The Playful Antiquarian

Massachusetts Book Awards ceremony, Sept. 14

The Massachusetts Center for the Book has announced that September 14th is the date for this year’s Massachusetts Book Awards ceremony. The ceremony will be at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, with a reception following at the National Yiddish Book Center. More details will be posted on the Center’s web site in the next few weeks.

The Massachusetts Center for the Book is an affiliate of the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book and is part of a cultural village that includes the Eric Carle Museum, the National Yiddish Book Center, and Hampshire College’s Center for the Book. The Boston office, quite appropriately, is at Simmons College. The Center’s web site is a little sparse right now, but I am certain that more will be added in the near future. I think that the literary map of Massachusetts will be very interesting and useful once it is up and available to the public.

In related news, the National Book Festival in Washington DC is scheduled for October 4th on the National Mall. And that, coincidentally, is the same day as BloggerCon here at the Harvard Law School…This fall will be very busy indeed.

1 comment August 8th, 2003

NPR Goes to Rare Book School

There will be a story about Rare Book School on NPR’s “All Things Considered” this Sunday, August 10th. Jacki Lyden of NPR spent a few days this week exploring RBS, the University of Virginia-based pseudo-summer camp for the rare book crowd (eg. librarians, collectors, library school students, and assorted bibliophiles). The announcement from Terry Belanger, the founding director of RBS, can be found in a number of places (ie. the Exlibris list, SHARP-L, or Book Arts-L).

Sadly, this was the week I was supposed to be at RBS for the well known course, Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography (or DesBib, as RBS alums refer to it). Unfortunately, I am young and poor and had to choose between taking a course at Simmons and making some progress towards an MLS or one week of intense study and rare book fun at RBS. Oh well, I will be there next year, definitely. For now, thanks to NPR, I can experience RBS vicariously but with a full night’s sleep and an additional year to finish the pre-course reading.

1 comment August 8th, 2003