Conferences

Image: National Library of Australia, Book stacks in the Hume Repository, 2023

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2024 

BIBLIOMANIA: STORIES FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE BOOK 

National Library of Australia (and online)

Canberra, Australia  4–5 December 2024 

Call for Papers 

Mass-printed or bespoke, digital or physical, books convey information. They are also objects with stories to tell beyond their text, particularly in their physical form. Inside and outside, they carry traces of those stories. They may tell us about the people and technologies that made them, or the people whose hands they have passed through. They take on lives of their own.    

The 2024 BSANZ Conference will focus on the topic of the stories behind the book, including but not limited to: 

  • the book as object;  
  • book production and bindings; 
  • book collectors and collections; 
  • booksellers and bookselling; 
  • users and readers of books and the evidence of those activities; 
  • the afterlives of books: circulation, distribution and dispersal;  
  • digital access to books: advantages, challenges and beyond; 
  • preservation and conservation of books; and 
  • areas relating more broadly to bibliography and book history. 

The Organising Committee for the 2024 BSANZ Conference cordially invites papers that address the conference themes.   

The conference will be a hybrid conference, though BSANZ and the National Library of Australia would love to welcome you in person, if that is possible for you. In-person activities and a conference dinner are planned.

Details:

  • Participants may present their papers online;
  • All sessions will be livestreamed; and
  • All sessions will be recorded for upload to the BSANZ YouTube channel in due course, with the presenters’ consent.  

Each paper should be 20 minutes long. (We will allow 10 minutes for discussion afterwards.) We also welcome panel submissions.  

Please send your 200–300 word abstract, as well as your paper title, your name, institution (if applicable), contact details, and an up to 100-word biography marked attention Dr Susannah Helman to: bsanzconference2024@gmail.com 

Please note that all conference presenters must be BSANZ members: http://www.bsanz.org/membership

Keynote speakers: To be advised 

Abstracts are due: 31 July 2024 

The National Library of Australia acknowledges Australia’s First Nations Peoples – the First Australians – as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land and gives respect to the Elders – past and present – and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.