Drawn

We first met blogger PK and BibliOdyssey, his remarkable blog devoted to visual materia obscura two years ago. BibliOdyssey is the starting point on the net for uncovering eclectic archival imagery and the fascinating wealth of ephemera offered by libraries, universities and other institutions.

Now the blog has become a book, BibliOdyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet, and it’s a perfect companion to the site. The title almost doesn’t do it justice; “archival images” sounds a bit stuffy, and “amazing” doesn’t quite capture author PK’s appetite for the strange and morbid. Luckily this a case where you can indeed judge a book by its cover: a striking image of a man in a thee-piece suit, plummeting to his death, is framed in ornamental gold foil skeletons and thorns.

What’s inside? PK says:

You can expect everything from astronomy to zoology and from Art Nouveau to the Renaissance…I like to think that the trajectory of the book aims somewhere roughly between our internet users’ penchant for a concentrated package of beguiling ephemera and as an introductory overview of the cultural wealth accessible from web archives for luddites.

It’s a sort-of sampler platter of not just BibliOdyssey, the website’s offerings, but also those of all the libraries and archives from which the site gleans its treasures. Packaged and designed by FUEL, along with commentary by PK, the book is available on Amazon or direct from the publisher. It’s a fascinating look into our strange, strange past.