Hoonaloon For Webdubs

As I`ve already mentioned, this month`s Hoonaloon News is already online and can be found at http://hoonaloon.blogspot.com.

Additionally, I`ve decided to post details of a few recent additions to our stock that may be of interest to visitors to this blog ;

 

 

 

5283 - Doreen Lawrence - And Still I Rise : Seeking Justice for Stephen  - Faber and Faber 2006  - 1st/1st - Hardcover

 

 

 

 

 

5247 - Charles E Cobb Jr - On the Road to Freedom ; A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail - Algonquin/Workman - 2007 - Paperback

 

 

 

 

 

5275 - Alice walker - The Same River Twice : Honoring the Difficult - The Women`s Press - 1996 - 1st English Edition

 

 

I don`t think any additional comment is needed from me. Further details of condition, price etc are available by visiting our online shop at ABE. As ever, if you have any further questions then feel free to ask.

 

Don`t forget to check out Hoonaloon News September 2012 for details of more from our stock.

 

All the Best,

 

 

Nick and Ann-Marie

Hoonaloon Books

http://honaloon.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nabu Press - an Elusive Entity

The word Nabu can have many meanings - a German conservation group, an Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom, a children`s clothing company or, and this is the one that interests us today, Nabu Press, a print-on-demand historical reprint publisher.

Nabu allegedly publish around 600,000 titles using POD technology. Of particular interest to me is the fact that their titles include works by Mary White Ovington and George Padmore.

Having found a UK bookseller offering their reprint of Ovington`s The Walls Came Tumbling Down, I placed my order and sat back happily to await it`s arrival.

On taking receipt of the book I was a little surprised to see the publication that arrived was rather more slender than expected, and that the cover illustration had no obvious connection with the subject matter.

On opening the book I was even more surprised to find that the text inside was not Ovington`s personal account of the founding of the NAACP, but an antiquarian work by a German academic, written in German.

I don`t expect to have any problems returning the book but I was curious to find out more. A quick skim around the internet showed that a number of people have had problems with this company`s output. Worryingly, Nabu have no website and their publications provide no contact details.

I did find a useful article `Who and Where are Nabu Press` at http://wiki.answers.com which tells you the name of the company that owns them and the address of their registered agent.

I understand that a number of people are experiencing problems with POD reprint companies and that the problem is not confined to Nabu alone by any means.  Presuming you place your order through a reputable book dealer you should have no problem getting a refund if you have a similar experience.

I can see a very valuable role to be played by reprint companies - POD companies if necessary, by all means -   making affordable copies of books like Ovington`s available. Unfortunately, that doesn`t seem to be what`s happening.

If anyone else wants to use the comments facility to tell the world about their experience of these companies - good  as well as bad, if that`s been your experience - I`d be very happy for you to do that.

A Trip to the Library

Staying in the UK, a recent decision by the London Metropolitan University to dispose of two of it`s special collections has proved controversial.

The collections concerned are the Women`s Library and the Trade Union Congress Library. The university has said it is looking for a new home, a new owner or a new sponsor for these.

Cynics have suggested that this because the LMU has been caught `upgrading` figures on the number of students it has in order to get more state funding. I myself had no idea that was the case and couldn`t possibly comment !

A lively campaign is underway in respect of the Women`s Library, which houses everything from early suffragette memorabilia to the archive of the National Women`s Register. For details, see my article Save the Women`s Library , posted earlier today at http://angpav.blogspot.com. 

At present there does not seem to be an equivalent campaign in respect of the TUC collection. However, these sites may be of interest ;

www.londonmet.ac.uk/libraries/tuc

www.unionhistory.info

www.londonmetunison.org.uk

Hopefully new homes and/or new sources of funding will be forthcoming for these unusual collections. As I`ve said elsewhere, it`s worth remebering that documents and artefacts aren`t the only assets these collections have, there`s also the expertise of the staff that maintain them and their familiarity with the stock.

A New Year, A New Approach

As I`ve noted before, I haven`t really been giving this blog the attention it deserves for quite a while.

Part of the problem was that my original plan (to run it as a tribute blog to the late W E B Du Bois) was a little over-ambitious, particularly given that my work and family commitments are considerable.

I`ve decided this year to turn it into something a bit more practical and achievable.

To do that, I`m returning to one of the better slogans of my mis-spent youth, `Think Globally and Act Locally` (as you might guess, I was young in the 1980s !). 

I already post some pieces on grassroots/locally based community groups etc at Angel Pavement ( http://angpav.blogspot.com ) and Bookshelves and Brown Ale ( http://bookshelvesandbrownale.blogspot.com ) so I plan to give this blog an international slant to complement those, whilst still using it now and again to comment on matters relating to Du Bois and his associates. Also, while my Angel Pavement and Bookshelves stuff tends to be newsy with little comment, this blog may well tend to be a little freer (is that a word ?) and more discussion-orientated.

I generally avoid party politics and rarely comment on the big topical issues of the day, as, quite frankly, there are more than enough self-appointed pundits cluttering up the web without me adding to their number !

Anyway, to make a positive start, I thought I`d share with you these rather fine images, which come from Dr Tony Shaw (  http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com ) ,  and which he has kindly given me permission to use. If you have literary leanings yourself, you may well wish to give his blog a visit.