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38th International Congress and 21th International Antiquarian Book Fair in Madrid
Dear members of the ILAB-LILA:
I would like to express the honour and great pleasure that we have in the organization of the 38º International Congress of the ILAB LILA and the 21º International Antiquarian book fair at Madrid that will take place in the Congress and Exhibition Centre from September 8th to 13th 2008, with the Honour Presidence of the S.S. A.A. R.R. Principes de Asturias.
Madrid, a dynamic and changing capital, has an overwhelming offer in cultural activities, gastronomy and hotels for all tastes. Museums like the Thyssen Foundation, modern art Queen Sofia centre and the Prado make a triangle that is worth visiting.
This allows us to introduce to all participants at the Congress and the International book fair some of the singular treasures that holds the city of Madrid like the Lazaro Galdiano Foundation with one of the most important art collections and library in Spain donated to the Nation by this patron in 1949. The Royal Palace, one of the most striking buildings in Europe for its construction, location and the variety of collections housed inside its walls. We shall have the privilege to visit the library located at the North tower.
We´ll end this tour with the trip, 35 miles far from Madrid, to the palace-monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, in a magnificent landscape, from where the king Philip the second reigned over the destiny of the Hispanic Monarchy in the XVIth century. Among its matchless collections: the library, one of the most important in the world for the quality and rarity of its holdings, will be the place for a detailed visit by the ILAB Congress members.
All that we suggest makes of Madrid the ideal frame to attract many members of the ILAB-LILA who would like to take this opportunity and stay with us several days.
The meeting of the delegates of the ILAB and the international book fair, will take place in the Conference hall located at the business center with easy access by taxi, underground and bus. This well known building is the place where two antiques fairs are being held every year, which makes a suitable and spacious place for both events.
We have contacted with several hotels in order to get a quality lodging and reasonably priced. The visits and trips organized by professionals with a convenient schedule. The book fair prices are really competitive, what we hope will help to attract the interest of a large number of ILAB-LILA members.
I believe that I have presented you all the good reasons why it is worth coming to Madrid. The Spanish members of ILAB brought together in AILA are waiting to give you a warm welcome to Madrid and among all to get success for the Congress and the International Book fair.
With best wishes
Gonzalo Fernández Pontes
President of Aila
38th International Congress and 21th International Antiquarian Book Fair in Madrid
Oak Knoll Honored with 2008 APHA Institutional Award
Congratulations to former ILAB president Bob Fleck and his staff at Oak Knoll, who are to be honored with the 2008 American Printing History Association (APHA) Institutional Award for "a distinguished contribution to the study, recording, preservation or dissemination of printing history, in any specific area or in general terms." Well deserved!
41st CALIFORNIA INTERNATIONAL ANTIQUARIAN BOOK FAIR FEATURES TREASURES OF THE PRINTED PAGES FROM THE WORLD'S PREEMINENT RARE BOOKSELLERS
Los Angeles Event Also Gives The Public A Rare Glimpse into the Collections of California University Libraries in Special Exhibit: Great Books from Great Institutions
LOS ANGELES – Book lovers, collectors and scholars will have the opportunity to see and purchase the finest in rare and valuable books, manuscripts, autographs, fine graphics, prints, maps and more at the 41st California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Los Angeles at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel from Friday, February 15, through Sunday February 17, 2008. In addition, the public will have a rare opportunity to view treasures from the special collections of Southern California’s university libraries in a special exhibit,
Great Books from Great Institutions.
Sponsored by the Southern California Chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the Los Angeles Book Fair is recognized as one of the world's premier antiquarian book exhibitions and sales. Exhibits from over 200 pre-eminent members of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers and the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America will feature books from five centuries of printing, as well as rare manuscripts that predate Gutenberg.
