For that past 50 years, Barbara Ketcham Wheaton has been meticulously compiling the information of historical cookbooks in Europe, North America, and beyond, including ingredients, illustrations, and backgrounds about the people behind each morsel. That labor is now available for the world to behold in the form of the beautiful and old-school-style database known as the Sifter.
There’s nothing better than getting lost in a stack of books—bonus if it’s amidst impressive architecture. Given that it’s currently National Library Week, there is no better time to visit (albeit virtually) some of the most impressive libraries in the world. Below, House Beautiful has rounded up a list of virtual tours of libraries in places like England, Austria, New York, Massachusetts, Mexico, Portugal, and Prague, and we cannot wait to bask in the joy that these magnificent libraries have to offer. Happy library hopping, bibliophiles!
If you’ve run out of things to do or are just tired of making sourdough bread from scratch, Atlas Obscura lists digital projects that you can become involved in.
…many libraries and archives remain closed, and will likely stay shuttered for months. In the meantime, try sublimating your intellectual wanderlust with more ways to give researchers a (virtual) helping hand. These projects won’t help you stretch your legs, but they will give your brain a workout.
Currently the British Library is busy digitizing its collection of around 150 globes and making them available as 3D interactive visualizations. Not wanting to be outdone the National Maritime Museum has also released a virtual 3D visualization of one of its historical globes.
The Mercator Terrestrial Globe was made by Gerard Mercator in 1541. Ten years later, in 1551, he made a companion celestial globe. You can also view 3d versions of Mercator’s Earth Globe and Mercator’s Celestial Globe on the University of Lausanne’s website.
It’s National Library Week 2020! This year’s theme is “Find your place at the library.” While the Smithsonian Libraries has closed its 21 physical branches during the COVID-19 outbreak, our work continues. We invite you to find a place with us online through our virtual resources, continued services, and digital content. We are here to help you explore and discover from the comfort of your home–and we look forward to welcoming you back in person as soon as we can.
If any one of us ran our own country, we’d surely drive no small amount of resources toward building an impressive national library. That would be true even if we ran a country the size of the Vatican, the smallest sovereign state in the world — but one that, unsurprisingly, punches well above its weight in terms of the size and historical value of its holdings. “It was in 1451 when Pope Nicholas V, a renowned bibliophile himself, attempted to re-establish Rome as an academic center of global importance,” writes Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza. That formidable task involved first “building a relatively modest library of over 1,200 volumes, including his personal collection of Greek and Roman classics and a series of texts brought from Constantinople.”
THE BARTENDING PROFESSION has a rich and varied history that only recently has come to light during the past two decades. Vintage cocktail and distillation books filled with recipes, techniques, and management procedures are being unearthed and collected at an unprecedented pace.
For the new generations of bartenders these rare volumes, dating from the 1820s through the 1940s, are financially out of reach. However, these sources of research are crucial to career development and creative inspiration as well as to personal advancement in a profession that has rediscovered a justifiable sense of pride and purpose.
Over the coming year, we will make available free, digitised versions of these classics that you can read online and search in a user-friendly, page-through format. With over 1,000 volumes at our access, we need your help in deciding which volumes you find most important to you as a bar professional.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
![The Sifter is a beautiful database of 5,000 historical cookbooks via Input [Food]](http://welchwrite.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/slide01.jpg)
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