« January 2022 »

Su	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Bookselling Research Network

Location:: Zoom - online
Time:: Friday 21 January 2022, 15:00–17:00
Contact:: Dr Eben Muse - e.muse@bangor.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce the first annual meeting of the Bookselling Research Network will be held on Friday, January 21, 2022, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm GMT.

Meryl Halls (Managing Director of the Booksellers Association of the UK & Ireland) will start the meeting off by speaking on current bookselling challenges and successes. Her presentation will be followed by a discussion of an agenda of collaborative network activities for the coming year.

There is no charge for attendance, and you can register here

The BRN was started in the Spring of 2020 to encourage communication between booksellers and those who research and write about bookselling so that they can share information and collaborate in strengthening the bookselling sector. We hope to develop the field of bookselling so that knowledge gaps are filled and research can further demonstrate the impact that bookshops and booksellers have (and have had) on our cultures, economies, and societies.

We expect to achieve that by

Encouraging research into bookshop-related histories, economic environments, professional practices and cultural impacts;
Making bookselling research available via public events (conferences, symposia, lectures and workshops) and publications (journal articles, trade articles, books, reports);
Building an evidence base for the strategic development of bookselling in both its physical and online forms;
Raising awareness of the cultural, economic and social value of bookshops (in all their forms) and bookselling across the world.

Although our initial activities have been severely restricted by the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on all our lives, we are eager to build some momentum now and take the Network to the next level. So far, we have begun a series of interviews being made available on the BRN website (Bookselling Interview Series Archives), and intend to provide several more of these during the coming year: please get in touch if you would like to contribute! We have also begun to report on relevant conferences with the first being on El comercio de librería en América Latina held in Bogota, Columbia in April, so please also get in touch if you know of other relevant events we can cover (or, indeed, if you’d be willing to report on!)

We’d like to invite you all to a 3-part online series of symposia in 2022, Bookshops Matter: The Matter of Bookshops. These 3-hour symposia will be free of charge and held in March, May and July. Each will be on a bookselling theme to be agreed upon at the January BRN meeting in January. Each will feature guest speakers from business and/or academia.

We are also planning a 2-day hybrid bookselling conference, provisionally titled Bookshops: Selling Books, Supporting Communities, to be held online and at the book-town Hay-on-Wye. A call for papers and opportunities to register will be sent out following the January BRN meeting. We hope you will be able to join us at all or some of these gatherings!

Eben Muse and Samantha Rayner

Directors of the Bookselling Research Network