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News from Italy: With local authorities no longer in charge of heritage protection, it is now illegal to export from Italy any book printed before 1965. Until August 2015, under Italian law, anyone owning a book older than 50 years and wanting to export it from Italy, was required to apply for an export license to the competent regional authority. On August 6th, the Italian Parliament approved a law on the reorganization of local governmental departments. The law 125/2015 repeals the paragraph of the Italian Heritage Code granting Regions the authority to carry out heritage protection on books and manuscripts; and provides for such authority to be "subject to specific agreements with the State". Alas, no specific agreements have been made so far and nobody can tell when, where and how these agreements will be finalized.

Without a doubt, every antique store and flea market from California to New York somewhere has a box of photographs – black and white, early Kodaks, or even tintypes… often warped, mirrored, faded – if you are reading this blog it is assumed that at some point or another your interest in antiquarian books and materials has drawn you to such an establishment, and you have at least fingered through a box of photographs labeled ".10 each or 15 for $1.00". Why is it, then, that those photographs are (seemingly) worthless, while there are photograph albums offered by booksellers with the same types of prints for thousands of dollars? As with all things antiquarian – provenance, condition and interest levels dictate the differences between a bin full of late 19th century silver-gelatin prints and an album full of un-faded, unaltered albumen photographs.

Last weekend's 43d California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Los Angeles, the first major book fair of the year, provided an excellent overview of where the rare book trade now stands and where it may be headed.

"A first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, with author JK Rowling's notes and original illustrations, was sold for £150,000 at auction in London. The book, which was auctioned by Sotheby's at a charity sale in aid of the English Pen writers' association, was purchased by an anonymous bidder by telephone. The annotations by Rowling include comments on the process of writing and a section from an early draft of the novel, along with a number of illustrations drawn by her and a note on how she came to invent Quidditch, a sport played by characters in the books."

The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) was founded in 1949. In the same year Laurence Gomme, the first ABAA President, attended the 2nd ILAB Congress in London as an observer, and a year later the American Association was officially welcomed as a new member of the League during the 3rd Congress in Paris. It took only a few more years until the ILAB affiliates were invited to the United States: to New York in 1955, and again in 1959. The 12th ILAB Congress was held in New York from 20th to 25th September, 1959. And it was bigger than ever before.

Marguerite Studer Goldschmidt was born in England to Swiss parents, she was educated in England and Switzerland. Her father, Paul Studer, was professor of Romance languages at Oxford University. In 1932 Marguerite began to study librarianship at the University of Geneva, apprenticed at the libraries of the Universities of Bristol (UK), Geneva (Switzerland) and Tubingen (Germany). She became assistant cataloguer at the University of Bristol library, associate of the British Library, and librarian of the Bush House Library at the BBC in London. There she met Lucien Goldschmidt: “on a double date for lunch at Lloyd's Corner. She remembers that he added money to the tip, a generous act that conveyed a sense of European manners and courtliness that even 59 years later still brings a smile. ‘He was a gentleman and I knew it then.’"