Eleanore Stewart
Program Planning
Calls for papers went out in the July and September AIC Newsletter with a deadline for submission of abstracts on October 1. We received a total of 22 abstracts. Four were rejected and one withdrew so that the program consisted of 17 papers. There was sufficient response to the disaster recovery topic to allow for a half day session. Speakers from this session were encouraged to submit their papers for inclusion (along with all of the disaster related papers delivered at AIC) in a special publication organized by the AIC office. The Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group submitted a proposal for a program to address the connoisseurship and conservation of Paperback Books and the Archives Discussion Group proposed a follow up session to last year's discussion of surface cleaning.
The Program Chair is responsible for the organization of the sessions and communication with speakers and the AIC office. This requires a lot of paperwork throughout the planning year: letters to speakers of accepted talks were mailed out by November 15 and a draft of the program was submitted to the Recovery Session Coordinator and the AIC office. Function sheets detailing the meeting facility and audio visual requirements were filled out and mailed to the AIC office by December 1.
The next deadline was February 27 when abstracts were due in camera ready form to the AIC office. Submissions describing the program were made to the Book and Paper Group column of the AIC Newsletter and appeared in every issue. Finally, in late May a letter covering last minute details of the presentations was sent to all BPG speakers.
The Archives' Discussion Group meeting was the first BPG event of the 1998 Arlington AIC meeting. It was held on Thursday June 4 from 12:30 - 2:00 and was chaired by Hilary Kaplan.
The business meeting was held Friday morning June 5th from 7:30 - 9:00, before the first BPG session.
The BPG Session took place on June 5 and 6 and consisted of one day of papers on general book and paper topics and one half day addressing the issues of disaster recovery. The BPG luncheon was held Friday at noon; there was no program associated with the luncheon this year. Following the disaster session on Saturday morning was the LCCDG program held Saturday afternoon and chaired by Maria Grandinette and Randy Silverman. The final BPG event was the reception held Saturday evening at the Shakespeare Folger Library.
All social events were ticketed and were organized by Assistant Program Chair Nancy Heugh. The breakfast meeting had 187 registrants, the luncheon, 167. Catering for the reception was provided by the event staff at the Folger Library and members took public transportation to the event. The reception costs totaled $3,745 for 140 people ($26.75/person); 145 tickets were sold at $10 a ticket (this included wine).
Registration for the Book and Paper Group was 303. The room was set for 375 and all chairs were full for the main BPG program.