Spring Events, Online and In-Person & More News from BSA

The BSA's Membership Working Group is now the Membership Committee! Chaired by Elizabeth Ott (UNC Chapel Hill), this transition from a working group to a Committee demonstrates the Society's commitment to hearing from and working with members to meet your needs. Stay tuned throughout the spring and summer for announcements about new membership benefits and more.

The Events Committee, Chaired by Ashley Cataldo (American Antiquarian Society), is pleased to announce the Society's schedule of events for the Spring. Here's quick overview:

• April 5, The Toni-Terry Problem with Black Books: A Conversation with Essence Bestsellers’ Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant. Moderated by Jacinta R. Saffold. (Virtual)
• April 12,  A Symposium in Honor of William S. Reese (Hybrid)
• June 3, Touch to See: A Nineteenth-Century Book for Blind Readers (In-Person at William and Mary)

Davis, Donna F., "Jean Booth Her Book". Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library.

News from Members & Friends
Members are the heart of the BSA. Join us in celebrating their accomplishments and support them at these upcoming bibliographical events. Reply to this email to share your announcements in our next newsletter. Member-booksellers: this includes you! We want to announce your latest catalogs and Book Fair appearances!

Jose Guerrero, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian at the Sutro Branch of the California State Library & BSA Liaison to RBMS, recently published "Unpacking the Other's Library: Latin American Book Collectors and U.S. Research Libraries." In The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship. Eds. Megan Browndorf, Erin Pappas, and Anna Arays. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2021.

Sarah Werner, Co-Editor of PBSA, will give a lecture at the University of Indiana Library at Bloomington's Lilly Library on April 6, 2022 at 5pm CT. Her talk, "What’s the power of feminist bibliography?" will be presented both in-person and online. Register online.

The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford will host the Lyell Lectures on 3, 5, 10, 12 and 17 May 2022. Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) will deliver  "From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900–1150". Register to attend in-person and/or online.

From the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section's (RBMS) Bibliographic Standards Committee (American Library Association):

• The Committee has put together a Rare Materials Catalogers Directory. This directory is intended to connect individuals and institutions seeking guidance related to the intellectual access and care of rare materials with experienced cataloging and metadata library workers. Potential questions may involve descriptive bibliography, metadata transformation in preparation for digitization, cataloging materials from specific genres or time periods, etc. Although the primary audience of this resource is catalogers, participants may have additional experience in other areas.
• The Committee will host a panel on reparative description and controlled vocabularies and thesauri on April 29 at 2pm ET. In this lightly moderated panel, attendees will hear from Erica Bruchko, Michelle J. Cronquist, and Staci Ross from the African-American Subject Funnel Project; Lillian Castillo-Speed from the Chicano Thesaurus; Shavonn Matsuda, from Lau Ā Lau Ka ʻIke; and Ryan Hildebrand from the RBMS Controlled Vocabulary Editorial Group’s Prejudicial Materials Group. Questions for the panelists are sought in advance. Please register here.

Black Bestselling Books: An Interview Series on the Essence Book Project

In 1994 Essence Magazine began publishing a list of bestselling fiction and non-fiction books as a response to mounting frustrations Black writers and readers had with the American publishing industry. Beyond luminaries like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker publishing for African American authors was nearly impossible. The EBSL was compiled from sales data shared by Black owned bookstores in the United States and Canada. The Essence Book Project, launched in 2016, uses digital technology to reframe the utility of the EBSL to include a computationally conceptualized view of the Black literary landscape at the turn of the twenty-first century. The project is both a digitized version of the EBSL and a growing archive of electronic copies of each title ranked on the list.

• April 5, 2021 3pm ET / 12pm PT (Zoom Webinar) - Co-sponsored by the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography
  The Toni-Terry Problem with Black Books: A Conversation with Essence Bestsellers’ Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant
  Registration & Speaker Bios
• Rescheduling in progress: register now for updates by email.
  The Magic of Editing Black Bestselling Books: A Conversation with Dawn Davis and Jacinta R. Saffold
  Registration & Speaker Bios

Touch to See: A Nineteenth-Century Book for Blind Readers – June 3, 2022 @ The Swem Library, William & Mary – Register by May 10

An in-person, half day workshop proposed to the Events Committee & led by Dr. Amanda Stuckey, Assistant Professor of English at Central Penn College in Harrisburg, PA.

We often think of sight-impairment as a barrier to literacy, but as early as the 1800s, US educators experimented with raised-print (or embossed) text books that blind and low-vision students could read by touch. Today, these tactile books stand as reminders that text is a material and multi-sensory experience. In the workshop “Touch to See: A Nineteenth-Century Book for Blind Readers,” we will consider the production, use, and physical state of one of these books, an 1836 New Testament embossed at what is now the Perkins School for the Blind and held at The College of William & Mary’s Swem Library Special Collections Resource Center. This workshop centers the experience of encountering this unusual tactile book (whether by sight, touch, or both) in order to discuss what it means to read by touch. Examining the range of textual and material decisions surrounding this New Testament, we will consider tactile books as, on the one hand, representative of the uneven (and often ableist) power structures that put them into print. On the other hand, however, tactile books also represent early efforts toward Universal Design, and workshop participants will also consider nineteenth-century understandings of access and inclusive learning. Overall, this workshop aims to broaden our expectations for books and how we read them.

The workshop will take place from 10am to 2pm, and lunch will be provided. Attendance is open to all. 

A Symposium in Honor of William S. Reese, The Grolier Club, Tuesday, April 12, 3-5pm (hybrid event – registration required to attend in person)

Reminder: The March issue of PBSA is available online

Members receive PBSA in print at no additional cost and electronic access to the full archive of the journal. BSA members also have exclusive access to the e-Book edition of this issue, which can be downloaded as an EPUB or MOBI file and read on an iPad, iPhone, Nook, Kindle, Android, or computer—even when the device is not connected to the internet.

Want to peruse this issue online or download the eBook version of the latest issue? Find instructions on our website.

Articles:
On Liberation Bibliography: The 2021 BSA Annual Meeting Keynote, by Derrick R. Spires

Margaret Cavendish’s University Years: Batch Bindings and Trade Bindings in Cambridge and Oxford, by Liza Blake

Embodied Literacy: Somatic Origins of Nonlinear Layouts in Chosŏn Epistolary Culture, by Hwisang Cho

Join BSA or Renew Your Membership to Receive PBSA by mail.
Join the Society for as little as $25/year if you are 35 and under, or $80 for individuals 35 and above. Membership benefits include full access to PBSA online and/or in print, the option to subscribe to the ACLS Humanities Ebook Collection for an additional $25, and discounts at the Center for Book Arts and University of Chicago Press online bookstore.