CABS 2020 CANCELLED

The following message was sent to members of the rare book trade on Tuesday, 7 April 2020:

To all our friends of CABS-Minnesota,

With regret, we are writing to announce that we must cancel this year's summer program which was to be held at St. Olaf College. The biggest priority for us from the get-go has been to protect the health of both our faculty and students. Not knowing what the future holds, it would be unfair of us to keep everyone hanging only to cancel – or for that matter, even forge ahead – in another month or six weeks. Consider our respective businesses: we can’t see how anyone on the faculty, or, for that matter, in this year’s class, is going to come out of this situation unscathed. Asking our faculty to take considerable time away from their businesses to prepare CABS lectures and presentations seems unworkable in the present environment.

Furthermore, having us in reasonably close proximity with one another isn’t at all prudent given that some of the faculty are in high-risk categories for COVID-19. The other concern, of course, is for the students, some of whom would be coming in on airplanes, some of whom may also be in high-risk groups, to say nothing of the issues that might come to the fore with dormitory sharing. The ABSF Board, which has now voted unanimously to cancel this year’s program, was not willing to ask either the faculty or the students to take that chance either.

Hence, the 2020 inaugural CABS seminar in Minnesota is canceled. Stay tuned, however. We may be looking at some planned events later in the year.

With great sadness, but buoyed by knowing this is the right decision,

Lorne Bair / Director, CABS – Minnesota
Rob Rulon-Miller / President, Antiquarian Book School Foundation