The Bibliographical Society

12/03/2026

The Society’s next meeting will take place on Tuesday, 17 March 2026, at 5.30 p.m., at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, and online via Zoom. It is the custom for the President to address the Society during the second year of his or her presidency, and Dr Nicolas Bell will be taking this opportunity to commemorate the centenary of the publication of the Short-Title Catalogue. Drawing on a newly discovered collection of papers, the lecture will chart the early stages in what is probably the largest undertaking in the history of the Bibliographical Society.

To attend online, please register for the event here:

Drawing on a newly discovered collection of papers, this lecture will chart the early stages in what is probably the largest undertaking in the history of the Bibliographical Society.

06/03/2026

The video from our Winter Virtual Visit to the Vatican Apostolic Library is now available on our YouTube channel:

Founded in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V to promote Humanistic studies, the Vatican Library is one of the world’s most famous libraries. Often viewed principally a...

04/03/2026

For this month’s Council’s Choice, Alessandro Bianchi has chosen AGORHA, a suite of thematic databases bringing together digitised documents, archival sources, and biographical records relating to individuals, collections, and institutions in France:

AGORHA: connecting book and art history The online portal AGORHA, developed by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, comprises a suite of thematic databases bringing together digitised documents, archival sources, and biographical records relating to individuals, collections, and institutio...

18/02/2026

On Friday 13 March, an in-person training day in digital methods for bibliographical study has been arranged by the Institute of English Studies and the Bibliographical Society, in association with the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester who will host the event. The workshop will provide an overview of current digital bibliographic methods and resources followed by a hands-on introduction to some key skills, where participants will learn how to process and clean bibliographical data; about record linking and querying, the uses of data visualisation and computer vision in bibliography; and good practice in data management. The session will be led by Giles Bergel (Senior Researcher in Digital Humanities in the Department of Engineering Science in the University of Oxford) and Christopher Ohge (Senior Lecturer in Digital Approaches to Literature at the School of Advanced Study, University of London). For further information and to book a place, see

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18/02/2026

On Tuesday 3 March 2026, at 15.30 GMT, the Bibliographical Society will travel virtually to the Vatican Apostolic Library. Founded in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V to promote Humanistic studies, the Vatican Library is one of the world’s most famous libraries. Often viewed principally as a repository of manuscripts, it preserves much more, including printed books, graphic prints, and coins and medals. The virtual visit will take place on Zoom and will begin with pre-recorded introductions to the library’s history, its departments and its collections. A live discussion and Q&A will follow. This visit is made possible by the generous consent of his excellency Abp. Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi, Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, and the Rev. Mauro Mantovani, SDB, the Library’s Prefect. Our host is Dr Stephen Metzger of the Manuscripts Department. For this very special occasion, please join us online by registering at this link:

On Tuesday, 3 March 2026, at 15.30 GMT the Bibliographical Society will travel virtually to the Vatican Apostolic Library. Founded in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V to promote Humanistic studies, the Vatican Library is one of the world’s most famous libraries. Often viewed principally as a repository of ...

12/02/2026

The fourth meeting of the 2025/2026 season will take place on Tuesday 17 February 2026 at 5.30 p.m., at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, and online via Zoom. Dr Barbara Heritage, of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, will take as her title ‘Staying in Print: The Brontës, 1846-1876’. Although Jane Eyre has never gone out of print, not all of the Brontë sisters’ works enjoyed such a wide readership at their outset. Drawing on bibliographical evidence gathered from hundreds of original copies along with information gleaned from extant publishers’ ledgers, this talk will trace the early editions of the works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë during their first three decades in print.

There is no need for you to register if you are joining us in person. To attend online, please register for the event here:

Drawing on bibliographical evidence gathered from hundreds of original copies along with information gleaned from extant publishers’ ledgers, this talk will trace the early editions, printings, and issues of the works of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë during their first three decades in print,...

03/02/2026

Our friends at Cambridge University Library are hosting the AI for Cultural Heritage Hub on 20 March. Bring along your data or challenging use cases - whether that’s card catalogues that need converting into machine-readable format, texts to transcribe and structure (in any language or script), or images to analyse - and help put ArCH to the test.

Get hands-on with the AI for Cultural Heritage Hub (ArCH)!

02/02/2026

For this month's Council's Choice, Joseph Hone highlights the Catalog of Distinctive Type (1660-1700):

The Catalog of Distinctive Type (1660-1700) If, like me, you spend a lot of time worrying about who printed what in later seventeenth-century England, then the Catalog of Distinctive Type (CDT), compiled by Christopher Warren and Sam Lemley of Carnegie Mellon University, will be an invaluable resour...

29/01/2026

Our friends at UCL are hosting an event examining how archives, libraries, and museums underpin a functioning democracy:

This event is organised by the UCL Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism.

21/01/2026

Please join us for a joint event with the Institute of English Studies on 3 February: ‘Shelf Improvement: How to Collect and Present a Prize-Worthy Book Collection’. What makes a good collection, how to craft a winning entry, and how to avoid potential pitfalls. More information & booking at:

Join judges and winners for this behind-the-scenes look at book collecting prizes. In this event we will discuss what makes a good collection, how to craft a winning entry, and how to avoid potential pitfalls in the process. Two prize judges (Anke Timmermann, Cambridge Rose Prize, and Jeremy Carson,...

20/01/2026

We are having technological troubles with internet at the Society of Antiquaries and tonight’s lecture will likely not be broadcast online. Our speaker will be recording his talk at a later date.

15/01/2026

The third meeting of the 2025/2026 season will take place on Tuesday 20 January 2026, at 5.30 p.m., at the Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, and online via Zoom. Professor Alan Nelson will address us on ‘The printed-book catalogues of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872): eccentric publications of an eccentric man’. The talk will reveal how Sir Thomas Phillipps’s catalogues of his vast library of printed books, published chaotically between 1819 and 1871, have experienced a similarly chaotic afterlife.

There is no need for you to register if you are joining us in person, but you might wish to do so to enable you to join online in case your plans change and you cannot make it to the Society of Antiquaries for the lecture. To attend online, please register for the event here:

Sir Thomas Phillipps's catalogues of his vast library of printed books, published chaotically 1819-1871, have experienced a similarly chaotic afterlife.