As the current president of the ABAA, I have been attending the biannual Congress of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the umbrella organization that brings together national Associations from around the world. Our hosts in Amsterdam have outdone themselves! The main Congress was preceded by meetings to discuss official ILAB business. The protection of cultural property, while pursued for the noblest of reasons, can lead to incredible bureaucratic burdens and even become counterproductive if people familiar with the actual function of the book trade aren't involved in shaping policy. Fortunately, ILAB's Executive Secretary Angelika Elstner has been elected to the European Union's Art Market Expert Group to provide precisely this kind of input. Among other contributions, ILAB has shown that Interpol's figures for ... [more ILAB Congress in Amsterdam: Business and Pleasure]

The streets of Dublin witnessed the largest parade in Irish history this Easter, as hundreds of thousands gathered to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. That revolt, by historical standards, was brief and seemingly futile in the short term. After the April 24 proclamation of an Irish Republic, perhaps fewer than 2,000 participants actually took up arms, and they were easily crushed within days by the British bombardment of much of central Dublin and the surrender and execution of its leaders. Nevertheless, the Rising boasts an outsize legacy not only in its ultimate political consequence of Irish independence five years later, but in its literary birthright, for a number of those involved in the uprising were authors of poetry and prose that had sculpted perceptions of Irish nationhood. Moreover, the destruction wrought upon Du... [more 1916: Collecting Ireland’s Easter Rising]

Millions of people who have joined, or watched, the recent protests across the country, beginning with the March for Women, have been struck by the diversity of signs in the crowd. Princess Leia as political crusader, puns riffing on the latest social media meme, diagrams of ovaries, statements of solidarity with Muslim refugees – all have been present, in endless variety. Surprisingly, perhaps, it was not always so. Many libraries and museums collect historical protest signs, and the study of these signs reveals many changes over the years — not only in the issues directly addressed by the signs themselves, but in evolving styles of communication, and the influence of the broader cultural environment. It might seem surprising that some libraries, committed to the preservation of literature and the written word, also collect protest s... [more Protest Signs: Barometers of Social Change]

Even if you didn't have the experience I had as a teenager going to summer camps where they sang the Internationale, the May Day demonstrations of 1886 and the subsequent Haymarket Riot have touched your life in ways you might not realize. The then-radical demand for an eight-hour workday gave rise to massive confrontations between activists and police, which exploded into violence on the third and fourth days of the strike. Like many romanticized events in our history, there are multiple angles of approach to understand what happened, and a wealth of material from which to build a reference library or collection. First, a quick recap: An amalgamation of anarchists, syndicalists and trade unionists had called for a strike to commence on May 1st in Chicago in support of demands for the eight-hour day. The strike involved tens of thousands ... [more What’s May Day All About?]