February 18, 2005

Dear Fellow Members,

I am writing, as always at this time of year, to notify you of the Society's annual meeting and to bring you up to date regarding recent news of the Society. The meeting will take place on Friday, March 18, at 4:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library. Following a brief business session, we will hear a talk by Terry Belanger entitled "If They're So Rare, Why Are There So Many of Them? Rare Books at Virginia in an Electronic Age." Terry, as you all know, is a member of the Society's Council, the founder and director of Rare Book School, and Honorary Curator of Special Collections in the University of Virginia Library. It is in the last of these capacities that he will be speaking to us, as our way of recognizing and celebrating the new Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at Virginia, which was opened last fall. I should add that the completion of this project was one of the accomplishments that brought to Karin Wittenborg last October the Elizabeth Zintl Leadership Award of the University of Virginia Women's Center (Karin is University Librarian and another of our Council members). Following Terry's talk, there will be a reception in the Rare Book School rooms in Alderman Library.

In the business part of the meeting, preceding Terry's talk, we shall vote on the re-election of David Seaman to the Council, for a term ending in 2012. David, as you know, has played a major role in developing the Society's electronic publication program, which encompasses previously published works (like the entire run of Studies in Bibliography) and new works as well. Formerly the head of Virginia's Electronic Text Center, he is now the director of the Digital Library Federation under the auspices of the Council on Library and Information Resources in Washington.

As is our custom, we have scheduled our meeting to fall during the Virginia Festival of the Book, and we hope that its listing in the Festival's official program will cause interested nonmembers who are attending the Festival to come to our meeting as well. We also hope that our out-of-town members will find more reasons to come to Charlottesville at that time, since there will be many events in addition to the Society's meeting to attract them. Two such events are two panels on Walt Whitman to be held the next day after our meeting--a particularly appropriate subject since the Barrett Collection in Virginia's special-collections library contains important Whitman manuscript material. For a full program of the Festival, which runs from the 16th through the 20th of March, visit the Festival's website at .

During the past year, the Society has been recognized in two significant ways. On November 5, 2 004, the Times Literary Supplement of London selected Studies in Bibliography as one of five scholarly journals to be discussed in its "Learned Journals Issue." David McKitterick, whom many of you know as an important book-history scholar and the Librarian of Trinity College Cambridge, discussed the traditions, accomplishments, and continuing vitality of Studies in Bibliography. Then on January 29, 2005, the American Printing History Association, at its annual meeting in New York, presented its Institutional Award to the Society for the large body of scholarly publications, including Studies in Bibliography, that the Society has produced, in both printed and electronic form, over its fifty-eight-year history. My remarks accepting this award on behalf of the Society are available through the "Important News" link on the Society's website at <http://etext.lib.Virginia.edu/bsuva/>.

Speaking of Studies in Bibliography, volume 55 has been published since our 2004 meeting and has attracted considerable attention, since it includes color plates for the first time, used to illustrate Gordon N. Ray's "The Art Deco Book in France." Another innovation is to have a contribution to Studies accompanied by supplementary material on the Society's website: the 183 slides that Ray used to illustrate his lectures in their oral presentation (only eight of which are included as plates in Studies) are available on the website, and marginal notations in the printed text indicate where each one is relevant. We are indebted to Matthew Gibson and Cindy Filer Speer of the Electronic Text Center for their cordial and expert help in mounting these illustrations on the website. The new volume of Studies contains other fascinating and important articles, and we must once again congratulate David Vander Meulen and his assistant, Elizabeth Lynch, for so splendidly continuing the great tradition of this journal. As for other Society publications, two new volumes are scheduled to appear in 2005: a separate printing of Ray's The Art Deco Book in France, with three added indexes, and my Textual Criticism since Greg: A Chronicle. 1950-2000 (a collection of six essays first published in Studies).

Each year's new volume of Studies is distributed by the University of Virginia Press, and the Society's Secretary has a limited supply of most earlier volumes. All the Society's other publications in print (including the three recently published reprints--Fredson Bowers's Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing and my Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing and The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers) are available from Oak Knoll Books. Let me remind you that members of the Society who identify themselves will be given a 10% discount. If you don't receive Oak Knoll catalogues and would like to, just write to 310 Delaware Street, New Castle, Delaware 19720; or phone 302-328-7232 or 1-800-996-2556; or fax 302-328-7274; or email <oakknoll@oakknoll.com>. Oak Knoll's complete catalogue can also be browsed at <www.oakknoll.com>.

Although I have already mentioned most of the members of the Council, I want to thank them all as a group for their loyal service to the Society: Ruthe Battestin, Terry Belanger, Kathryn Morgan, David Seaman, David Vander Meulen, and Karin Wittenborg. I also want to give special thanks to our Secretary-Treasurer, Anne Ribble, who handles the day-to-day affairs of the Society so skillfully and effectively that I think of her as the model of what a person in this position should be. The Society (like all scholarly organizations) needs membership support, and I urge each of you during the coming year to recommend the Society to potential new members, perhaps pointing out to them that the basic membership of $55, which brings with it a volume of Studies is less than the price of Studies when purchased from the University Press ($70). (There is also a special student rate of $27.50.) And I urge each of you, if you can, to increase your own membership contribution--to Contributing Membership ($150-$249), or Patron ($250-$499), or Benefactor ($500 or more). The Society's flourishing publication program cannot exist without your generous support, and your contributions are a sign that you approve of what the Society is doing.

With thanks and best wishes to all of you.