APHA at SHARP -- Panel discussion at SHARP's 2002 London conference

The American Printing History Association

"Preserving the Recent Pre-Digital Past: The APHA Perspective"

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APHA ran its first-ever scholarly discussion panel at the July 2002 conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). The panel, held at the University of London, July 10-13, 2002, featured members of the American Printing History Association (APHA) who talked about the challenges and opportunities of digital technologies from their perspective within the Association. The panel was entitled "Preserving the Recent Pre-Digital Past: The APHA Perspective."

APHA's proposal for the panel read:

In the rush to digitization, what are we losing about twentieth-century print culture? What technologies and information and stories about printing production are disappearing? What is needed to save them for historians of print? Which organizations are collecting and preserving technologies and stories?
This session will bring together members of the American Printing History Association (APHA) to describe the challenges as well as the opportunities of new technologies. Panelists will discuss what is being preserved as well as research resources that are available outside of major institutional libraries and archives. Panelists will also describe various APHA activities that promote the preservation of print culture history. These include APHA’s oral history project, the identification and preservation of printing history artifacts, and APHA’s publishing program.

Three or four APHA members will constitute this panel. The panel’s chair will also provide a brief overview of APHA’s history and mission.

Panel members were:

Alice Beckwith, Professor of Art History, Providence College, and Coordinator, APHA Oral History Project.
"Voices from the Digital Edge: The APHA Oral History Project"

Paul Romaine, Curator and Executive Director, The Gilder Lehrman Collection (on sabbatical), and Vice-President for Membership, The American Printing History Association
"Preserving Printing Artifacts: Museums, Associations and Individuals"

Michael Winship, Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin
"The Art Preservative and APHA" (tentative title)

Irene Tichenor, Recent Past President, The American Printing History Association
(Chair)

Recent Past President Irene Tichenor moderated.

A report of the conference and the panel papers appeared in the Fall 2002 APHA Newsletter.

Contact Vice President for Membership Paul Romaine or Vice President for Programs Mark Samuels Lasner for more information.

N.B. Some of these papers will be repeated at APHA's October 27, 2002 Wayzgoose at the Museum of Printing, North Andover, Mass.

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