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A year ago Gonzalo Fernández Pontes was elected a member of the ILAB Committee. As Security Chair he is responsible for the ILAB Stolen Book Database, and he coordinates all efforts of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers to prevent thefts and to catch book thieves, both at national and international level. At the IFLA Conference in The Hague he gave a talk about this important work of the League.

Depuis quelques années notre profession connaît de profondes mutations. On nous parle de plus en plus du livre électronique, et il n'est pas difficile de comprendre que dans quelques années le livre papier ne sera plus la référence en matière de support de la culture. J'avais déjà anticipé cela en 2002 dans un autre article intitulé "Quel avenir pour le livre ancien" dans lequel je disais que le livre ancien échappera sans doute à l'effondrement général du marché du livre neuf, car le livre ancien restera une valeur de collection. Comme je le disais alors " plus le décalage entre le livre de consommation courante et le livre ancien sera grand, plus ce dernier sera valorisé en tant qu'objet de convoitise et donc de collection ». Il y aura donc en effet toujours des amateurs exigeants pour de belles reliures en cuir, de beaux livres illustrés sur beau papier, des manuscrits originaux, etc... Peut-on en effet réellement comparer ces beaux objets du passé à un livre électronique ? le livre ancien a donc un futur !

Cominciamo con l'affermare che anche il manoscritto è un libro, seppur prodotto con una tecnica diversa da quelle oggi più note (la scrittura manuale, che rende gli esemplari, anche se prodotti in serie, copie uniche), ma con una fisicità del tutto simile a quella del libro tipografico: forma, materiali e, in parte, paratesto, e premettiamo che non ci occupiamo se non di sfuggita del "supporto" fisico, che poi è la carta, senza la quale mai il libro sarebbe diventato un prodotto industriale (o proto-industriale), e che ha una sua, importante, storia, che in Europa comincia a partire circa dal XIII secolo. Quando apparve il primo libro a stampa, quasi nessuno capì la rivoluzionaria novità: esso infatti si rivolgeva allo stesso pubblico del manoscritto e si presentava allo stesso modo.

Reference information is indispensable to antiquarian booksellers. Like many traditional booksellers, here at BTC we have many hundreds of bibliographies and reference works that we can quickly consult to help us in identifying and verifying different books, editions, and autographs. But with more and more information available on the Internet, it may seem that there is no longer a need for booksellers to have a large reference library. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is still a great deal of information, necessary to properly cataloging a book, that can only be obtained from print sources.

In 1954 the ILAB delegates met in Vienna for their 7th Congress in the history of the League. It was the time of the Cold War, Vienna was still divided into five occupation zones between the Soviet Union, the USA, the United Kingdom and France, and with the first district, the city centre, being patrolled by all four. Christian Nebehay, at that time President of the Austrian Antiquarian Booksellers' Asscociation (VAO), had invited the ILAB booksellers to Vienna. He and his colleagues had organized a fabulous congress programme including visits of libraries and palaces, concerts, flower bouquets and chocolate for the ladies, an elegant welcome reception - and a memorable "Heuriger" party.

Diana Parikian, one of the most g ift, hardworking and highly regarded booksellers in the trade, recently announced her 'retirement', prompting the above remark in The Book Collector. Diana created whole fields of collecting interests and library trends, from emblem books to Wunderkammer, and many a rare book collector and librarian is indebted to her. Her finds include neo-Latin Renaissance literature, early theatre, opera libretti, documents of art history as well as forays into conjuring and cookery. Diana belongs to that small group of booksellers who actually read, or at least browse, the contents of obscure books, in Latin. Italian and French, to discover some unknown feature. She has published 80 catalogues over the last 45 years.