Books will cover every imaginable area of interest -- from the history of travel and exploration, early science and medicine, technology, law and commerce to literature and the arts. Whether you are seeking a first edition of a favorite modern author or an historic book like a 17th century Shakespeare folio or the King James Bible, you’ll find it at the Book Fair where items range in price from a few dollars to more than six figures.
The special exhibit, Great Books from Great Institutions, will present unique and rarely seen books, manuscripts and other materials from the vast archives of Southern California’s university library collections – many of which exist nowhere else in the world. The exhibit will feature individual displays from libraries, including:
• University of Southern California, Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library
• Occidental College, Mary Norton Clapp Library
• University of California San Diego, Mandeville Special Collections Library
• University of California Los Angeles, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library
• University of California Los Angeles, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
• University of California Los Angeles, Charles E. Young Research Library
• University of California Irvine, Langson Library
• University of California Riverside, Rivera Library Special Collections Department
• San Diego State University, Malcolm Love Library
Free seminars will appeal to both the dedicated collector and those new to the world of rare books including “Rare Books 101,” which will provide an overview on how start collecting. On Sunday, February 18 from 1:30 to 3 p.m., “Discovery Day” is an opportunity for the public to present up to three items to experts for free examination. Admission to the California International Antiquarian Book Fair is $15 on Friday for a three-day ticket and $10 on Saturday or Sunday. The event will take place at the Hyatt Regency Century
Plaza Hotel, located at 2025 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles. Hours are Friday, February 15, 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, February 16, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, February 17, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For further information, please visit www.labookfair.com or call the event hotline at (800) 454-6401.
A Bookseller Finds his Niche
If you're looking for a book about books, Bob Fleck is your man
If Johannes Gutenberg's first edition Holy Bible is today's Holy Grail for book collectors, then Old New Castle resident Bob Fleck is the Indiana Jones of the rare book community.
Read the whole article at delawareonline.com.
CBS's 60 Minutes visits the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.
Andy thinks books are one of the greatest inventions of all time. He recently visited the New York Antiquarian Book Fair where he learned how much some of the old classics sell for.
Click here or on the image above to play the video
ABAA member William Reese's very generous gift to Yale
Yale University Library receives a gift for the Map Collection
William Reese, President of William Reese Company, a firm dealing in rare books and manuscripts in New Haven, has donated $100,000 to the Yale University Library to support the future of the Map Collection in Sterling Memorial Library.
Mr. Reese, a 1977 Yale graduate who has given generous support to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library over many years, intends this gift to pay for essential cataloging and other work, and at the same time to form the foundation for a new fund-raising effort. In his letter to University Librarian Alice Prochaska, he writes:
"The Yale Map Collection is one of the extraordinary resources of the Yale Library and the University. Over the past year, in the wake of the apprehension of a thief who has now pled guilty to stealing maps both from the Beinecke Library and the Map Collection, I have worked with the Library to inventory the collections and to advise on the many issues which have arisen in the wake of those thefts. While we have come to realize that the
Map Collection is facing many challenges, I am convinced that, with sufficient nourishment, the remarkable collections and dedicated core of staff can blossom into a vital research center of the first rank. I look forward to continuing to work with you to realize this goal."
Alice Prochaska noted: I wish to offer profound thanks to William Reese for this gift, and for his unwavering support of the Map Collection during the difficult times that followed the recent thefts. He has given his time and expertise unstintingly, and this gift now supports our plans for a bright future for the Yale Map Collection. I am matching his gift with funds reallocated from the Library's own budget. With Mr. Reese's advice and support, the Library will now begin to raise additional significant funding. We will be seeking to endow the position of Map Curator, to support the creation of a full electronic catalog with digitized versions of the holdings of this great collection, and to support and extend the high-powered consultative service in Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) that the staff provide. The Map Collection with its expert staff and wonderful contents is really one of the jewels in the crown of the Yale University Library's collections, and we intend that it should become renowned both for the maps it contains, and for the great services it provides to the scholarly community.
YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MAP COLLECTION:
The Map Collection has the largest collection of maps in Connecticut and one of the largest university collections in the United States. Its collections are geographically comprehensive and consist of over 200,000 map sheets, 3,000 atlases, and 900 reference books. The Collection receives maps and charts on deposit from the U.S. government agencies, and through gift and purchase. The Collection also houses approximately 15,000 rare (pre-1850) sheet maps. Though these cover many areas of the world, most pertain to North America, the United States, and New England. There is also a sizeable reference collection and a small, selective serials collection.
Yale University Library Press Release
August 16th, 2006
For more information: http://www.library.yale.edu/MapColl/index.html
FOURTEENTH ILAB PRIZE FOR BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two Winners for the ILAB-LILA Bibliography Prize
The winners of the International Prize for Bibliography were announced before two hundred guests at the ABA Centenary Ball held at the Royal Geographical Society in London. Presenting the judges’ verdict the Prize Secretary said:
‘I must say it sometimes seems there are rather a lot of Prizes. We have no sooner got over the Booker, the Whitbread and the Orange, when it’s time for the Baftas and the Oscars - and hundreds of others..'
But the League’s Bibliography Prize is different. It wasn’t invented last week by some spin doctor to promote a product. It was founded fifty years ago by the League to repay in a small way the debt the trade owes to the bibliographers - who toil away in libraries, largely unsung, to produce the reference books we need, and which help us to become better booksellers. This is the fourteenth Award. There have been around a hundred entries from all over the world and they cover every aspect of bibliography and the history of the book in its widest sense, as well as cartography and all the book arts. The criteria are originality and significance - and of course bibliographical rigour.
To pick a winner from such a field has not been easy - and of course there can only be one winner. But the judges have excelled themselves and produced two. After much consideration, discussion and debate they decided it was impossible to separate the claims of two outstanding books and determined therefore that there should be two joint winners and the $10,000 Prize be divided between them.
So here they are, in no particular order. First ‘John Payne Collier: Scholarship and Forgery in the 19th Century’ by Arthur and Janet Freeman. ‘It’s a big book, with big aims, and it succeeds magisterially’. Those are not my words, but those of the learned reviewer in The Library. It’s a bio-bibliography, consisting of a 1000 page Life of Collier linked and keyed to a 400 page bibliography. And it is a fascinating read from start to finish. Collier of course was an influential, prolific and highly respected scholar and writer - and at the same time the promulgator of a great body of forgeries. The Freemans among much else have sorted out the authentic books and the forgeries and the fabrications. This book does what it says on the title page: Scholarship and Forgery in the 19th Century. Could it start a cult on the scale of the T.J.Wise cult? Could Freeman become a household name like Carter and Pollard? Could there be Collier Fellowships and Seminars in universities around the world? We shall see, but it would be nice to think so. Published by Yale at £100 the two volume set, no more than the price of your ticket this evening.
And the other co-winner is: ’A Bibliography of 17th century Numismatic Books’ by Christian Dekesel, published by Spink (as you might expect) in London, though Dr Dekesel is of course a Belgian scholar. It is monumental and meticulous. The judges were impressed by its erudition - and also I suspect by its weight. This is just Vol I of 3 - and I won’t need to explain why the others are not here. But this heavyweight is an intellectual heavyweight. The author, assisted by Mme Dekesel, has not just examined every book but every copy of every book he has located in over 300 libraries and collections. Each entry has all the data and detail you could possibly want, with a facsimile of the title thrown in. And remember, numismatic writing occurs in history, travel, economics and portrait books, and much else too. This book follows the Dekesel volume on 16th century numismatics and will itself be followed by 18th century volumes, already well advanced. The whole will comprise the Dekesel Bibliotheca Nummaria, covering three centuries, a magnificent achievement.
