Summer is usually the busy time for library professional development of all kinds, especially conferences and institutes. Conferences in particular may not always be the most helpful for non‐professionals, but serious collectors and amateur historians won’t leave them completely empty‐handed. The various sub‐groups of the American Library Association (ALA) – such as the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the ALA – will probably have at least one or two sessions at their conferences of that would help build skills helpful for personal research. At the RBMS conference in Philadelphia this July [LINK], which I attended, pre‐conference workshops like “Building Collections: Acquiring Materials and Working with the Antiquarian Book Trade” or “Reference Sources for Rare Books” could be just as helpful to non‐librarians. Even more technical discussion sessions during the conference, like “Progressive Bibliography: Catalogers, Curators, and Crowdsourcing” could be at least of potential interest to non‐librarian researchers, just in terms of keeping them abreast of the developments in the institutions in which they may want to look for resources. Big summer conferences like the Annual Meeting of the ALA [LINK] or the Society of American Archivists (SAA) [LINK] also may be good places to look for topics of interest. The registration and travel fees for attending these professional conferences as a non‐professional, non‐member may not be feasible for all, but it’s worth seeing if any national, regional, or local library or archives conferences may be planned for your city. Other great resources for non‐information professionals can be found in the classes and institutes run by organizations like the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) [LINK] and the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School (RBS) [LINK]. Classes I’ve attended, like the introduction to architectural records that CCAHA offered several years ago, or the “Understanding Photographs: Introduction to Archival Principles & Practices” course I took through SAA [LINK] would probably be of interest to the wider world of researchers. Rare Book School is a slightly different animal altogether. RBS offers weeklong classes throughout the summer at UVa in Charlottesville, Virginia (plus some other courses during the rest of the year in other east coast locales) on topics like English Paleography, 1500‐1750 (which I took this July), The Identi-ication of Photo Print Processes, Provenance: Tracing Owners & Collections, and other topics related to rare
84 Shades MAGAZINE | Memento Mori 2010