Bibliography Week 2023

January 10, 2023, 4pm Eastern – Bibliography Week Orientation | ONLINE | Register

What is Bibliography Week, anyway? Join BSA members Colleen Barrett and Ashley Cataldo and Executive Director Erin McGuirl for an overview of this mainstay in the book world, taking place at the end of January each year. During this Zoom meeting, hosts will provide an overview of the program and help attendees prepare for a week of bibliographical events in New York City. We’ll cover the week’s events (virtual, hybrid, and in-person only) and NYC travel basics like weather and local transportation and leave plenty of time for your questions.

January 11, 2023, 6:30pm – PBSA Information Session | ONLINE | Register

Please join Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA) co-editors Dr. Sarah Werner and Dr. Jesse Erickson for an online information and Q&A session on January 21. Drs. Werner and Erickson will discuss their vision for the journal and how it can be part of an expanded field of bibliographical scholarship. They will also answer questions that you might have about practical matters of publishing in PBSA, such as the submission and review process, image permissions, special issues, and open access. You will have the opportunity to ask questions about their new role as editors as well as other questions related to the journal, so please get your queries ready!

January 18-20, 2022 – New Scholars Program: Individual Talk Screenings & Q&A Sessions | ONLINE | Register

Join the 2023 New Scholars and members of the New Scholars Committee for dedicated pre-program screenings and dedicated question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions for each scholar. These sessions are scheduled as follows:

• January 18, 7pm Eastern: Seamus Dwyer (Yale University, BSA New Scholar) & Agnieszka Rec (Yale University, moderator): “Bastard Hands, Medieval Commodities, and Reading Medieval Manuscripts”
• January 19, 7pm Eastern: Rachelle Grossman (Harvard University, Pantzer New Scholar) Kinohi Nishikawa (Princeton University, moderator): “Dirty Slugs and Flimsy Paper: What a Page Can Teach Us about Yiddish Printing in Postwar Poland”
• January 20, 7pm Eastern: Mara Frazier (Ohio State University, Malkin New Scholar) & & Meghan Constantinou (Simmons University, moderator): “The Dance Typewriter: IBM, the Labanotation Element, and ‘Women’s Work’ in 1973”

12pm Eastern – Finding Your Focus: A Roundtable for Aspiring Book Collectors | ONLINE | Register

This roundtable will feature recent winners of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize for young women book collectors. The panelists will share the experience of building their winning collections, with an emphasis on the moments of inquiry, epiphany, and re-evaluation that shaped their projects. Our goal in this roundtable is to demystify the early stages of building a collection, when many aspiring collectors become discouraged or intimidated, by focusing on productive acts of re-direction and pivoting.

Speakers:

• Miriam Borden, University of Toronto, Centre for Jewish Studies
• Margaret Landis, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado-Boulder
• Melanie Shi, Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris

Moderators:

• Heather O’Donnell, Honey & Wax Booksellers & Co-founder, Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize
• Rebecca Romney, Type Punch Matrix & Co-founder, Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize

Full speaker & moderator bios are available on the registration page.

1pm Eastern – Speaking Texts: Recordings in/and Preservation, Accessibility, and Indigeneity | ONLINE | Register

Bibliographical analysis of texts requires close looking at objects, which traditionally have been printed textual artifacts. While scholars working in the digital humanities have made headway in pursuing the bibliographical analysis of digital objects, such as OCR’d text, bibliographical analysis of other kinds of new media, such as recorded sound and its accompanying textual transcriptions, has received less attention among bibliographers. Yet many texts, like the oral cultures of residents of Appalachia, tribal members of various Indigenous communities, and formerly enslaved people of African descent, are not recorded in printed text until after they are recorded in sound. Such various iterations of text in new recorded formats raise traditional bibliographical questions: What is an edition, state, and issue? Does the physical format of the sound recording help us to understand the production and dissemination of the text? This panel seeks to bring together several 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.