President, I was once ticked off in the nicest possible way by an eminent historian of the book for applying the word ‘definitive’ to a bibliography. ‘Is anything ever definitive?’ she said - ever so sweetly. Well I guess not. But these two books come pretty close. They will still be standing when we have long been gone and the International League is proud to honour them with its Prize.’
The judges also nominated two books for their Specially Commended Award. First, from Germany, Bernhard Fischer’s ‘Der Verleger Johann Friedrich Cotta. Johann Friedrich was head of the great Cotta publishing house of Stuttgart and Munich in its most brilliant period, 1787-1832. Cotta published Goethe and Schiller and practically every other notable in literature and scholarship of the time. This is a detailed bibliography of the entire Cotta output of those years, with the printing history of every one of its publications - books, journals and graphics. A substantial work, published in three volumes by Saur of Munich.
And also Specially Commended was David Griffiths’ Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, the evening’s only single volume work, published by British Library in the U.K and Oak Knoll elsewhere in the world. It offers 450 years of publishing history, from Cranmer’s famous text of 1549 to date, some 5000 different editions (including 1200 different translations), all meticulously differentiated and described, with collations, as you would expect. In the trade we sometimes complain that academic bibliography is all about books we never see. Nobody will say that about the Book of Common Prayer. This excellent work will take its place alongside Darlow & Moule’s great Catalogue of Bibles.
So, one American author, one Belgian, one German and one British. An international result - and four books worth a permanent place on all our reference shelves.
ANNE AND DAVID BROMER ESTABLISH RARE BOOK FUND AT THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Boston antiquarian booksellers Anne and David Bromer, owners of Bromer Booksellers in Copley Square, recently established an endowment fund to celebrate and promote the rare books collection at the Boston Public Library. Proceeds from THE ANNE AND DAVID BROMER RARE BOOKS FUND will be used for guest lectures and performances, exhibitions, publications, and traditional and online presentations and finding aids.
According to Anne Bromer, the purpose of the endowment is “to make the public aware of the depth and scope, richness and importance, of the Library’s rare book collections.”
The establishment of the fund is a reflection of the Bromers’ long-standing interest in both rare books and the Boston Public Library. Anne’s first job in 1965, as a graduate of Simmons College School of Library Science, was at the Library; and in 2001 the BPL co-published her first book, Strings Attached, about the printer Dorothy Abbe. Currently, David serves as a member of the Board of the Associates of the Library.
Bromer Booksellers, Inc., has been located across the street from the Library in Copley Square for the past 26 years. The Bromers’ hope is that the new fund will encourage Bostonians to explore further the great treasures that reside within the beautiful edifice of their public library.
ILAB Virtual Book Fair, Everywhere and Nowhere
What if you held a bookfair and nobody came? Surely some fair promoters would lie awake at night worrying over that scenario. But imagine if you held a book fair and there was nowhere for people to go. Bob Fleck, owner of Oak Knoll Books and current president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), envisioned just such a fair. A fair held everywhere and no place at once.
He proposed the idea last November at an ILAB Meeting in Potsdam, Germany.
Book 'em Ken! Ken Sanders' incredible adventures in the rare-book trade.
Ken Sanders has a multitude of friends, most of them long dead and on a shelf at his funky Salt Lake City bookstore.
He has enemies, too, the kind who call and make death threats. As chair of the security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), Sanders knows the once genteel rare-book business has fallen prey to Internet fraud, credit card theft and e-auction forgeries. Even international cartels, not content to limit their business to arms and oil, drugs and extortion, have discovered that rare books are portable, can be moved quickly across several time zones, fetch huge sums from collectors and can be liquidated swiftly, when necessary, through an Internet auction site such as eBay. The kinder, gentler days of the book trade, where deals were sealed simply with a handshake, seem over.
It was Sanders' daughter, Melissa, who first heard the threatening message left on the bookstore's answering machine March 2003. Recorded shortly after 4 in the morning, a heavily accented voice said: "Ken Sanders ... this is David ... you may know me as David Holt ... I am very much looking forward to coming to Salt Lake City and cutting off your balls ... Goodbye now ..."
