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The winner of the 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, sponsored by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers with the generous support of the B.H. Breslauer Foundation, is now officially announced!

In time with the Paris International Antiquarian Book Fair 2018, we would like to present some outstanding French publications that were submitted for the 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography 2018.

The Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, awarded every four years by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers is one of the most prestigious awards in this field. Writers, publishers, librarians, journalists, scholars, antiquarian booksellers, book collectors and all who are interested in bibliography and the history of the book were invited to submit books to the 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography by the end of April this year. Bibliographies are an indispensable tool for booksellers but this collection of publications is more than that. It portrays the variety and depth of our profession; academic excellence combined with the love and passion for the subject. A truly international Prize, representing authors, editors and publishers from all corners of the world.

The ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded again in 2018 and is one of the most prestigious prizes in the field of bibliography. A prize with longstanding tradition and a strong support for scholarship: The ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, worth US$10,000, is one of the most important prizes in the field of bibliography. Every fourth year it is awarded to a particularly significant reference work within a selection of scholarly books about books. So far, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has received 34 submissions of outstanding works.

The 17th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded in 2018 to one or more books published in any language and in any part of the world between April 2013 and April 2017. Any work submitted to the Prize must be a published book available on the market. The prize jury - consisting of Bettina Wagner (Bavarian State Library, Munich), Daniel de Simone (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC), Yann Sordet (Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris) and the antiquarian booksellers Fabrizio Govi (Italy), Konrad Meuschel (Germany) and Justin Croft (United Kingdom) - will admit all publications relating to bibliography in a very broad sense: textual bibliography, history of the book, bookbinding, papermaking, type-founding, library catalogues, short-title catalogues of a single author or typographer, etc.. The jury will not take into consideration ebooks and catalogues of books intended for sale and translations of previously published works.

A helpful user brought to my attention the newly updated website for USTC (Universal Short Title Catalogue) which was just launched 4 days ago. For those unfamiliar with the project, its mission is to compile a "collective database" of all European printed books from the 15th and 16th century, with a later extension into the seventeenth century also in sight. I don't think I need to make a point of how useful this will be to anyone who does research relating to early printing.