Call for Papers
The Fifth International Conference on the Book
Madrid, Spain, 20 to 22 October 2007

This broad-ranging and cross-disciplinary conference will discuss the past, present and future of publishing, libraries, literacy, learning and the information society.

Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of the Book. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for review and possible publication in the journal, and provide access to the online edition of the journal.

To submit your proposal, please visit the Submit Proposal link on the conference website. We look forward to receiving your proposals and hope you will be able to join us in Madrid in October 2007.

Call for Papers
"Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence"
A major international conference to be held at
The Institute of English Studies,
University of London
21-23 July 2008
Organised by the Open University and the Institute of English Studies

Keynote speakers: Kate Flint, Jonathan Rose, David Vincent

Studies centred on the history of reading have proliferated in the last twenty years. They have sprung from several different disciplines, encompassed different periods and geographical locations and chosen divergent methodologies, but their common quest has been to recover and understand the traces of a practice which is central to our understanding of human history, yet notoriously elusive.

One such approach is ‘The Reading Experience Database 1450-1945’ (RED), a project run by the Open University and the University of London. While RED is already proving its worth as a digital resource, its methodological parameters are necessarily limited and its vision therefore partial. What is needed in order for the study of the history of reading to progress beyond the boundaries of specific institutions, disciplines, methodologies, geographical locations and time periods is a forum in which as many diverse approaches as possible are brought into energetic debate.

This major 3-day conference, the first of its type, seeks to provide such a forum. We invite 20-minute papers from international students and scholars of any discipline - both within and outside the Humanities – who are interested in the history and practice of reading in any period or geographical location.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

● Theories of reading

● Issues of literacy

● National and transnational histories

● Reading and readers in fiction

● Reading communities

● Quantitative versus qualitative methodologies

● Genre reading

● Digital resources and their development

● Visual representations of reading

● Reading across disciplines/languages

● Using historical data in contemporary research fields

● The sociology, psychology and neurology of reading experiences

● Evidence of reading from private audio recordings and blogs

● Finding, compiling, interpreting and preserving the evidence of reading

Paper titles, abstracts of no more than 300 words and short biographies should be sent electronically by 31 January 2008 to all three organisers:
Dr Shaf Towheed (S.S.Towheed@open.ac.uk);
Dr Rosalind Crone (r.h.crone@open.ac.uk);
Dr Katie Halsey (Katie.Halsey@sas.ac.uk).

Grant-Funded Position at American Antiquarian Society
Position title: Cataloguer, North American Imprints Project

The American Antiquarian Society has an immediate opening for a rare-book cataloger. The Society's North American Imprints Program is currently creating a detailed union catalog of U.S. imprints published from 1801 through 1820. The position is grant-funded; funding is in place for the next 24 months, and additional funding will be sought for continuation of the project.

Essential Responsibilities:
Successful applicants are expected both to create new MARC records and to enhance existing MARC records, working both from original books and pamphlets and from digital and microform surrogates. AAS utilizes Endeavor Information Systems' Voyager integrated library system.

Qualifications:
Successful candidates will have excellent interpersonal, organizational and communication skills, as well as experience with the MARC formats, with AACR2, and with "Bibliographic Description of Rare Books". The MLS is required for this position; familiarity with Voyager and knowledge of Microsoft Access and/or SQL is desirable; a background in American history and a reading knowledge of German are highly preferred.

The position is available immediately.
Salary: Minimum $35,000 negotiable based on experience and qualifications
Benefits: Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Paid Vacation, Personal and Sick Days, Professional Development Opportunities
Work hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Additional information will be provided upon request.
Please submit a letter of application and resume to Edward J. Harris, Jr., Director of Administration, American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury St., Worcester, MA 01609. Electronic applications should be sent to eharris@mwa.org. Deadline for applications is 15 June 2007.

The American Antiquarian Society is a learned society founded in 1812 that supports a research library specializing in American history, life, and culture from settlement through the year 1876. The library serves a world-wide community of scholars. The American Antiquarian Society is an equal opportunity employer in accordance with applicable federal and state laws.

Two Research Positions in Book History
University of London
School of Advanced Study
Institute of English Studies

THE HISTORY OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Research Fellowships
£28,023 pa inclusive of London Weighting

We are looking for two historians with completed PhDs to undertake two separate but related projects on the history of OUP. These roles form part of a series of postdoctoral fellowships dedicated to writing the History, are a cooperative venture between the University of London and OUP. The successful candidates will work under the direction of Professor Simon Eliot, the General Editor for one year from autumn or early winter 2007. Apart from the year of research, it is expected that each fellow will make significant written contributions to the History, which is to be published in 2012-13. Each fellow will be based formally in the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, but much of their time will be spent in Oxford and/or on field trips.

Postdoctoral Fellowship Ref: 035/07

The Fellow will undertake a detailed one-year study of the archives relating to the activities of OUP in S E Asia and Africa. The material discovered and the ideas developed will contribute to Volumes III and IV.

Postdoctoral Fellowship Ref: 036/07

The Fellow will undertake a detailed one-year study of the archives relating to the printing and publishing of educational texts by OUP in the UK and abroad. The material discovered and the ideas developed will contribute to Volumes III and IV.

For further information about the role (including details of the method of application), please visit website.

Alternatively, in the event that you experience difficulty, please email: ulrecruit@lon.ac.uk or telephone 020 7862 8100 (dedicated 24hr answerphone) for an application pack, quoting the appropriate reference.

The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 5.30pm on Thursday, 7 June 2007. Interviews are expected to take place in Oxford on 28 June 2007.

