As a member of the Rare Books subgroup of the Library Association of Ireland, I receive interesting notifications. One that came in the mail today, just before I went off to my Norwegian language class, was a notice of a conference in St. Andrews University in Scotland. (Of course, we all know who studied there!) The Conference title is Documenting the early-modern book world: Inventories and catalogues in manuscript and print. And if you follow the link you can see the list of papers to be given. Really obscure topics but to me very interesting. I love to make lists – and particularly lists of my books. The first session of the conference is titled Booklists in 15th and 16th century Venice. The second session will be about Private Collections. Then we have Sales Catalogues. And so it goes on. But the one that particularly caught my eye was the session on Lists in north-western Europe and a paper to be delivered by a person from the University of Bergen on The market for books in early-modern Norway. Right up my alley, I thought, to go along with my Norwegian language course which also covers -broadly – history and geography and politics.
The conference is in early July – a great excuse to go to Scotland – but I already have other plans. There is a lot going on, including the Association of Guilds of Weavers Spinners and Dyers Summer School to be held in Edinburgh at around the same time, but I have already booked a place at Music Camp here in Tacoma, just south of Seattle. And the big family reunion is going to be in New Hampshire/Maine on the 4th of July.
