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 stolen library materials were wildly exaggerated. For example, it claimed that 472,933 pieces of “Library material” had been seized in the past year, which, if true, would mean that the book trade was awash in literal mountains of stolen goods. ILAB was able to show that almost the entire figure derived from a single 500-year-old family archive in Italy that was confiscated by the state as part of a dispute over legal ownership. In point of fact, ILAB and its affiliates are always eager to protect the integrity of institutional collections, and now ILAB has a voice in the European Union to help shape policies that sustain this goal without inadvertently impacting legitimate business.

During the Presidents’ meeting, Stephanie Stillo, who heads the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, discussed collaboration between libraries and the trade, and celebrated the work we have done together on the Missing Books Registry. I talked about the ABAA’s efforts to recruit early-stage dealers during a session led by Mats Petersson of Sweden. We addressed many other issues over the course of a long day, including the heavy impact of VAT duties on the European trade. All in all, it was a humbling honor to sit among such distinguished colleagues from around the world.

ABAA members may not realize the relative scale of our organization within ILAB. Ours is by far the largest member organization, and we hold the largest book fairs, with some of the most diverse attendance. I am delighted that our market is seen as attractive to dealers from other continents, and I warmly welcome international exhibitors to ABAA fairs.

After the official ILAB meetings the rest of the Congress is open to all ILAB affiliates, and it's an amazing bibliographical smorgasbord of the host city and its institutions. The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam is a treasure on any day, but for the benefit of Congress attendees, the Museum’s library brought out a selection of truly scrumptious delights.  Among my favorites were some tattered books that had been lost by Dutch explorers in the frozen wastes of Nova Zembla in the late 16th century, as they tried to find a northern route to Asia. After almost 300 years in the Arctic, some of these texts were recovered in the 19th century. Their tattered pages show the ravages of the icy climate, but their relevance is all the more poignant because of this fact. Boats have taken us along Amsterdam’s famous canals to other cultural institutions and archives, all of which have opened their arms to us in the most welcoming manner. One personally meaningful visit for me was to the Portuguese Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter, where some of my ancestors would have worshipped many years ago. The Ets Haim (Tree of Life) Library on the grounds of the synagogue is the oldest active Jewish library in the world, and curator Heide Warncke brought out some of its most memorable holdings for Congress attendees to examine in detail. The dinners have also been revelatory. Outgoing ILAB President Mario Giupponi can be seen here giving his remarks to ILAB presidents while a server puts the finishing touches on plates at a restaurant called Trees. The dessert, made of a seemingly baffling combination of cucumber roulade, frozen yogurt, and dehydrated olives, turned out to be amazing—people are still talking about it.

Through these days spent traveling together along the beautiful canals of Amsterdam and exploring the collections of the host city’s museums and libraries, ILAB members from around the world have learned about the issues facing the trade in other countries, and forged bonds of real intercontinental friendship. If you’re an ABAA member, or a member of any other ILAB affiliate, these Congresses are open to you. The next one is in Berlin – don’t miss it!