Anyone suffering from snuffles and sneezes at this time of year can take comfort from a cough-sweet that not only relieves your symptoms but also clobbers you with inspirational slogans. Some of them are a bit dubious: is it possible, or particularly cheering, to ‘hi-five yourself’? But the instruction to ‘Be unstoppable’ is undeniably helpful. There’s an impressive balance of old and new–the wacky ‘Turn “can do” into “can did!”‘ rubbing shoulders with the classical injunction to ‘Seize the day’.

And of course this kind of thing goes back a long way. The sixteenth-century humanist, Desiderius Erasmus, urged students to keep the fruits of their reading ever before their eyes: ‘In the same way you will write some brief but pithy sayings such as aphorisms, proverbs, and maxims at the beginning and at the end of your books; others you will inscribe on rings or drinking cups; others you will paint on doors and walls or even in the glass of a window so that what may aid learning is constantly before the eye. For, although these measures seem trivial in themselves when taken singly, yet taken together they make a profitable addition to the treasury of knowledge’. Were he alive today, I think I know which brand of cough-sweet he’d be buying…

Resurrecting the Book: 15-17 November 2013, Library of Birmingham, England

PLENARY SPEAKERS: Professor Sir David Cannadine, Princeton University; Professor Johanna Drucker, UCLA; Dr David Pearson, City of London Corporation; Professor Nicholas Pickwoad, University of the Arts, London.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Professor David Roberts, Birmingham City University; Dr Jason Scott-Warren, Cambridge University; Linda Carreiro, University of Calgary; Sarah Bodman, University of the West of England

To celebrate the re-opening of the largest public library in Europe and its outstanding special collections,The Library of Birmingham, Newman University College, the Typographic Hub at Birmingham City University and The Library of Lost Books have united to host a three-day conference on the theme of Resurrecting the Book.

With e-book downloads outstripping the purchase of hard copies, with libraries closing and discarding books and with the value of the book as physical object being increasingly questioned, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together academics, librarians, publishers, artists, creators, designers, and users of books to explore a wide variety of issues pertaining to the creation, design, construction, publication, use, reuse, preservation, loss, and recovery of the material book, electronic and digitized books, and of collections and libraries. Abstracts on the conference themes and their intersection and covering any historical period are invited. The conference themes include, but are not limited to:

BOOKS AS MATERIAL OBJECTS: the materiality of book creation, construction, production, use, reuse, and destruction; manuscripts and printed books; book-design, illustration, paratextuality and its manifestations; book-covers, bindings, clasps, vellum, parchment, paper, manuscript and printing and production processes;

COLLECTIONS AND LIBRARIES: book collectors, collections and their locations; missing, lost and found books; the creation, recreation, dispersal, sale and destruction of books and libraries; the movement of books and libraries; lost libraries; the impact of libraries on books; lost and revised editions;

THE ARTIST’S BOOK: altered books; book preservation and conserved books; books and material culture; books as art; books in art; illustration and illumination; woodcuts; engravings; marbled pages; book decoration; printmaking;

E-BOOKS: the creation, use and abuse of ebooks; neglected and lost ebooks; ebook readers; electronic libraries; books and collections and the impact of digital technologies;

PUBLISHING: publishers and publishing; the future of publishing; back-catalogues; print-runs; editions; archives; digitization and multi-media books;

Abstracts of no more than 400 words accompanied by a 50 word biographical profile should be sent to both: Dr Matthew Day – m.day@newman.ac.uk and Dr Caroline Archer – caroline.archer@bcu.ac.uk

DEADLINE for submission of abstracts: FRIDAY 1st FEBRUARY 2013.

The conference will run in conjunction with The Library of Lost Books Project. This is an exhibition of 50 de-accessioned books which have been given a new lease of life as objects redesigned into works of art. The conference is also part of the Library of Birmingham’s reopening festival.

A weblink to the CFP is at http://resurrectingthebook.org/86-2/

On Friday 25 January, Cambridge University Library will be holding its 7th masterclass as part of the Incunabula Project.

The masterclass, entitled “Discovering Provenance in Book History”, will be led by David Pearson, Director of Culture, Heritage & Libraries at the City of London Corporation. David has published and lectured extensively in this area of book history and his books include Provenance Research in Book History (1994) and Books as History (2008); he also teaches a course on Provenance at the University of Virginia Rare Book School.

There is a growing recognition of the value of looking at provenance evidence in early books — the lessons about the social impact of books which can be learnt by looking at the ways they have been owned, marked, read, annotated, mutilated or ignored.  This workshop will explore these themes alongside some practical guidance on identifying the various kinds of evidence that can be found, with the help of examples from the early collections of Cambridge University Library, and the opportunity for hands-on exploration and discussion.

The seminar will be held in the Morison Room at the Library. It will start at 2.30pm and will last approximately 90 minutes, allowing time for questions and discussion. Attendance will be limited in order to allow all attendees a chance to see the books under discussion up close, and to participate in the discussion.

To book your place, please email <incunabula@lib.cam.ac.uk>.