Speakers:

• Justin Tackett, University of Warwick (Moderator)
• Kopana Terry, University of Kentucky
• Mara Mills, New York University
• Alan Corbiere, York University

BIPOC, LGBTQ+, Disabled, & Spanish-speaking Bibliographers: Bibliography Week Meet-Up | Tuesday, January 24 at 5:30pm Eastern | ONLINE | Register

Hosted by Vice President Megan Peiser, PBSA Co-Editor Jesse Erickson, Council member María Fernàndez, and BSA member Kate Ozment, this event provides an opportunity to connect with people like you who are interested in bibliography.

This will be a Zoom meeting, with breakout rooms provided for individual groups. Captioning will be provided in the main Zoom room and one breakout room.

This event is open to BSA members and non-members alike. It is intended for members of the Black, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, disability, and Spanish-speaking communities. If you do not identify with one of those groups, don’t worry! There is plenty of space for you to connect with fellow bibliographers at other BSA Bibliography Week events, in person and online. Scroll through the listings above and below, and  register to join us for as many events as you like.

11am Eastern – Tour of the New York Society Library | In Person | Register

All are welcome to meet at the New York Society Library (53 E. 79th Street at Madison Avenue) for a tour of the historic library, its collections, and resources available to researchers, bibliographers, bibliophiles, collectors, students, and others. BSA members, this is a great opportunity to learn more about the Society Library and its collections, which you have access to at a special discounted rate.

5:30pm Eastern – Materialities of Contemporary Latin American Publishing | In person at the Center for Book Arts | Register

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. Our panel features three scholars who, through a series of case studies from Mexico, Argentina, and Bolivia, consider these projects and how they reflect in the materiality of books and digital platforms.

Organized by Alex Hidalgo & Corinna Zeltsman; Chaired by Paloma Celis Carbajal

Speakers:

• Nora Benedict, University of Georgia
• Élika Ortega, University of Colorado Boulder
• Magalí Rabasa, Lewis & Clark College

2:30pm Eastern – Tour of the New York Society Library | In Person | Register

Learn more about the New York Society Library with a guided tour of its reading rooms, quiet study spaces, and twelve floors of stacks. During your tour, you will learn about the Society Library’s collection and services, and hear about the Library’s 268 years of history in New York City.

BSA members, this is a great opportunity to learn more about the Society Library and its collections, which you have access to at a special discounted rate.

The Library is located at 53 E. 79th Street between Park and Madison Avenues, blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park.

5:30pm Eastern – Members & Friends Mixer | In Person @ the New York Society Library | Register

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. Special Collections Librarian & BSA Events Committee Vice Chair Barbara Bieck will be there with select materials from NYSL Special Collections and there will be opportunities to explore the library stacks and ongoing exhibition. Drinks and nibbles will be served.

The 2023 Annual Meeting & New Scholars Program | Convene, 530 5th Avenue at 54th Street & live online via YouTube | Registration required by January 20, 9am Eastern

The 2023 Annual Meeting and New Scholars Program will be held in-person and live-streamed to our virtual audience starting at 2pm Eastern with New Scholars’ papers and a group question and answer session. Following a 30-minute break (snacks and beverages will be available at Convene for our in-person audience), the 2023 Annual Meeting will begin at 3:45pm Eastern. The entire program will be live-streamed for a virtual audience on the BSA YouTube Channel.

The Annual Meeting Keynote is sponsored by the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) and the New Scholars Program is sponsored by Patrick Olson Rare Books. Quarto and Folio sponsors of the meeting are listed below. Learn more about sponsorship, which begins at $250, on our website.

Registration | Register Online
Registration is required for in-person attendance. All attending the live program in New York must register by January 20, 2023 at 9am Eastern. Seating is limited, so register now.

Virtual attendees need not register but are welcome to do so.

2-3:15pm Eastern – The 2023 New Scholars Program – Sponsored by Patrick Olson Rare Books

The Bibliographical Society of America’s New Scholars Program promotes the work of scholars new to bibliography, broadly defined to include the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, and subsequent history of all textual artifacts. This includes manuscript, print, and digital media, from clay and stone to laptops and iPads.

