07/21/2025
Earlier this month, I attended the 2025 SHARP conference with the theme of “Communities and Values of the Book”. With time spent at both University of Rochester River Campus Libraries and at Rochester Institute of Technology, the week provided me an opportunity to dip my toes back into academia and learn from countless ultra-intelligent international scholars. SHARP, or the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, chose Rochester as its host city this year, and with good reason; we have so many great organizations and groups which work to secure the foundation of books in our lives. I’ve always called myself a lifelong learner, and I’m really grateful I had the opportunity to attend this conference. Other than being immersed in the beautiful surroundings of these campuses and soaking up knowledge like a sponge, a few highlights of the week included:
📕 Printed a letterpress poster on a Goudy press, and then did a VR simulation of the same process. RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection at RIT Libraries
📙 A demonstration of MISHA, or the Multispectral Imaging System for Historical Artifacts, which captures loss in documents that have faded or been lost to time. It’s like magic, but with science! RIT Center for Imaging Science
📒 Toured the Image Permanence Institute and saw how super smart scientists test and preserve a variety of materials for preservation.
📗 A keynote presentation from Katie Mitchell on her new book “Prose to the People”, all about black-owned bookstores.
📘 A panel discussion of the Visual Studies Workshop Press and the massive collection of artists books they’ve published.
📓Other speaker talks I attended included topics like early 20th-century female wood engravers, The Club of Printing Women, traditional book packaging and distribution, pop stars and their book collections, using AI for translation of foreign texts, and the proliferation social media in reading trends.
