2010 Convention Page
Presenters
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Here's your chance to learn more about the speakers at this year's Convention. |
Don Baldwin
I was a book collector and avid reader from the early 1950s. Bookmarks became a passion when I ran out of space for books. It was hot August day in 1970 I came across my first metal bookmark. By the end of the day I had three. Traveling from Maine to North Carolina on a regular basis gave me many opportunities to scout numerous antique and thrift stores to find those little gems. By my retirement in 1990 I had three large shoe boxes of metal, bone, wood, plastic, ribbon and leather bookmarks. There was another large box of paper and card stock items. The challenge? To make some sense from the boxes.
Presentations:
Some Thoughts On Organizing a Bookmark Collection
Deanna Dahlsad
Deanna Dahlsad's collecting addiction began in childhood. Raised in a family of antique collectors and dealers, she was forced to wake early on weekends and dig through the tossed-away bits of other peoples' lives. Now, in the guise of "writer," she has found the way to justify her obsessions with objects, her unnatural appreciation for discussing them, and her proclivity to sleep in. Among her many gigs, Dahlsad is a staff writer for Collectors' Quest, runs Inherited Values, and her blog Kitsch Slapped; but most of the time, she feels her objects are cooler than she is. Aside from appearing all over the internets, items from her collection appear in such places as the Virtue, Vice, and Contraband: A History of Contraception in America exhibit at the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum (at Case Western Reserve University) and The Hingham Shipyard Historical Exhibit
Presentations:
Are You An Embarrassed Collector? Don't Be!
Laine Farley
Laine Farley is a digital librarian who misses being around the look, feel and smell of real books. Her collection of over 3,000 bookmarks began with a serendipitous find while reviewing books donated to the library. Fortunately, her complementary collection of articles and books about bookmarks provides an excuse for her to get back to libraries and try her hand at writing about bookmarks.
Presentations:
Research For Your Bookmark Collection: Using the Internet and Beyond
Alan Irwin
Although Alan had accumulated bookmarks for years, it wasn't until he'd bought an advertising bookmark from the 1920's for an all girl jazz band in Paris that he realized he had a collection. Being an engineer, he decided to explore what it means to be a bookmark collector and document that exploration at the Bookmark-Collector website. He quickly discovered a diverse but disconnected array of bookmark related groups and topics scattered across the net, and these documented discoveries became the weekly Bookmark Bookmarks survey of bookmark related internet links.
An experienced collector and crafter (he often jokes that his real hobby is hobbies), Alan realized that the conventions he attends for other hobbies provided a chance to grow and learn in a way that isn't available to bookmark collectors. Inital exploration of creating a tradional convention for bookmark collectors proved impractical. Then, while attending professional "webinars" at work, the idea of a virtual convention started to form. After enthusiastic response from everyone who heard the idea, the Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention was born.
Presentations:
Lauren Roberts
Lauren became a bookmark collector purely by accident. She blames it on the hair. "I was browsing the shelves at local used bookstore," she notes "when I noticed an old olive-colored book entitled The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac. Being fond of both old volumes and books about books, I pulled it off the shelf only to have it fall open to pages 55-56. Tucked neatly at the beginning of the chapter entitled 'Baldness and Intellectuality,' a bookmark particularly apropos to its location, sat quietly: hair. Specifically, a clump of golden brown hair, male from the length of it. It had lain undisturbed for so long it had even left visual stigmata on the page under it. I was enchanted and remain so. It is the only bookmark I own that stays in the book and the only one made of hair. But that experience has grown into a collection of more than 1,300 bookmarks."
Her collection has no particular focus. "Whatever attracts me," she says, and so the collection has bookmarks made of silver, brass, stainless steel, leather, paper, silk, linen, fiberglass, of bookmarks that date from 1865 to 2009, of bookmarks that span subjects from advertising to war, of bookmarks that come from countries ranging from Australia to Serbia, and of bookmarks that ranged from free to several hundred American dollars. She loves to share her collection, though she is cautious about boring non-bookmark people. (Are there any?)
In January 2006, Lauren started up BiblioBuffet, an online literary salon. BiblioBuffet has grown enormously from its wobbly beginnings and now boasts eight contributing writers and a managing editor. One of its primary features is a bi-weekly column on bookmarks. Co-written by Lauren Roberts and Laine Farley, another enthusiastic collector, "On Marking Books" focuses on bookmarks. Topics have included the history of various trends and companies behind advertising bookmarks, the historical significance of bookmarks, bookmark legends, bookmarks in war, odes to bookmarks, bookmark storage and display ideas, bookmarks in history, die-cut bookmarks, souvenir bookmarks, and more. There's always something new about bookmarks, particularly old ones. Lauren is not only an enthusiastic collector of the old and the new, but also an "enabler" who is always willing to help another admirer get started.
Presentations:
How To Store And Display Your Bookmark Collection
Buying Antique Bookmarks On eBay
Olga Sotomayor Sanchez
http://puntodelectura.blogspot.com/2006/01/el-por-qu-del-hobby.html
(PD: Texto sin tilde) En ese link de mi blog esta toda la informacion. Al 2009 tengo mas de 9.000 unidades de 60 paises distintos e intercambio con mas de 100 coleccionistas de todo el mundo. Vivo en santiago, tengo 35 años y colecciono desde el 2003
Saludos
This is the link to my blog post with information about how I became a collector. Now in 2009, I have more than 9,000 units from 60 different countries and exchange with more than 100 collectors around the world. I live in Santiago (Chile), I'm 35 and I've been a collector since 2003.
Greetings
Unfortunately, due to a personal situation, Olga will be unable to attend the convention.
Presentations:
Exhibiting Bookmarks - CANCELED
Jen Funk Weber
Jen Funk Weber does not collect bookmarks. In fact, she's a bit of an anti-collector, harping on a desire to "travel light" through life, but we are an open-minded and inclusive organization and don't hold it against her. She does, however, appreciate and enjoy other peoples' bookmark collections, and she makes embroidered bookmarks, uses them, sells them, gives them away, and teaches others to make them. She makes other kinds of bookmarks as well; she's a bit like a ravenous greyhound in a butcher shop when it comes to crafts: she's into everything and doesn't know when to stop.
Jen is a children's author, owner of Funk & Weber Designs (a needlework design company), and founder of the Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy program that celebrates and promotes reading and stitching. She dreams of one day hosting a Battle of the Bookmarks competition with the Bookmark Collector and BiblioBuffet.
Presentations:
The Making of an Embroidered Bookmark and the Stitching for Literacy Program
