AustLit

'It is possible to view with some sympathy the complaint made by a recent review in La Bibliofilia that centenaries provoke bursts of not altogether convincing publication about subjects that are then neglected till the next significant date comes around. However, there are stronger reasons for recording at commemorative intervals the work of a learned society and for submitting it to critical analysis. If one takes the two entities on which we have quite explicitly based our own programmes - the Bibliographical Society (London) and the Bibliographical Society of America - it is clear that the members thought it necessary to set down an ample record of achievements and problems at jubilee moments. At the end of World War II the London body issued a volume edited by Frank Francis, The Bibliographical Society 1892-1942: Studies in Retrospect. Half a century later, Peter Davison, who taught bibliography amongst other things at the University of Sydney in the early 1960s, edited the more ambitious The Book Encompassed: Studies in Twentieth-Century Bibliography. Very properly debates and the identification of gaps were not absent from these pages. On the other side of the Atlantic Hope Mayo was working on a history of the Bibliographical Society of America and presented a substantial overview of the topic in her presidential address to the annual general meeting in January 2004. Alongside this one could put Brian McMullin's article four years later on the hundredth anniversary of that Society's Papers.' (Publication abstract)

'Looking back over the 25 years of the Society since the early 1990s one sees a set of solid achievements, important changes of external circumstances, and a consequent need to change or at least refocus the Society's energies. Let me start in a slightly statistical way by summarising the tangible achievements of the Society since 1993. At our anniversary meeting we can celebrate: 24 volumes of Script and Print and its predecessor, the Bulletin; six Occasional Publications; three Essay Prizes awarded; 26 successful conferences staged; a dozen conference travel bursaries distributed; three speakers sponsored at the Melbourne Rare Book Week; a functioning webpage that draws around 700 hits per month; Facebook and Twitter presences; and governmentally speaking, ten bloodless changes of Executive; one act of incorporation; and zero fiscal scandals, bankruptcies or defalcations.' (Publication abstract)

'Reflecting is a useful exercise, especially when there are achievements to be discerned. I refer here to the collective achievements made by members of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) while I was President from late 2011 to 2018. Apart from a few bumps, and some no-goes, there have been solid, worthy advances.' (Publication abstract)

'The aim of this article is to illustrate what must be a commonplace observation: that libraries on the periphery (by which I mean those in major English-speaking countries beyond the British Isles and North America, for present purposes Australia and New Zealand) are generally neglected by analytical and descriptive bibliographers based in the centre-neglected to the extent that the holdings of peripheralist libraries are likely to be overlooked or ignored, despite the fact that they may (nay: do) contain significant collections of one kind or another (as well as significant individual items) that, were they known to the scholarly and collecting world, would serve to add to or correct the bibliographical record.' (Publication abstract)