The 2023 New Scholars are:

• Seamus Dwyer, BSA New Scholar – “Bastard Hands: Scripts and the Medieval Language of Commodity”
• Rachelle Grossman, Pantzer New Scholar – “Dirty Slugs and Flimsy Paper: What a Page Can Teach Us about Yiddish Printing in Postwar Poland”
• Mara Frazier, Malkin New Scholar – “The Dance Typewriter: IBM, the Labanotation Element, and ‘Women’s Work’ in 1973”

Read the New Scholars’ paper abstracts on the BSA website.

In 2023 the BSA New Scholars will present in person in the traditional format: presentations of all three papers will be followed by a panel discussion, with questions from the live audience. View the “Bibliography Week Prologue” schedule to learn more about the opportunity to pre-screen and discuss individual Scholars’ papers via Zoom on January 18, 19, and 20.

3:45pm Eastern – The 2023 Annual Meeting & Keynote Lecture – Sponsored by the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA)

Following a welcome from BSA President Caroline Duroselle-Melish,  Dr. Kelly Wisecup will present the 2023 Annual Meeting’s keynote lecture.

“Toward a Bibliography of Birchbark Books”
This talk asks what a bibliography of birchbark books might entail and how such research might challenge understandings of paper, print production and circulation, and readership. Dr. Wisecup takes up these questions by examining an array of birchbark books and objects that informed the making and circulation of the Potawatomi writer Simon Pokagon’s birchbark booklet titled The Red Man’s Rebuke (alt. title The Red Man’s Greeting). Thought by many scholars to be printed for the Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair in 1893, Dr. Wisecup illuminates a longer history of the booklets’ printing and circulation, including multiple editions and evidence of several readers. Dr. Wisecup asks what methods a bibliography of birchbark requires by reflecting on recent collaborative research with Pokagon Band of Potawatomi archivists and linguists. Attempting a bibliography of the birchbark booklets offers new insights on how Indigenous people acted as readers of periodicals and other printed objects as well as evidence of strategic circulation and archiving, from the nineteenth century to the present.

The 2023 Annual Meeting: Call to Order

• Executive Director’s Report
• Council Election: Nominating Committee Chair, Barbara A. Shailor
• Brief reports from the Secretary, Treasurer, & Audit Committee Chair
• Awards Presentation: BSA Fellowships, The 2023 St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize Presentation
• Adjournment

The 2023 BSA Annual Meeting Reception

Come raise a glass and celebrate the 2023 New Scholars, the Council Classes of 2023 and 2026, and enjoy the bibliographical camaraderie that so many of us have missed so dearly.

Registration is required by January 20, 9am Eastern

Covid safety protocols

• Read about Convene’s Covid standards and safety protocols.
• Masking is encouraged but not required.
• In alignment with our host venue’s policy, we strongly recommend staying up to date on vaccinations at all times. Proof of vaccination will not be required for entry.

Getting to Convene & Accessibility

Convene at 530 Fifth Avenue is located between 44th and 45th Street on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from Grand Central Station and Bryant Park near the Bryant Park and Grand Central Subway Stations. The location is wheelchair accessible. For more information about access, including parking recommendations, visit Convene’s website and scroll down to the “Location” Heading.

The Council is most grateful to the organizations and businesses that sponsor our Society’s Annual Meeting. For more information about sponsorship and to secure yours online, read the update on the Society’s website.

Closed captioning throughout Bibliography Week is sponsored by Type Punch Matrix.

Quarto Sponsors of the Annual Meeting
Bartleby’s Books  • Bruce McKittrick Rare Books • Christie’s • De Wolfe & Wood Rare Books • Musinsky Rare Books, Inc. • Richard C. Ramer, Old & Rare Books • Royal Books, Inc. • The University of Chicago Press Journals Division • 

Folio Sponsors of the Annual Meeting
Convene • Heritage Auctions • The University of Pennsylvania Press

Coming to New York for Bibliography Week? Hotel rates tend to be very reasonable in late January, the lowest point in the NYC tourist season. If you are uncertain about attending, check hotel cancellation policies: you can book reservations early to secure the best rates and cancel if necessary at no cost.

Executive Director Erin McGuirl suggests the hotels below based on strong online reviews and affordable nightly rates, but not on personal experience.