Antiquarian Book Fair

[Music] 00:07 I've been involved in antiquarian book 00:10 selling for about 34 years or something 00:12 like that you just never know what 00:14 you're going to bump into and it's a 00:16 great opportunity to see some really 00:17 fascinating and an unusual material that 00:20 you're just not going to see elsewhere 00:21 actually this little item this is just 00:24 about eleven months ahead of the Battle 00:26 of Agincourt 00:27 I've never I mean this is something you 00:29 just don't see anywhere else we don't 00:32 talk about those my name is Vic so Shack 00:41 I'm president of the antiquarian book 00:43 sellers Association of America the ABAA 00:45 they are the hosts of this event it's a 00:48 trade association for about 450 00:51 booksellers throughout the country 00:52 you've got collectors you've got 00:55 institutional representatives you've got 00:58 booksellers in the ABA who are in 01:00 exhibiting you've got international 01:02 booksellers so it draws a wide wide 01:04 audience I think about the quality of 01:06 what it is is it important as something 01:09 important or otherwise interesting is 01:11 the particular copy of high-quality is 01:14 it going to satisfy a serious collector 01:16 someone who's a connoisseur will 01:18 appreciate it yes it would have to be a 01:20 reason for someone to care about it at 01:21 all there's a favorite work of 01:23 literature or an important historical or 01:25 scientific work a beautifully made book 01:27 but it's also the history of the copy 01:29 did the author give it to someone or is 01:32 a copy and appropriate interesting 01:34 condition is there something significant 01:36 about it individual nature that would 01:38 make a buyer want it rather than some 01:40 other copy kind of interesting thing 01:42 that I've been working on for a number 01:43 of years is I now have all the remaining 01:45 books from the Ira Gershwin library 01:48 collectors are trying to build up 01:50 collections in their own areas sometimes 01:52 no the dealers sometimes find dealers 01:54 who are totally new to them which is why 01:56 these fairs are always so exciting this 01:58 show is great there is a very 02:00 interesting 02:02 mix of young and old people and it's 02:05 really exciting to see young people 02:06 coming in and getting excited about 02:08 ephemera my boss does a really good job 02:10 of representing lots of different 02:12 literary movements lots of different 02:13 artistic movements we have a lot of 02:15 artists books artists monographs 02:17 literary first editions personal letters 02:20 personal documents that type of thing I 02:22 see the best of the best and like the 02:23 most interesting them the most 02:26 fascinating things my background was 02:28 first in journalism and then next in 02:31 public relations and it actually became 02:33 a natural progression to selling books 02:36 it's good to come to shows and connect 02:38 with collectors and help put books in 02:41 their hands and move them along into the 02:43 new collections that they're going into 02:45 ephemera is a very broad category and 02:48 the idea is that it's material that has 02:50 been discarded but it used to be useful 02:53 in other words ephemera is often used as 02:57 a research instrument to study former 03:00 times and social and cultural values as 03:02 a physicist I'm very interested in the 03:04 limits of physics to describe human 03:06 affairs I think both are important in 03:08 assessing the meaning which is what 03:11 we're after when we read ephemera is 03:13 something about the meaning of those 03:14 lives I mean everything we do that we 03:17 present is telling a different story 03:19 where books tell stories in one way when 03:22 we were presenting a collection of 03:24 ephemera or something about it we're 03:26 telling a new story I do a lot of work 03:28 with works by children and this one 03:32 certainly tells a story she did about a 03:34 hundred and twenty-five different pages 03:37 she tells stories of everyday life and 03:40 things that we still experience today I 03:43 am here representing the miniature book 03:45 Society so I make miniature pop-up books 03:48 special collections aren't only antique 03:51 books they're also contemporary book 03:54 artists books just learning the 03:56 engineering that I put into it took me 03:59 almost 20 years so we have a whole case 04:01 of information books manuscripts Diaries 04:05 photo albums about the national parks 04:08 some of which are very rare and hard to 04:11 find 04:11 others are very common and yet they each 04:14 tell the nation's story through the 04:16 National Park units they always wanted 04:18 to be a National Park Service ranger 04:20 personally for me it was a lifelong 04:22 dream so to put on the flat Ranger hat 04:25 and the gray and green uniform was a 04:26 dream come true two of the best jobs 04:29 ever working as a ranger for the 04:31 National Park Service and selling books 04:34 back when you're in your early 30s it 04:36 seemed like it wasn't a problem at all 04:38 to leave a federal job with good 04:41 benefits and pay and dive into the world 04:44 of books that is not really the highest 04:47 paying of professions but if you love 04:51 what you're doing the rest comes 04:53 naturally I've always been a reader 04:55 in the 80s I've found Charles Dickens I 04:58 was in my 30s 04:59 his works resonated with me I started 05:03 collecting first editions next thing you 05:05 knew I had a large collection next thing 05:08 you knew I was buying and selling to 05:10 support my book buying habit and at the 05:13 time I was in the Coast Guard I'm an 05:15 introvert and I would often escape from 05:18 work into a novel or what-have-you one 05:21 of our efforts right now is to bring the 05:23 young the new generation in in this 05:25 wonderful world of books in printed 05:27 matter this is the manuscript of Jean 05:29 Paul starts what is literature I was 05:32 doing research on John Steinbeck for my 05:34 senior thesis so I had to go find the 05:36 primary source documents like this and 05:38 then to see his handwriting is messy he 05:41 spells things wrong 05:42 he didn't just you know come up with the 05:44 words like he put a pen to the paper and 05:46 he wrote it and like there's something 05:48 so magical about that and that's when I 05:50 was like I want to do this for the rest 05:52 of my life like somehow someway I can't 05:54 and I can't not be around this this is 05:57 on being ill by Virginia Woolf and she 05:59 held it just like I'm holding it right 06:01 now and there's just something really 06:02 amazing about that that sense of tactile 06:06 connection to her that you can't get 06:09 that obviously she's you know she's 06:12 someone in the past and things like this 06:15 are why I'm interested in this field I 06:17 want to make sure that this object 06:20 and future iterations of objects like 06:22 this I want to make sure that they can 06:23 be accessible to people the intrinsic 06:25 value is through preserving history 06:27 history doesn't have to be something 06:28 that happened a thousand years ago five 06:31 hundred years ago history is something 06:32 that happened last year I mean obviously 06:35 we can't save all history but we can try