning Together: A Report of Session 803 (SAA 2022) (via DLF) International Coalition of Library Consortia ...