Last weekend at the 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco, the ABAA held a raffle in support of the Elisabeth Woodburn Fund. For those who are unfamiliar, the Elisabeth Woodburn Fund is non-profit charitable fund established by former ABAA President Elisabeth Woodburn in 1990. It is overseen by the Trustees of the Benevolent Fund and the Executive Director of the ABAA, and gives financial assistance for scholarly research and education relevant to the antiquarian book trade, such as scholarships to the Colorado Antiquarian Bookselling Seminar and the California Rare Book School, contributions to the ILAB Bibliographical Prize, and support of the Bibliographical Society of American and the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. The Elisabeth Woodburn Fund also houses the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest Fund, which was created to encourage and educate new book collectors and to support the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, which is now cosponsored by the ABAA. The raffle prize was a photo collage celebrating 50 Years of ABAA Fairs. Emeritus member Barney Rosenthal supplied the photographs, which were taken at the 1961 New York Fair, and he also compiled and signed the collage. Barney was also kind enough to come to the Fair on Sunday to draw the winning ticket and present the collage to the winner. ABAA member Sam Hessel was the lucky winner, and he generously donated the piece to Headquarters for archival purposes�... [more San Francisco Raffle Photos]

Eight years ago, Paul Ryall and Ed Smith made this documentary for the ABAA. It was shot at the 36th Annual California International Book Fair held in San Francisco. Here is the link. Enjoy! [more 'Bibliomania' Now on YouTube In Its Entirety]

The 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair will be held this weekend, February 11th-13th, in San Francisco at the Concourse Exhibition Center. Over 200 members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) will be exhibiting their diverse inventories, providing a rich selection of books, manuscripts, maps and other printed materials. The theme of this year's fair is music, and there will be a special exhibit of rare musical books and manuscripts from the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Additionally, there will be several lecture and seminars taking place during the fair; a schedule of events can be found here. If you are attending the fair, please drop by the ABAA booth! The 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair Concourse Exhibition Center 635 8th Street at Brannan Street San Francisco, CA 94103 Hours: Friday, February 11, 2011 3 pm - 8 pm Saturday, February 12, 2011 11 am - 7 pm Sunday, February 13, 2011 11 am - 5 pm For more information, please visit sfbookfair.com. [more This Weekend: 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco]

The Frankfurt Book Fair commenced yesterday, and with a special focus this year on technology. A new digital initiative, called Frankfurt SPARKS, was launched at the fair, and aims to "provide an initial 'spark' for for future publishing projects" and bring "together providers of innovative technology and those working with creative content- thus breaking traditional industry boundaries," according to Director Juergen Boos. Set apart from all the technological presentations and conferences is the rare and antique book pavilion, in its own separate space for the first time this year. Described as "an oasis of calm, with not an iPad in sight", the rare books dealers may be physically detached from the digital pandemonium, but the subject of digitalization and the possibility of how it may impact their business is still on their minds. ProQuest is a company whose current project is to digitalize all early European books published between 1475 and 1700 and put them online. Come November, 4,000 texts from the Florence library, all dating before 1600, will be published online, including some books owned by Galileo. While acknowledging that they do most of their business online, rare booksellers seemed to balk at the idea that digitilization would truly impact their trade. "Look, the people who buy my books are not really interested in ebooks," said Moritz Backhaus, from the Antiquariat im Hufelandhaus book firm. He continued on to say that if one was interested in the text itself, ... [more Even with a Focus on Digitalization, Rare Books Still Display at Frankfurt Book Fair]