Melissa knew David George Holt was a convicted felon with a number of aliases whom her father had been chasing "forever", as she put it.
"He did time for securities fraud, then started defrauding booksellers," she said. "He offers something scarce at a really good price," Melissa explained. "Then he has the buyer wire 15 percent of the price to an associate in Russia. The book, of course, never arrives," she said. Sanders had just unmasked Holt twice in quick succession, blocking his efforts to bilk book dealers. It seemed Holt intended to retaliate.
Read the whole article here >>
The Rare Books Detective
The New York Antiquarian Book Fair is the oldest and most prestigious such event in the United States. Held each spring in the gargantuan Park Avenue Armory on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the fair draws more than a hundred dealers from Vienna, Paris, London and beyond. Opening night is a gala preview. Red carpet divides the booksellers' aisles, and a tuxedoed band plays some vague, unobtrusive jazz while deals upwards of $100,000 are made between sips of wine and samples from the generous cheese platter. Major categories at the fair include modern first editions, English literature, science, and travel and voyages. But advertised specialties range widely: the occult and bibles; tennis and Maurice Sendak; books about books and Canadiana. The rare book business is a small, select world-the largest organization, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, boasts about two thousand members worldwide; the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America about five hundred-and the fair is the apotheosis of the industry's stuffy charms.
Ken Sanders mingles happily with the crowd, if not quite inconspicuously. His bushy beard, which stretches to his chest, sets him apart from his rather staid-seeming colleagues; and though he is balding, remnants of the fifty-two-year-old's mostly grey hair are pulled back in a short ponytail. Still, Sanders, proprietor of a bookstore in Salt Lake City that specializes in Edward Abbey and the literary West, manages to engage his fellow bibliophiles. The rare book world, after all, is where Sanders has spent his life since he began collecting as a teenager.
There is another world, too, in which Sanders has grown adept at manoeuvring, a world filled with shadowy figures and deceit. In this world, Sanders is not merely a rare books dealer, but a rare books detective. As chair of the security committee for the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA), Sanders spends between ten and fifteen hours a week poring over reports of theft and fraud, sending alerts to ABAA members and, as the situation warrants, conducting his own investigations. His tenure as security chair for the ABAA-a volunteer position-began in 1999 and has coincided with the rapid growth of Internet commerce and of its spawn, electronic fraud, to which the bookselling community has been especially susceptible.
Book dealers who have been defrauded know to turn to Sanders, as law enforcement agencies like the FBI and Interpol almost never take an interest in the jurisdictional complexity of tracking down rare-book thieves. Using a stolen credit card number and just enough literary knowledge, a typical thief can convince an unsuspecting dealer to ship a valuable first edition across several time zones. Rare books are small, easily portable, not overtly suspicious and, thanks to Internet auction sites like eBay, easily converted into cash. No one keeps track of total losses, but the most notorious thieves working the trade have made off with as much as $100,000 US each in books-taking care never to "spend" more than about $5,000 at a time so as to avoid rousing suspicion.
Reports of theft and fraud have shaken up the rare book trade, to the chagrin of many. "It's been a trusting, gentle business for most of its existence," says Sanders, "a handshake kind of business." Rooted deep within the culture of bookselling is a certain reticence, an essential genteelness that Sanders, with his hard-charging efforts, seems to have endangered. Booksellers seem dismissive of any talk about theft and scams and consider it a serious impediment to business. Steven Temple, security chair for the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, doesn't think that theft is necessarily increasing at all, only that it is now more commonly reported.
Sanders' investigations, however, have undeniably led to results. He has shut down gangs in Belgrade operating with stolen credit card numbers and eBay accounts-though not before they managed to scam dealers of about $40,000 in rare books. Sanders has also disrupted gangs of credit-card fraudsters based in Nigeria and Ghana, baiting them by accepting orders and then shutting down their stolen card numbers. Sanders takes pleasure in asking for another card, and then another, until the fraudsters realize he's on to their schemes.
