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Dr. Hans Schneider, antiquarian bookseller from Tutzing in Germany, passed away in April 2017 at the age of 96. Eberhard Köstler remembers Dr. Schneider, his legacy and a lifetime of building one of the most important antiquarian firms worldwide, specialising in music and music literature. 

The first major antiquarian book fair of the year in America, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017!

Best story of the week was Ed Bayntun-Coward's recollection of his encounter with a glamorous woman at a party. She asked what he did for a living. Ed replied smoothly that he was an antiquarian bookseller – "What a contraceptive", she responded, immediately turning on heel and walking away.

I moved my business from Newark to New Castle in December 1979. John and Emily Ballinger moved up from North Carolina and bought into the business, and their down-payment was just enough cash to allow me to buy 414 Delaware Street from Herb Tobin, a legend in New Castle lore. Herb was the last in line of the family butchers and knew every reputable historical fact (and many disreputable) about the city of New Castle. This Victorian storefront had been a butcher's shop during its entire life before I turned it into a bookshop.

Collecting Angling books has wide appeal, and not just for folk that fish. Many of the intrinsic characteristics of angling – solitude, meditative activity, excitement of the chase, celebration of the natural world – are also reflected in the collecting endeavour. Early literature with an Australian angling connection extends back to 1880, with the book Vacation Tours in New Zealand and Tasmania, by James Coutts.

Dust on the shelves. Collectors consider it romantic: the dusty corners of antiquarian bookshops where scarce volumes have been hidden under the dust for centuries waiting to be discovered and to be bought by book lovers for a few cents. (The legends say that these books exist.) Dealers live with it or, most of the time, don't do anything against it: the dust in the corners where boxes with hundreds (thousands) of books are stored waiting to be described, priced and put into the showcases or into the internet. Scienstists warn: dust may be unhealthy. As early as 1900 Eduard Fischer von Röslerstamm published an empirical analysis on the life expentancy of antiquarian booksellers, librarians and book collectors. His question was: Did they suffer from dust in the lungs? Was the "book dust disease" an occupational disease that threatened the rare book trade?