Leonardo: The Codex Leicester
An exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland
13 June – 12 August, 2007

The Codex Leicester, an autograph manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) containing his observations on the nature and properties of water as well as other aspects of science and technology, is one of the most famous and important of Leonardo’s scientific notebooks. Composed circa 1508-1510 and consisting of eighteen loose double sheets in which Leonardo illustrated and wrote down ideas and observations in his distinctive mirror script, the manuscript is a lively record of the thoughts of the great Italian Renaissance artist and scientist.

Water is the central theme of the Codex Leicester, which also presents Leonardo’s notes on subjects ranging from hydraulics to canalization, from astronomy to atmosphere and meteorology, and from physical geology and palaeontology. These provide substantial evidence for the study of his approach to science and technology, especially his understanding of the effects produced by moving water on the earth and in the sky. The notebook includes practical inventions, such as designs for strengthening bridges and for flood control, a number of which were used in Leonardo’s time and are still in use today. The Codex Leicester also contributes to a deeper understanding of Leonardo’s art, in that the Mona Lisa and other late paintings offer a visual synthesis of the artist’s scientific knowledge as summed up in the Codex.

The Chester Beatty Library will display the Codex in an historical context, together with borrowed works and manuscripts from the Library’s own holdings including a rich collection of manuscripts of Arabic science – some dating as far back as the late ninth century – which are of great significance as they transmitted to the western world the fruits of the learning of the classical world. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

The Codex travels to no more than one country every year and will be displayed only at the Chester Beatty Library during its stay in Ireland. Admission to this exhibition is free but booking is essential. For the widest choice of dates and times, we strongly recommend that you book online (please re-visit this website for details) from 14 May. A limited number of tickets will be available to book by telephone 01 4070769 from 14 May between 10am and 12noon, Mon-Fri, and also for collection at the Library daily from 1 June.

This exhibition has been kindly supported by the Irish Times and X Communications.

Observation in Early Modern Letters, 1500 – 1650
Warburg Institute
University of London, 29 -30 June 2007
A colloquium organized by the Warburg Institute, with the support of the British Academy.

In the past two decades, the fierce attacks on the humanist tradition by exponents of the new science in the seventeenth century have been re-assessed. One of the issues at stake concerns the methods of humanist philology: by means of the critical observation of manuscript and printed copies of texts, philologists had learnt to trust their senses before drawing conclusions. This observational method was also applied to phenomena other than texts in the fields, for example, of astronomy, anatomy and botany. This conference aims to analyse how observations reported in early modern letters were communicated and until what extent they were mediated by epistolary rhetoric. Cutting through disciplinary and confessional boundaries, the methods of the learned world in the early modern period will be assessed by the following speakers: Iordan Avramov, Elisabethanne Boran, Candice Delisle, Florike Egmond, Anthony Grafton, Michiel van Groesen, Gerhard Holk, Chiara Lastraioli, Henrique Leitao, Dirk van Miert, Peter N. Miller, and Adam Mosley. For more information, please contact dirk.vanmiert@sas.ac.uk.

Annual Conference on Book Trade History
Music and the Book Trade from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century
Saturday 1 December & Sunday 2 December 2007
The Foundling Museum
40 Brunswick Square
London, WC1 1AZ

This year's book trade history conference explores the printing, publishing and selling of music from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, bringing together the latest research by historians of the book and musicologists.

SPEAKERS

Donald Burrows (Open University): John Walsh and his Handel Editions.

Iain Fenlon (King's College, Cambridge): The Music Trade in Renaissance Iberia

Anna Jones (Wolfson College, Cambridge): "A Curious Collection of Musick Books ... Also all sorts of Ruled Paper and Books." The music book trade in mid-seventeenth century England: an overview

Richard Luckett (Magdalene College, Cambridge): The Playfords and the Purcells

Rupert Ridgewell (British Library): Music in the Artaria Ledgers, 1784-1827

Stephen Roe (Sotheby's): The Sale Catalogue of C.F.Abel, 1780

Jeremy Smith (Colorado, U.S.A.): Turning a New Leaf: The East Music-Publishing Firm and the Jacobean Succession

The Annual Book Trade History Conference is organised by Michael Harris, Giles Mandelbrote and Robin Myers, in association with the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.

The full fee for two days is £80 (one day £50), including conference, lunches and access to the Foundling Museum, a lunch-hour recital and tour of the Gerald Coke Handel collection. A limited number of reduced-rate places, sponsored by the Bibliographical Society, will be available to registered students. The proceedings of previous conferences and a selection of antiquarian books will be available for purchase during the conference.

For a booking form or further information, please consult the website.

Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
British Library
Meeting Rooms 3 & 4, Conference Centre
Monday 11 June 2007

PROGRAM

11.15 HORST MEYER (Bad Iburg) A philosopher designs his books: Shaftesbury's typographical principles

12.00 Sherry

12.15 Lunch (Own arrangements.)

1.45 FRANÇOIS DUPUIGRENET (Enssib) Typography and theology in the ‘Poetical
Labyrinths’ of the Cistercian Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606-1682)

2.30 ALASTAIR MCCLEERY (Scottish Centre for the Book, Napier University, Edinburgh) The German paperback tradition and its influence

3.15 Tea

3.45 GEOFF WEST (British Library) Handmade books from Cuba: more than 20 years of Ediciones Vigía

4.30 JAROSLAVA KAŠPAROVÁ (Prague) La réception de la littérature espagnole des XVIe et VIIe siècles par les lecteurs tchèques d'époque

The Seminar will end at 5.15 pm.

All are welcome to attend

Beyond the Text: Bibliography in the Digital Age
4th National Conference on the State of Canadian Bibliography
20-22 June, 2007
Grande Bibliotheque
Montreal, QC

Preliminary program available here