January Midday Program

Tell the truth. When you get a look at someone’s library, you do more than consider the shelving units and bookends. You take a careful look at the books themselves. Just what does this person read? Collect? Display?

Now our guest, Jeremy Dibbell is going to nudge H.G. Wells aside, commandeer The Time Machine and take us into a fascinating journey through the American past to consider the libraries of the early colonial period through 1800.

What was on Myles Standish’s shelf? Ben Franklin’s? Phyllis Wheatley Peters’? John Adams’? And more?

He’ll be drawing on the latest from The Libraries of Early America project (LibraryThing.com) to introduce us to the tastes and collections of the famous and the obscure. Who shelved guilty pleasures? How-To manuals? Theological works? Scientific treatises?

Jeremy Dibbell serves as Special Collections Librarian at Binghamton University. A member of the American Antiquarian Society, he has been director of communications and outreach at Rare Book School, a reference librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and has been librarian for social media and rare books at LibraryThing.

This is a Zoom only program, so no need to worry about the weather forecast. Plus, don’t tell them, but we left the Morlocks off the invite list. So register and reserve your seat today!

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

January Evening Program

Our speaker will briefly discuss antique bookplates, but his emphasis will be on the contemporary art form and the fact that bookplates are in use worldwide today! Bookplates are used to mark pride in book ownership and to facilitate exchange to build collections and global friendships.

James P. Keenan has collected bookplates for nearly fifty years and has been involved in the graphic arts field since the late 1970s. He has authored several books on ex libris, including American Artists of the Bookplate (Cambridge Bookplate, 1990 & 1996) and The Art of the Bookplate (Barnes & Noble, 2003). He is currently updating Bookplates: The Art of This Century (Cambridge Bookplate) as an illustrated directory of the world’s top book artists and printmakers making ex libris prints today.

For twenty-five years, Keenan has led the American Society of Bookplate Collectors & Designers (ASBC&D), founded in 1922. His role as publisher of the Society’s quarterly journal and Year Book underscores his influence and active engagement in the community. Through Cambridge Bookplate and ASBC&D, Keenan has organized over thirty exhibitions at prominent libraries and museums nationwide, showcasing the importance of his work and the Society’s collections to collectors and scholars alike.

This is a Zoom only program. Register and reserve your seat today.

Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.