Position Announcement: Fellowship Coordinator for Antiquarian Book School Foundation

The Antiquarian Book School Foundation is accepting applications until September 30, 2023 for the position of Fellowship Coordinator. This part-time, primarily work-from-home position involves managing the CABS-Minnesota Diverse Voices Fellowship program. 

The full job description and application form are available at this link

Prospective applicants with questions may contact Michele Wan at michele@bookseminars.com or sign up for a time to chat with her here.

Of Possible Interest: Artist Talk at LC!

Artist Talk: The Nightingale & Commissars:  From the Neva to the Hudson
Thursday, July 27, 2023 at 3:00pm
Rosenwald Room (LJ 205)
Rare Book & Special Collections Division
Jefferson Building, 2nd floor

Join the Rare Book & Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress for a rare opportunity to hear Soviet-born New York book artist Mikhail Magaril talk about the need for “an artistic paper book” in our electronic times. Magaril will present his most recent projects, which focus on themes of the artist’s freedom and lack of freedom. He will also discuss his inspirations, from Hans Christian Andersen to Joseph Brodsky, as well as his own life experiences.  Magaril will be joined in conversation by longtime collaborators Michael Weintraub and master printer Peter Kruty, who will add to the discussion of how concepts can be expressed graphically.  The group will show tools and the original forms from which the books were printed. 

The talk will be accompanied by a display of Magaril’s works from Library of Congress collections.  Magaril’s books are produced in editions of only a few copies.  They weave elements of history with humor and evocative representations of Leo Tolstoy’s alphabet books, fairytales and Jewish folklore, and Soviet Army songs.  Magaril has illustrated works by Nikolai Gogol and Daniil Kharms, offered a purely visual interpretation of the Russian fable Masha and the Bear, and produced a set of color portraits of riders on the New York Subway.  His collaborators have included other prominent printers, photographers, and cartoonists.

This event will be filmed for later viewing on the LC website.

For more information about this event, contact Barbara Dash: bdas@loc.gov

Lewis Carroll Society of North America – Spotlight on Collectors!

June 11, 2023 , 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT
11AM Pacific/ 2PM Eastern/ 7PM UK

Join the Zoom Webinar on June 11

Join LCSNA members and friends as they go on a virtual tour of some very special Carrollian collections. In addition to exclusive looks at exquisite ephemera, they’ll explore what drives collectors to collect, and how they settle on specialty and scope.

We are very excited to welcome Dr. Catherine Richards, Clare Imholtz and Joel Birenbaum.

Catherine Richards will give an introduction to the important field of Carrollian Deltiology, sharing some of her favourite specimens, and showing how they can lead to some fascinating research.

Joel Birenbaum, serious and not so serious collector of all things Alice, will present Welcome to My Wonderland.

Clare Imholtz will share her Alice-themed yearbook collection!

Meet Your Collectors

Catherine Richards has been collecting and researching Lewis Carroll for over 40 years. The Richards collection is wide-ranging, and one particular focus is upon Carroll-related postcards, which in themselves cover every conceivable topic.

Joel Birenbaum is a member and ex-president of the LCSNA, Creator and Administrator of the Alice in Wonderland Collectors Network and Organizer of Alice150.

Clare Imholtz is a long-time LCSNA member who has been collecting Alice books and ephemera since the 1980s. She discovered Alice-themed yearbooks, many of which include extraordinary student art and writing, on eBay.

Peter Parley Presentation with Jackie Coleburn & Anthony Mullan!

A GLOBE ON A NEW PLAN: PETER PARLEY’S TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY TO CHILDREN IN 19TH CENTURY AMERICA

Join Philip Lee Phillips Society Members and Friends 
For a Spring Presentation
In Conjunction with the Washington Map Society Annual Dinner

FRIDAY MAY 19, 2023

Thomas Jefferson Building, Room LJ-119
85 First Street, SE | Washington, D.C.  

10:00AM  Coffee Hour
11:00AM  Lecture and Q&A | in-person and virtual
12:00PM  Curated Display of Peter Parley Books

Jackie Coleburn, Library of Congress, Rare Book Cataloger, and Anthony Mullan, Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Cartographic Specialist (retired), will give a talk on Samuel Griswold’s innovative methods of teaching geography to his young readers as a companion more than as a tutor, telling stories and creating adventures to convey concepts of history and geography. Griswold’s books, under the pseudonym Peter Parley, were immensely popular, selling in multiple editions and millions of copies. The lecture will offer a window into the prevailing opinions and assumptions of pre-Civil War America with Goodrich’s books on geography for children.


Questions? Contact Sara Karrer saka@loc.gov or call 202-707-6150.

Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies Event

The next meeting of the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies 2022-2023 series will take place on Friday, February 10, from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. (EST) via Zoom.

Lilla Vekerdy, Head of Special Collections at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, will deliver a talk entitled “How Do Book Bindings Get to Sing?

Zoom link:  https://wcupa.zoom.us/j/93439549048?pwd=alVCaE54RWVVeGNUdGQxbjlaQzlKQT09

Abstract:
How Do Book Bindings Get to Sing? will discuss a group of Renaissance and Early Modern books that are bound in fragments of music manuscripts from the Middle Ages.  These “singing bindings” are hundreds of years older than the texts they cover.  Furthermore, the texts inside are on mathematics, physics, astronomy, and one even about the Devil itself, but absolutely none is on music.  Lilla Vekerdy will shed light on how and why these discrepancies happened.  The volumes examined are selected from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.

Biography:
Lilla Vekerdy earned her two master’s degrees in Literature, Linguistics and Library Sciences in Budapest, Hungary in 1984, and completed her doctoral coursework in Medieval and Renaissance History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri in 2005.  She has been the Head of Special Collections at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives since 2008, where she oversees all rare materials in 16 library research centers, and also serves as the Curator of Physical Sciences Rare Books.  Her research interest and publications are in the history of science and medicine as well as in rare book studies, and often cover the overlay of these fields. 

Please join us for Lilla Vekerdy’s talk and discussion afterwards.

For further information, consult the Washington Area Group for Print Culture Studies website at http://wagpcs.wordpress.com/, or contact Sabrina Baron and Eleanor Shevlin at the above emails.