Last year Sanders helped nab book thief John Charles Gilkey, who may have stolen as much as $100,000 in books. For months Gilkey-who was "brazen as hell," says Sanders-placed orders with booksellers over the phone, often chatting up dealers before using a stolen credit card to make the purchase. Before the charge could be disputed, Gilkey would call back to mention that a cousin or nephew was conveniently in town and able to drop by the bookshop. Then he or his accomplice-identified afterwards as his father-would leave with the book in hand. Gilkey later switched methods and asked booksellers to send books by overnight mail to hotels, where he had reserved a room with a different stolen credit card.
When Gilkey attempted to scam Ken Lopez, president of the ABAA, Lopez and Sanders worked with police in San Jose to set up a sting. Lopez, a Massachusetts-based dealer, let Gilkey go through with an order for a first edition of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Though the asking price was $6,500, Gilkey actually talked Lopez down to a price of $5,850. He also asked Lopez to send the book overnight to the upscale Westin Hotel in Palo Alto. When Gilkey, dressed in rumpled slacks and a baseball cap, arrived to pick up the package, police were on the scene to apprehend him. After posting a $15,000 bail, Gilkey disappeared, eluding authorities for weeks until he was eventually caught in another sting. He is now serving a three-year sentence in California.
Why does Sanders pursue these white-collar criminals so relentlessly? "I have an innate sense of fairness," he says. His daughter Melissa agrees: "He takes [theft] so personally, not only when it happens to our store, but to our colleagues." Melissa, twenty-five, manages Ken Sanders Rare Books. Once, when a shoplifter at the store made off with a $1,500 painting of Jesus Christ, Sanders followed the thief to his car, denting a door and breaking a window before being knocked to the ground as the car sped away. "Dad," says Melissa Sanders, "is a volatile man." His hands bloodied, Sanders called the police with the thief's licence plate number, then got in his truck and searched the neighbourhood. The thief, perhaps intimidated, called Sanders later that day to say that he had left the painting at a nearby restaurant, where it was subsequently recovered.
One man, however, vexes Sanders above all others: David George Holt, aka Frederik Buwe, aka Professor Karl Fisher. Holt, a sixty-two-year-old Illinois native turned globetrotter, actually has many more aliases, all allegedly used in email and Internet scams that have plagued book dealers since the mid-1990s. "With Holt, it's personal," Sanders says grimly. Other thieves may have gotten away with more money, but Holt is notorious for his persistence, for his apparent duplicity and for a possible association with the Russian mafia that Sanders has brought to the attention of the FBI. If all this was not enough to place a dark cloud over the book trade, there is also the rumour of Holt's involvement in the disappearance of Svetlana Aronov.
Aronov-a popular New York bookseller known for her wit and style, as well as her collection of Russian avant-garde titles-was noticeably absent from the New York book fair. Five weeks earlier, Aronov, forty-four, had left her apartment on the Upper East Side to go for a walk with her family's cocker spaniel and never returned. Her relatives visited the fair to hand out flyers offering a reward for information leading to her return. Detectives visited the fair as well, intent on speaking with booksellers about Aronov and with Sanders about Holt. Sanders had already been in contact with the New York police and had posted email notices urging people with knowledge of either Aronov or Holt to contact authorities.
Sadly, Aronov's body was found in the East River across from Manhattan several weeks later. Police never named a suspect, and months later, there have still been no arrests in the case.
Holt has not taken kindly to Sanders' meddling. Early one morning, a heavily accented voice left a message on Sanders' voice mail threatening to visit Salt Lake City to "cut your balls off." Sanders recognized the voice as Holt's and simply rattled off an email to his nemesis: "Dave, no need to come all this way. Send me your address and I'll come and visit you." Sanders remains unfazed in the face of such threats. His rationale: if something were going to happen, it would have happened already. "Despite my aggressiveness, I'm not Superman," he says. "People do think I'm crazy for doing what I'm doing."
