Bibliography implies community. It focuses on understanding the creation and circulation of texts as physical objects; and implicitly recognizes that behind each surviving object, no matter how small, there are communities at work: booksellers and collectors, volunteers saving a local organizers' flyers in their closets, the curatorial staff at a museum. Yet at the same time, bibliographical teaching and scholarship have historically focused on a narrow range of materials and creators, even while broadening in chronological range and subject matter. Having centered a canon defined by Western European values, the discipline has built a body of knowledge in which large gaps remain to be filled, especially regarding groups kept outside of centers of political and institutional power on the basis of their race, ability, class-background, gender identity or sexual orientation, or any combination of these factors.

This panel aims to highlight the work of people filling those gaps, with the explicit intention of demonstrating how bibliographical scholarship and practices can be channeled toward a more realistic understanding of historic and contemporary relationships between people and texts. Our conversation looks to expand bibliographies and the communities they connect by broadening our view of who does bibliography, and how.

Panelists Eyob Derillo (British Library), Hudda Khaireh (Thick/er Black Lines artist collective/OOMK) and Brooke Palmieri (Camp Books),  offer perspectives from traditional sites of bibliographical practice – the bookshop, the library, and the academy – as well as from marginalized or minority groups working as "bibliographers" on their own and for themselves. This panel aims to fill gaps not only by enumerating and analyzing more material, but also by including and recognizing new voices and perspectives in the conversation. Fuchsia Voremberg (Maggs) will moderate.

Please click here for more information about the panelists, including biographical statements and abstracts of their presentations.

A note about access to Maggs: the floor of Maggs on which the event will be held is not wheelchair accessible. They recently restored their lift, but since this is a historic building, the lift shaft runs to landings of the stairwell rather than the main upstairs levels. Therefore access to the event will be limited by one flight of 15 steps either up or down. The event will be recorded by video and posted to YouTube, and anyone who cannot attend in person can email bsa@bibsocamer.org to be notified when the video is published online.