LHRT (Library History Round Table)

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The mission of the Library History Round Table (LHRT) is to encourage research and publication on library history and promote awareness and discussion of historical issues in librarianship.

Learn more about LHRT on the ALA website.

Biblioclasm and the Bibliographical Society of America

  • 1.  Biblioclasm and the Bibliographical Society of America

    Posted 2 hours ago

    The  latest issue of  The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America includes a "Letter from the Editors"--Sarah Werner and Jonathan Senchyne --

    "Biblioclasm is cultural violence that targets texts in order to target the people and claims to memory sustained by those texts, violence that has existed for centuries and that continues to exist today."

    The editors state:

     Across the remaining issues of volume 120, our covers will explore biblioclasm across different scales and media: war and human rights, where libraries and archives are targeted as embodiments of communal memory; cybercrime, where the destruction or hostage-taking of digital records refigures biblioclasm for networked collections; and censorship, where suppression and erasure become instruments of political and religious authority, used to discipline free expression and to narrow the range of voices, beliefs, and histories that can be publicly preserved and heard. In bringing these contexts together, we mean to underscore that biblioclasm is not only an event, but a set of pressures that determines what textual artifacts can endure, what histories can be written, and, crucially, what futures are possible."

    *  (Letter from the Editors Sarah Werner and Jonathan Senchyne. The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 2026 120:11-3.)

    Many presidents of the   Bibliographical Society of America have been librarians. Here is a Table I made at  Wikipedia:
     
     


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    Kathleen de la Peña McCook
    Distinguished University Professor
    School of Information
    University of South Florida
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