Whether or not Holt is dangerous, he certainly has a checkered past. According to FBI Special Agent William Hann, in 1991 Holt stole about $100,000 in US Savings Bonds from his grandmother and used the money to start a new life in New Zealand, abandoning a wife and five children in a suburb of Milwaukee in the process. From New Zealand, he allegedly began targeting booksellers in various schemes. At the urging of angry booksellers, Holt was extradited to the United States in 1997 on an outstanding charge of securities fraud. Hann said book dealers documented for him over $3,000 in losses from fraud, but he suspects the total to be much higher. Holt served an eighteen-month sentence for securities fraud and was released in 1999. Since his release, dozens of complaints have been made involving aliases that Sanders believes serve to cloak Holt. The hallmarks of Holt's alleged scams are emails written in broken English and deals too good to be true, which appeal to dealers' greed.
Sanders emails Holt whenever he catches wind of a new alias, and the pair go back and forth. Holt has emailed Sanders with a promise to commit future frauds "in our mutual good name" and signed it "Kennet Sanders Rarities." Through a computer expert, Sanders has tracked most of these email aliases to Volgograd, Russia. In addition, some of the scams have involved wire transfers to Russia, leading Sanders to believe that the Russian mafia has become interested in the rare book trade, with Holt perhaps merely serving as an agent in their crimes.
Holt has even been so bold as to be included as the contact person in an online listing for a bookseller by the name of Dr. R. Litchkovakha. A call to Litchkovakha in New Zealand about the listing was answered by a young woman with a strong New Zealand accent, who suggested calling back in about three hours to reach her father. A phone message and email outlining the accusations against Holt were answered with an email that sharply denied "any association with fraudulent activities [or] threats." The voice on the answering machine in New Zealand is that of a man, sounding cheery and very American, who identifies himself as Dr. R. Litchkovakha. The voice says, "If I'm not in, I'm probably out hunting for a book." Rest assured, Sanders is out there too, looking to catch a thief.
By Jaime Adame, republished on behalf of Maisonneuve Magazine, Click here for original article
THE ILAB PRIZE FOR BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE $10,000 PRIZE IS AWARDED every fourth year to the author(s) of the most original and significant book in the field of bibliography published in any language and in any country in the world.
THE PRIZE FOUNDATION was established by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) forty years ago to affirm its regard and support for bibliographical scholarship. It is now recognised as the most eminent of its kind.
THE NEXT AWARD IS THE FOURTEENTH for which the judges will consider books published in the calendar years 2001-2004.
TO BE ELIGIBLE a book may deal with any aspect of bibliography, e.g. enumerative bibliography, history of the book, transmission of texts, book arts, book trade. The only exceptions are catalogues of books intended for sale and catalogues of public libraries. In order to be entered, a copy of the book must be received by the Secretary before 31 December 2004. It may be submitted by its author, its publisher or any other interested person. The verdict of the judges will be announced in the summer of 2006.
JUDGES. The international panel of six judges is appointed to represent the worlds of scholarship, librarianship and the antiquarian book trade:
Professor Luigi Balsamo, 'La Bibliofilia', Bologna
Antoine Coron, Directeur de la Réserve, Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Dr Roland Folter, H.P. Kraus, New York, bookseller
Dr Kristian Jensen, Keeper of Incunables, British Library
Raymond Kilgarriff, St Leonards, England, bookseller
Poul Jan Poulsen, Copenhagen, bookseller
PRIZE SECRETARY to whom all enquiries should be sent:
Raymond Kilgarriff
15 Maze Hill
St Leonards
East Sussex TN38 0HN
England
tel +44 (0)1424 426146
email: rmkilgarriff@btinternet.com