A dynamic news resource for the international community of rare book, manuscript, archival and special collections; open to contribution from all working within the sector and edited by the IFLA Rare Book and Special Collections Standing Committee.
For those in love with rare books and special collections, finding a good catalogue is always good news. No matter if it’s a latest generation database with links to high quality digital reproductions, a common online catalogue or a dusty printed bibliography half hidden in a shady shelf, if it’s go...
IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Conference, Bibliotheca Alexandria (Alexandria, Egypt), March 19th, 2020 The IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section Committee is sponsoring a one day conference devoted to Islamic manuscripts and imprints, their special needs and internati...
Funding cuts, climate change, conflict, natural hazards and other disruptive events are affecting cultural heritage around the world, including special collections held in libraries. The protection of heritage during disruptive events contributes to the international agenda for risk reduction via th...
IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section events at WLIC 2019 The Rare Books and Special Collections Section invites you to join our programme of events during the Congress in Athens, 24-30 August 2019. Full details of each session are posted on the Congress website but this post gives a short...
The Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) is working to help its member libraries and other organisations that curate cultural heritage collections to answer precisely that question. As a membership organisation, CERL aims to facilitate, enhance, and improve the use and impact of printed...
Standardized cataloguing of rare materials has always been a complex matter, historically fragmented within geographical regions until the arrival in the 1980s of standardized models, such as ISBD and DCRM, which were quickly adopted internationally. In general, rare materials are never the first to...
IFLA has announced its Call for Nominations for Section Standing Committees August 2019 – August 2023 is now open. This call outlines what is expected of committee members in general. If you are interested in standing for a position, or in nominating someone, please read through these and make sure...
At this year's WLIC in Kuala Lumpur the Rare Books and Special Collections section held our first ever Knowledge Cafe, on the subject of rare materials cataloguing. This format is designed to encourage people to come and discuss issues with one another, and we wanted this one in particular to look a...
Crisis or Enlightenment? Developments in the Book Trade (1650-1750) St Andrews Book Conference, 20-22 June 2019 It has never been questioned that the European Enlightenment was made by books. The intellectual movement which swept across Europe and the Atlantic world from the end of the seventeenth c...
RBSCG Annual Study Conference : The Library as Classroom Cambridge University Library, photo credit: Sir Cam. The RBSCG Annual Study Conference will be held at Downing College, the University of Cambridge, from 5th-7th September 2018. Delegates are invited to hear speakers from across the country di...
JORNADA “O TRÁFICO ILÍCITO DO PATRIMÔNIO BIBLIOGRÁFICO NA AMÉRICA LATINA E CARIBE” Organiza: Fundación Biblioteca Nacional del Brasil & IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section Está abierta la convocatoria de trabajos a ser presentados durante la II Jornada IFLA El tráfico ilícito del patrimon...
In the last years an increasing number of libraries are adopting RDA as a cataloguing standard. Still, what happens to their rare materials? Is RDA fit for the description of their rare books, their manuscripts, their graphic and cartographic materials, their music? Will it be able to overtake extre...
The programme for the IFLA Rare Books & Special Collections section mid-term conference has now been published! You can view it below or download it here. Libraries in the sky large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections National Library...
Libraries in the sky: large-scale collaboration strategies and infrastructures to enhance the use of digital heritage collections IFLA RBSCS mid-term conference, National Library of Norway (Oslo) April 12th 2018 In many countries, libraries have worked together to enhance the visibility of their nat...
Over the past few decades book history has been something of an outsider in the French intellectual world. Whilst in Anglophone countries the discipline thrived, in France the subject was increasingly marginalised. Elsewhere in academia, numerous student programs, research centres and well-funded pr...
Biblioteca Nacional de España (Madrid) The RDA Steering Committee convened last week in Madrid, at the National Library of Spain, in the context of its 3R Project (RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project). Along with the closed business meetings, the institution hosted two open sessions. In the...
Call for Papers: William Birch and the Complexities of American Visual Culture: A Symposium Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa., October 5, 2018 From the William Birch Collection, Li...
The Rare Books and Special Collections Group Conference 2017, hosted at the picturesque University of Sussex, had ‘Collections at Risk’ as its theme. Over the course of the three-day conference we heard talks from people working in a variety of roles who approach rare books and special collections f...
Frédéric Blin at WLIC 2017 (Wroclaw) On July 5th, 2017, during the annual conference of LIBER, the European League of European Libraries, the Consortium for European Libraries (CERL) and the LIBER Digital Cultural Heritage Forum organised a workshop entitled: "Managing bequests & Digital Estates: Ne...
En el año 1873, durante la Primera República Española, María Sandalia del Acebal y Arratia donaba a la Biblioteca Nacional la que había sido la biblioteca de su marido, Luis de Usoz y Río, y con ella la mayor colección de obras relativas a reformistas y heterodoxos españoles que se conserva en Españ...
The Rare Books and Special Collections Section invites you to join our programme of events during the Congress. Full details of each session are posted on the Congress website but this post gives a short summary. Get involved! Some of the IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Standing Committee at...
Data Stewardship and Data Curation 4th Digital Curation Workshop - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, 13-14 November 2017 Call for Papers - deadline 11 August 2017 Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen This theme is on the agenda of both libraries and research teams and a focus a...
Image credit: A Goode projection of a Visible Earth image collected by the Earth Observatory experiment of the U.S. Government's NASA space agency. Photo: Wikimedia. You are invited to attend a special all-day session (Session 088) at the forthcoming IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2017:...
Jornada “El patrimonio bibliográfico en América Latina y el Caribe: desafíos y perspectivas” 27 y 28 de septiembre de 2017, Buenos Aires - Argentina Organiza Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno – IFLA Rare Books and Special Collections Section La Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno de la Repúbli...
Wolrd Intellectual Property Organisation's flag (OMPI in French). Image by: World Intellectual Property Organisation With the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights’ (SCCR) thirty-fourth session at World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) approaching, we would be very grateful if...