Heritage et AL

One of the recipients of  Auckland Library Heritage Trust 's  Researcher in Residence  award for 2014/2015 was Dr Zain Ali. Dr Ali focused his research on a  golden Quran  that  Henry Shaw  donated to the library and also some  manus cripts of poems in  Arabic . The aim of the Researcher in Residence scholarship is to assist with scholarly research and promotion of materials held in  Sir George Grey Special Collections . These aims were certainly achieved this year with some Arabic manuscripts being translated into English for the first time. The fruits of this research were presented in a talk at the library on the evening of 28 May this year. The video of the talk is now up online and you can watch the talk that Dr Ali and translator Hoda Khaled Fahmy gave below: Do have a look at Auckland Libraries YouTube Channel ; there is some great content there. Recently added videos include some of our family history talks through ...

2013 is the 700th anniversary of the birth of the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) - poet, biographer, prose writer, lecturer, book collector, biographer of Dante and Petrarch, humanist.   Boccaccio’s best known work is the 'Decameron', written between 1348 and 1352. It is a collection of 100 tales told by a group of young noble men and women who flee to the countryside to escape the Plague. Over 10 days they tell each other stories to distract and amuse themselves. The 'Decameron'’s combination of “realism, cheer and disorderliness” and its reputation as a book banned for its erotic content have ensured that it has remained popular through the centuries. It has been translated into many languages, turned into verse, and inspired other books, films, and electronic media. Ref: 'Il decamerone Di M. Giovanni Boccaccio', Londra, 1757-[61], Sir George Grey Special Collections The copy in Italian (shown above) was printed in the 1750s. The second ...