Toward Inclusive Bibliography - June 3, 2019

Description Bibliography implies community. It focuses on understanding the creation and circulation of texts as physical objects; and implicitly recognizes that behind each surviving object, no matter how small, there are communities at work: booksellers and collectors, volunteers saving a local organizers’ flyers in their closets, the curatorial staff at a museum. Yet at the same time, bibliographical teaching and scholarship have historically focused on a narrow range of materials and creators, even while broadening in chronological range and subject matter. Having centered a canon defined by Western European values, the discipline has built a body of knowledge in which large gaps remain to be filled, especially regarding groups kept outside of centers of political and institutional power on the basis of their race, ability, class-background, gender identity or sexual orientation, or any combination of these factors. This panel aims to highlight the work of people filling those gaps, with the explicit intention of demonstrating how bibliographical scholarship and practices can be channeled toward a more realistic understanding of historic and contemporary relationships between people and texts. Our conversation looks to expand bibliographies and the communities they connect by broadening our view of who does bibliography, and how. Panelists Eyob Derillo (British Library) "More Than a Text Carrier: The Ethiopian Codex," Hudda Khaireh (Thick/er Black Lines artist collective/OOMK) "Black British Publishing - or how to account for what is refused and refuses to be," and Brooke Palmieri (Camp Books), offer perspectives from traditional sites of bibliographical practice – the bookshop, the library, and the academy – as well as from marginalized or minority groups working as “bibliographers” on their own and for themselves. This panel aims to fill gaps not only by enumerating and analyzing more material, but also by including and recognizing new voices and perspectives in the conversation. Fuchsia Voremberg (Maggs) will moderate. Co-sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America, The Bibliographical Society (UK), and Maggs Bros., Ltd.

AudiencesGraduates, Professionals, Scholars, Undergraduates

Access TermsManuscripts, Book industries and trade--History, African diaspora

TagsDäbtära, Ge'ez, Ethiopian manuscripts, Book as object, Black British Publishing History, Black Book History, Publishing, Independent Publishing, Inclusive Bibliography, Task Force on Gay Liberation of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association, Kay Tobin Lahusen, Gay Bibliography