Debora Dyer Mayer
There were two goals in mind in planning the program for the 1995 Annual Meeting. First, to develop an interesting and rich program that reflected the diverse interests within the Book and Paper Group membership and secondly, to select abstracts that related well to one another or addressed common themes.
To accomplish this it was decided to support a day and a half of programming. A full day was devoted to formal presentations with general themes relating to fixatives and consolidation, architectural drawings, book bindings, and historical and technical research. These topics emerged from the abstracts submitted. Some abstracts were also solicited to strengthen the grouping of talks. A second day (half day) was added to include a session organized by the LCCDG dealing with 19th and 20th century books in circulating collections. LCCDG selected a speaker, Mr. Tanselle, to facilitate the session. An Open Forum Session was organized by the BPG Chair to address the directives of the AIC Board regarding commentaries for The Code of Ethics. This session was held separately from the business meeting in order to keep the business meeting as concise as possible. The second day concluded with a reception at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts organized by Kathy Ludwig and Elizabeth Buschor.
Increasing the BPG Session to a day and a half of programming without having concurrent sessions was tried as an experiment this year. In addition, having the LCCDG submit a proposal for a session and having it sponsored as a BPG session was also new for this year. If there are issues or themes the membership feels need to be addressed, or meeting formats to be added or changed, it is important to share these ideas with the Program Chair as soon as possible. Planning for next year's meeting is already beginning.
A very big thank you to all who submitted abstracts for review. We had over twice as many submissions as we were able to accept. This is the largest turn out by the membership that any one can remember. A thank you to Sarah Melching, the Assistant Program Chair, for her work, support and good humor as we developed the program together. I would also like to thank the rest of the BPG Executive Committee, Kathy Ludwig and Elizabeth Buschor for arranging the reception, the AIC office, and especially this year's speakers with whom I very much enjoyed working.