Bears were mysteriously missing toes. These scientists cracked the case. WaPo
Meet the archive moles Prospect, Lucy ScholesProspect, Lucy Scholes: There’s a growing band of people digging through library stacks and second-hand bookshops in search of lost classics. I’m one of them..Most of the time, my work feels more like that of a detective than an editor. Falling down endless online rabbit holes is an occupational hazard. I read old reviews in digitised newspaper archives, and trawl obituaries, looking for interesting titbits. Internet Archive—the non-profit digital library that houses millions of books—is an indispensable resource, not least because so many of the titles it holds can’t be easily found IRL. But none of this would work without access to various bricks-and-mortar collections, especially the London Library. You’ll find me in the stacks, rootling out books that—as revealed by the stampings inside—no one’s read since the 1980s, or earlier. Faber’s classics and heritage editor Ella Griffiths’s playful description of herself as an “archive mole” feels spot on. Our endeavours might be dusty, but it’s easy to become addicted to the thrill of the chase, which is made all the more exciting because serendipity plays such a pivotal role. Griffiths was browsing the shelves of Faber’s in-house archive when her eye was caught by the striking post-apocalyptic cover of their original English-language edition of Termush, Danish author and playwright Sven Holm’s 1969 dystopian novella. She’s now reissuing the book under the new Faber Editions series—which spotlights radical rediscovered voices from history—this May…”
Hiss story: The last snake-handling church in West Virginia – in pictures Guardian
