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This year's Amsterdam Antiquarian Book, Map & Print Fair will be held from 28 to 29 October, 2011, in the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam. After the great success in 2010 both Dutch antiquarian booksellers associations, the Nederlandsche Vereeniging van Antiquaren (NVvA) and the Bond van handelaren in Oude Boeken (BOB) will for the second time organize and support an Antiquarian Book Fair where more than 60 Dutch and foreign dealers present wonderfull books, manuscripts, maps and prints from all centuries. The Fair will also feature displays by private presses, publishers and bibliophile societies.

It's time to celebrate! On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Japan (ABAJ) will be hosting an International Antiquarian Book Fair in Tokyo from 5 to 7 March 2015 at the Grand Palace Hotel in Tokyo. Some 20 dealers from Europe and the United States and around 25 dealers from Japan will show rare and beautiful books, maps and manuscripts highlighting the amazing history of printing in Asia and the Western world. A 350 page, richly illustrated book fair catalogue gives an overview over the most exciting items for sale.

Was that it? Was Bob's involvement in ILAB finished and done with? Oh no! ILAB needed a Treasurer capable of taking its accounting system into the 21st Century and turned once more to Bob Fleck to take on this difficult and not so enchanting job, which he took on in April 2014. He worked relentlessly during a year and a half, until the Seville Presidents' Meeting in October 2015, to put all the accounts in order and once the job was brilliantly done … he resigned, having been asked to head New Castle's Historical Society, and for once in his life, he could not be able to find the time to work, rest, and work and work again and again. To thank him, once more, and perhaps not for the last time, for his devotion to ILAB matters, Bob Fleck was awarded during the 2015 October Seville Presidents' Meeting with the ILAB Medal, engraved on its back: "In recognition of services rendered to the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers."

It is widely known that in 1839 William Henry Fox Talbot invented the positive-negative system of photography that effectively was the medium until the digital age supplanted it 150 years later. It is less wellknown that from 1852 he concentrated on perfecting his photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure, which revolutionized high-quality book illustration and art reproduction from the 1880s.

Most of my bookselling life has been a lonely business: waiting for trains, scouring shelves of dull books in the hope of finding one good one. But for five years I had a shop, and that wasn't lonely at all.

The ultimate guide to the identification of British antique maps and their makers: An illustrated dictionary of over 1,500 members of the map trade in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, of British-born engravers working overseas and foreign engravers working in the British Isles, from the beginnings until the mid 19th century. Included are all the known engravers and lithographers, globemakers and retailers, the principal map sellers and publishers, key cartographers, makers of map-based games and puzzles, but also the remarkable lives of many artists, dealers and publishers, whose fates have been unknown so far.