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BSANZ Conference: 'The Limits of the Book'

Celebration cake for BSANZ’s 40th anniversary

Celebration cake for BSANZ’s 40th anniversary

This year’s conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) was held between 20 and 22 July at the University of Queensland Library. Founding members Wallace Kirsop and Keith Maslen were there to help celebrate BSANZ’s 40th anniversary.

The conference was launched at The Ship Inn, on Brisbane’s South Bank, and delegates were welcomed by Professor Kay Ferres, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Griffith University. The keynote speech, ’Digitisation and the Scholarly Book’, was delivered by freelance publishing consultant Andrew Schuller, with a response by Paul Eggert, Australian Defence Force Academy.

The papers explored the boundaries of the study of books and print culture and were divided into four main themes:

  • Paratexts and parabooks
  • Books post-production: Libraries, reading, bookselling
  • Phantom books, lost books and piracies
  • Limits and limitlessness in the digital book.

The full agenda necessitated some parallel sessions to fit everyone into the time frame. In addition to over 20 papers, there was the Annual General Meeting, a panel discussion and three book launches. During the conference dinner, Richard Overell, Monash University, gave an amusing personal insight into rare-books librarianship. A special viewing of some of the Fryer Library’s treasures rounded off a very busy program. The conference website contains a synopsis of the papers and a list of associated readings. Abstracts of the papers are available on request through one of the conference organisers.

Congratulations to the organising committee on what was a highly successful and smoothly run event, well attended by over 50 members and others, even from as far as New York. The next BSANZ conference will be sure to raise some interest, with its theme ‘To Deprave and Corrupt: Forbidden, Hidden and Censored Texts’. It will be held at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 14–16 July 2010. Enquiries can be forwarded to scriptandprint@gmail.com.

Andrew Sergeant
Reference Librarian, Information Services

BSANZ welcomes new members, and has membership categories for individuals, students and institutions. Membership is diverse, ranging from academics in a variety of historical and literary disciplines to rare-book librarians, collectors, printers, antiquarian booksellers and more. While BSANZ’s website is undergoing reconstruction, a quarterly journal, Script & Print, and an occasional newsletter are produced and distributed free to members. There is also an associated blog that contains information on how to join BSANZ, indexes to publications, links to similar societies and more.