Earlier today, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) hosted a 90-minute webinar to discuss how the COVID-19 health crisis is affecting antiquarian booksellers around the world.
Access to reliable and relevant information is vital in a time of crisis. Many of our colleagues are concerned about the following weeks and months, have spend weeks re-organizing the business, were forced to lock up shops, send staff on leave or furlough or are simply in lockdown at home.
Events and fairs in the rare book world were cancelled or postponed all over the world. Now is the time to stand together as a worldwide trade.
AMOR LIBRORUM NOS UNIT - THE LOVE OF BOOKS UNITES US.
Due to the COVID19- crisis, which affects many booksellers and has demanded booksellers over the last few weeks to focus entirely on the challenging situation in the business, we are aware that some booksellers might have not found the time and chance to apply for a scholarship.
Halloween is the time for ghouls, goblins, witches, and ... ghosts. In the art world, ghosts aren't merely the phantoms, banshees, and spooks of horror stories; there are also ghosts of the pen. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons, and plenty of famous authors have written works on behalf of others as well.
The only existing account of his life beyond his travels is an obituary in the Royal Geographical Society, New Series 1882: Edmund Smyth travelled in the company of John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton, and he made a secret expedition to Tibet and the Brahmaputra with Robert Drummond and Thomas W. Webber. Webber's report "Forests of Upper India" was rejected by Sven Hedin, who "dismissed the account as worthless and riddled with inconsistencies, devoting six pages of his Southern Tibet to demolishing Webber's claims". Why? Hedin had recently returned from Tibet and claimed the discovery of the source of the Brahmaputra as his own.
On Saturday we start to earn our keep. A day-long meeting of the presidents, with the ILAB Committee and its tireless staff. Here's not the place for a full report, but we discussed, among many other things, the circuit of international book fairs, the major upcoming events in Switzerland (2012) and France (2014), the sharing of new ideas to promote our activities, the preparation of an international guide to book-collecting in its various forms, the ever-expanding ILAB website, the international directory of members, and the wider geographical spread of associated booksellers around the world. All in all, a highly congenial and really rather impressive example of international co-operation.
In April 2012 it was announced that 1500 books were missing from one of the richest and oldest libraries in Italy: the Girolamini Library in Naples. Shortly afterwards the library's director Marino Massimo de Caro was suspended, then arrested and accused of embezzlement along with four accomplices from Argentina and Ukraine. A number of stolen items from the library were confiscated in Munich, London, New York and Tokyo, but most of the books are still missing. It is not even known right now how many books were actually stolen. ILAB President Arnoud Gerits advises all booksellers to check their purchases of Italian books from the 15th to the 17th centuries if these volumes were purchased in the time period between January to May of 2012. Nearly every day, more and more news and background information become public. The book theft in the Girolamini Library turns out to be one of the most spectacular ever. Snippets from some of the most interesting press articles and YouTube clips.
York Antiquarian Book Seminar provides an opportunity for leading specialists to share their expertise and experience with booksellers, librarians and collectors in a comprehensive survey of the out-of-print, antiquarian, rare and used book markets. Basic procedures and problems are discussed both formally and informally through a series of lectures, discussions, demonstrations and practical hands-on workshops with emphasis on cataloguing, pricing, and bookselling in the electronic age.
The seminar is designed for people of all levels of expertise, from beginners to those with years of experience who want to hone their skills in this rapidly changing field.
Very recently, a delightful new book tumbled on to my desk from an otherwise boring mail delivery - a Yard (3 Foots) Anthology, which straight away brightened my day and finished off anything else I had planned to do. For it immediately took me back many years to a different era. After a preliminary look-through, I was so grateful that I telephoned the donor to thank him most profusely and genuinely.