Spotted in a pub in Suffolk…

The UCLA Center for 17^th– and 18^th-Century Studies announces two two-year visiting positions in History of the Material Text, to be housed in the Departments of History and English, respectively. These positions are designed to enable participation in the life of the Center and the appropriate Department, as well as fuller use of the riches of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the Special Collections of the UCLA Libraries. We seek scholars of early modern studies (16th-18th centuries), broadly defined, whose expertise includes but is not limited to book history, history of the material text, and print cultures, in Europe and beyond. Applicants should have received their doctorates in the last six years (no earlier than July 1, 2007 and no later than September 30, 2013).

Visiting fellows will teach two courses per year in their respective Department, one of which would be at the Clark Library. Fellows are also expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center’s working groups and other research initiatives.

Fellows will receive a stipend of $50,000 per year, plus benefits for the fellow and dependents and a $3000 research fund.

Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, 20-page writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to:

Barbara Fuchs, Director

Center for 17^th– and 18^th-Century Studies, 310 Royce Hall Box 951404, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 90095-1404

Thursdays at 5:30pm, room SR-24, Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Thursday 24 January

Bob Groser (Bibles Production Manager, Cambridge University Press), will talk about materials and processes used in modern Bible manufacture

Thursday 21 February

Elizabeth Upper (Munby Fellow, Cambridge University Library) and Ad Stijnman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), ‘Cycles of Invention: The Historical Developments of ‘New’ Innovations in Colour Printing, ca. 1600-1700′

All welcome. Wine & soft drinks will be served at the start of the seminar.

For more information, please contact Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk), Andrew Zurcher (aez20@cam.ac.uk) or Dunstan Roberts (dcdr2@cam.ac.uk)

There was a fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian by Wayne Gooderham about an exhibition he has curated at the Charing Cross Road branch of Foyles, on ‘the secret contents of secondhand books’. Gooderham keeps a lovely blog of book inscriptions, but he writes in the Guardian about some of the other kinds of things that lurk between the covers of old books. Over the years, he discovered, staff at the Skoob Books warehouse have gathered a considerable collection of photographs, postcards, tickets and bills of numerous varieties, postage stamps, pressed flowers, bookmarks, and even a cemetery map – each one carefully noted and collated, and each a tangible yet mysterious trace of some past reader’s presence…

Gooderham’s exhibition continues until 13th December.

Please come for tea & mince pies

& a spin of the new book-wheel

on Tuesday 18 December

between 3.30 and 5 pm

 
G6, Walnut Tree Court, Queens’ College

(Andrew Zurcher’s rooms)

Conveners: Giles Mandelbrote (Lambeth Palace Library), Dr Keith A. Manley (The National Trust), Professor Simon Eliot (Institute of English Studies), Professor Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary)

The seminars are jointly sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, the Institute of Historical Research, and the Library & Information History Group of CILIP.

Venue: Jessel Room, first floor of Senate House, unless stated otherwise below. Changes to room allocations will be displayed on the web-site of the Institute of English Studies.

Time: Tuesdays, 5.30 p.m.

Podcasts: Available online

Autumn Term 2012

4 December
Daniel Starza Smith (University College, London)
‘How Hard a Task you Lay vpon Mee you doe not Knowe’: Editing the Libraries of the First and Second Viscounts Conway, 1610-1645
Between 1610 and his death in 1631 Sir Edward Conway (later first Viscount Conway), enjoyed a spectacular rise in professional fortune, transforming from a Netherlands-based soldier to a Secretary of State who served both James I and Charles I. Conway acquired most of his education and courtly polish by seeking out literature in manuscript and by collecting around 500 printed books. Two catalogues exist of his libraries – dated, fortuitously, 1610 and 1631. I am in the process of editing these catalogues for Private Libraries in Renaissance England, and this paper presents my findings about this important statesman and patron’s intellectual profile at the beginning and end of this period. It also expands previous work on Conway’s son, Edward, second Viscount Conway (d.1655), one of the greatest private book collectors of the seventeenth century, whose collections totalled some 13,000 printed volumes.
Please note: this session takes place in the Dr Seng T Lee Centre for Manuscript and Book Studies in Senate House Library (fourth floor).

Spring Term 2013

5 February
Dr William Poole (New College, Oxford)
Seventeenth-Century Library Benefactors Books in Oxford Colleges: Some Examples and Some Uses
This talk will concern the rise of the genre following the opening of the Bodleian Library, and how we can exploit college examples of the form for different historical purpose; in other words not just to track the growth of specific collections per se but to ask if and how far such resources can be used to discuss intellectual change more generally.

5 March
Dr Paddy Bullard (University of Kent)
Title TBC – to be on either Jonathan Swift’s library or Edmund Burke’s library.

Summer Term 2013

7 May
TBC

4 June
Dunstan Roberts (Trinity Hall, Cambridge)
Title TBC
Please note: this session takes place in the Guard Room at Lambeth Palace.
Intending visitors are asked to contact in advance mary.comer@churchofengland.org.
Please note that the Great Hall will be closed during this term.

2 July
Alice Ford-Smith (Dr. Williams’s Library)
A Library Walk is being organized
Fuller details will be available at a later date. A charge of £10 will be made for this event.

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Chris Hilliard (University of Sydney), ‘What do the masses read? Popular literacy and social investigation in Britain, 1850s-1930s’.

The Seminar meets at 5 pm in the Senior Parlour, Gonville Court, Gonville and Caius College.