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In one year's time exactly, Bologna will host an event very important for all of us, the International Congress of the ILAB, September 20-26, 2010. After more than 20 years the Italian association, ALAI, has again the honour – and the responsibility – of taking care of its organization. Bologna is a splendid town, almost unknown to tourists, counting less than 400.000 inhabitants; in terms of quality of life it ranks as one of the top cities in the whole Italy. Its extensive medieval center, one of the best-preserved in Europe, contains a wealth of important Medieval and Renaissance artistic monuments.

In the case of titles published before 1900, the key to first-edition identification is often the date on the title page. The vast majority of first editions published before 1900 had the year of publication on the title page (this is true for fiction and non-fiction titles). The presence of a date on the title page alone may identify books published prior to the mid-1800s as first editions. A matching date on the copyright page (or the back of the title page) often identifies a book published in the mid - to late 1800s as a first edition. After 1900, a number of publishers did not or currently do not put the date on the title page of their first editions.

Every year, the New York Grolier Club invites to its annual lecture during Book Week. In 2018, Justin Croft, antiquarian bookseller from the UK, spoke about manuscripts from the age of print.

It does not happen all that often that an old antiquarian bookseller sees a catalogue and thinks, a little enviously: "I wish that was one of mine." Paul Kainbacher's latest catalogue "Im Herzen Afrikas" is one of those. The presentation is generous, in a large quarto format. Nearly every item is illustrated in colour. The numbering, which often makes a catalogue lifeless, has been omitted. The text is set in single or double columns, which does not make reading hectic, rather it adds a component of surprise and dynamics. Well, these are externals, it is the content that counts. But still, a mood is set, the reader is curious and elated ...

Last Saturday, the "heart of literacy" lay in Baden, next to Vienna. Dr. Paul Kainbacher launched the ILAB Pop Up Week in his antiquarian bookshop with a Bibliophile Evening dedicated to rare books on the history and exploration of Africa. The elegant rooms were crowded with books and visitors who enjoyed the lectures given by Walter Sauer and Martin Peter Pfitscher, both renowned authors and leading experts from the University of Vienna. Walter Sauer, Professor of Economic and Social History, compared Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" with the experiences of Austrian travelers to Central Africa, while Martin Peter Pfitscher, specialist in Ethnology, took the visitors on a photographic tour to Africa seen through the lense of author, adventurer and photographer Oscar Baumann.

Johannes Magnus, Sweden's last Catholic archbishop, got caught up in the politics of the Reformation but escaped to Italy, where he found time to write a book about the history of the Scandinavian people. Some scholars, Danes in particular, don't think much of Magnus' history, though. Magnus was decidedly a Swedish nationalist and didn't treat the Danish people very kindly in his book. In fact, he suggested that Danes were actually descendants of Swedish criminals who were exiled south of Sweden. His book, Gothorum Sueonumque Historia, ex probatis Anriquorum Monumentis Colleta, & in xxiiij. libros redacta, naturally sparked loud Danish protests, and spate of Danish books refuting Magnus' conclusions.