Bibliography Week

Panel with past winners of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize.

This panel brings together scholars who will explore bibliographical analysis of oral culture, textual transcription, and capture and preservation of recorded sound from a variety of perspectives and help us to think through how we might do a bibliography of sound and oral culture.

Hosted by Vice President Megan Peiser, PBSA Editor Jesse Erickson, Council member María Fernàndez, and BSA member Kate Ozment, this event provides an opportunity to connect BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Disabled, and Spanish-speaking bibliographers.

The Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Bibliography Week lecture will be presented by Avinoam Shalem. An early Quran, allegedly considered the copy by the third caliph, Uthman bin Affan (murdered in 656 CE), is traditionally said to have been carried by Timur from Iraq to Samarqand. It was taken by the Russians in 1869, and "returned" by them to Bashkortostan and then Tashkent in the 20th century, but before it left Russian hands, it became an object of study for Russian scholars and was reproduced in fifty copies by Dr. S. Pissareff.  Professor Shalem will discuss the history of the Quran, and the curious status of the 1905 Pissareff facsimile, residing in the grey zone between reproduction and copy.

​Join 35 exhibitors offering books, maps, ephemera, and more for sale at the Bibliography Week Showcase. The Showcase takes place in conjunction with Bibliography Week at FIAF on East 60th Street, just across from the Grolier Club. Visit the ABAA website for a complete list of dealers exhibiting at the Showcase.

Learn more about the New York Society Library with a guided tour of its reading rooms, quiet study spaces, and many stacks open for browsing.

A panel of Carnegie Mellon scientists and scholars – Christopher N. Warren, Max G'Sell, and Grolier Club member Samuel Lemley – will present the Grolier Club Bibliography Week lecture. At the heart of this talk is the recognition that the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment developed out of a long and complex tradition of press controls and licensing in Europe and the colonies, and that this amendment's framers understood a lesson sometimes under-appreciated by scholars: that press controls had long pushed certain kinds of printing underground.

This panel examines how actors associated with publishing have reimagined books as material objects in contemporary Latin America. While often situated on the periphery of global publishing markets, the region is a center of innovation where a range of projects—independent, state-funded, radically anti-capitalist, or a mixture of these—have proposed alternative ways of making, reading, and circulating books. Reception follows. Livestream the presentation at https://youtu.be/5s8qLPcbuPk – no registration required.

Learn more about the New York Society Library with a guided tour of its reading rooms, quiet study spaces, and many stacks open for browsing.

Join us at the New York Society Library for a gathering in the Members’ Room. This is an opportunity to meet your fellow members of both the BSA and the Society Library, learn more about our organizations and the many resources we have to offer to the broad community of book people.

Attend the Society's Annual meeting with a keynote lecture, "Toward a Bibliography of Birchbark Books" by Dr. Kelly Wisecup. The 2023 New Scholars Program begins at 2pm Eastern.

Brooklyn used booksellers Better Read Than Dead open up their (literally) underground warehouse for a two-day weekend sale, Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Thousands of antiquarian, collectible, and plain old paperback books – alongside prints, periodicals, pamphlets, and more – will be for sale. Local antiquarian and ephemera dealers Dividing Line and Fugitive Materials will be the special guest dealers set up on the premises as well. The sale will be held in the Book Garage, 539a Greene Avenue in Brooklyn, around the corner from Better Read Than Dead's bookstore inside Burly Coffee at 90 Kosciuszko Street.

The NYAM Bibliography Week lecture will be presented by Mary E. Fissell, PhD. Aristotle's Masterpiece, first published in 1684, was a steady seller into the 20th century, advising readers about sex and babies. Over the course of writing a book about the Masterpiece, Professor Mary Fissell looked at hundreds of copies. In her talk she will reflect on the relationship between evidence drawn from the material text, and that of readership from other sources.

The APHA annual meeting program will include officers’ reports, the election of board trustees, awards to individuals and institutions for their distinguished contributions to printing history, and the announcement of the 2023 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History.