Sidney E. Berger was the Ann C. Pingree Director of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum of Salem; he is now that library’s Director Emeritus. For the past 18 years he has been on the faculties of Simmons University and the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, teaching rare-book classes in both institutions’ library schools. He was also Curator of Printed Books and then Curator of Manuscripts at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, and he headed the Special Collections Department at the University of California, Riverside. He is widely published in several fields, and his book Rare Books and Specials Collections won the 2015 ABC-CLIO/American Library Association award for the Best Book in Library Literature. He makes paper and casts type by hand, and he is the proprietor of the Doe Press, publishing short texts from handset types, printed on a handpress
As Mark Twain observed, there is a world of difference between 'the almost right word and the right word.' In this enlarged edition, Professor Berger gives us the right word for every possible term related to books. Going far beyond Carter's ABC, he has produced a true Booktionary, defining thousands of terms related to the making, getting, keeping, trading, and loving of books. The whole history of books and printing, bookselling and collecting, librarianship, and much more is in this immensely useful resource. Berger's definitions, so wonderfully precise and clear, give us the confidence to speak intelligently about books--always using just the right word. Sid Berger has been a positive influence on the book collecting world for many decades. His expertise ranges from the micro (his paper collection for example) to the macro (the vast language of old and rare books in all its forms) and is painstaking, accurate, well presented, and up-to-date. The second edition greatly enlarges and improves the first and will be the standard to which all collectors, librarians, and booksellers should adhere.